Christopher Martin's Examination of the Fifth Way #1

The Fifth Way of Thomas Aquinas is one of the most misunderstood arguments for the existence of God. Primarily because of the Intelligent Design movement making such a loud racket that nobody can really hear anything else. Fortunately, there is an excellent article by Christopher Martin that digs  deep into this argument and shows why it isn't anything like the argument from design.

I will go through this article slowly; very slowly. Just a paragraph or two at a time. It is long, and sometimes technical. The article can be found here.

The Fifth Way, as often remarked, depends on final causality, explanation in terms of an end, of what is the point of things. The aim is to show that the world, like its parts, requires an explanation in terms of what it’s for, and what the world is for is set by God. It is a mistake to say that this argument is based on the world’s being for a purpose: it is rather based on the world’s having a point, which is at first sight quite another thing. The circulation of my blood has a point, but it does not have a purpose: nor do even I have a purpose in circulating my blood, since circulating my blood is not something in the strict sense which I do. I can’t help it. It is true that in order to reach God Aquinas has to argue that the point of the world has to be a purpose set for it by God, but that is a further step in the argument.

So explanation in terms of an "end" is different from explanation in terms of a "purpose." Martin's circulatory system has an explanation in terms of an "end", of "what it's for": to deliver oxygen throughout his body. But it does not have a purpose: it might have been created directly by God, or by blind evolutionary forces. Whether it is a part of something larger that has a purpose or not, considered as a part of the system of his body, Martin's circulatory system only has an end, not a purpose.

This is the briefest of all the Five Ways, and its structure is apparently clear.

1. We see that there are things that have no knowledge, like physical bodies, but which act for the sake of an end.

2. But things which have no knowledge do not have a tendency to an end unless they are directed by something that does have knowledge and understanding.

3. Therefore there is some being with understanding which directs all things to their end, and this, we say, is God.

This is his formalization of the Fifth Way.

But this simplicity is deceptive, and the history of natural theology and apologetics has made it yet more difficult for us to read this argument as we should. Most people would want nowadays to object to the first premiss, and to deny that we see that physical bodies act for the sake of an end. But they would grant that if we saw physical bodies acting for the sake of an end, we should conclude immediately to the existence of God. Aquinas does not agree, I think. He thinks that it is almost unquestionable that e.g. physical bodies act for the sake of an end: what is tricky is the step from the unconscious end-directedness which we see all around us to the conscious end-directedness which he needs to assert if he is to prove the existence of God. 

An important point. One of the key differences between Intelligent Design and the Fifth Way is that in the former, ends and goals are difficult to find but if they are, the existence of a Designer is immediately inferred. However, in Aquinas, it is obvious that physical systems act for the sake of an end; the harder part is getting from that fact to the existence of a Designer. This will become clearer as the article proceeds.

That's enough! I told you this would be short! Snippets. The blog is supposed to be digestible.

The take home points:

• There is a difference between "end" and "purpose"; as Martin will make clear later, something can have an "end" relative to the system of which it is a part, even if that system does not have any overarching purpose.
• In the Fifth Way, the existence of "ends" in the world is easy to find; it is the move from this fact to the existence of God that is difficult.

Carl Sagan: Where Did God Come From?

Watch this:



"Where did God come from?" This is a popular objection from atheists. Unfortunately, it's also completely misguided, and only exposes the atheist for being utterly unfamiliar with classic monotheism.

To explain…

Starting with Aristotle, which is where classic monotheism begins to really gel, the basic idea is that all changeable things (such as birds, people, planets, stars) cannot collectively be responsible for their own existence, because then they would be causing themselves to exist, and so would have to exist prior to them existing, which is a logical contradiction. To solve this, Aristotle hypothesizes that there must be something unchangeable which is responsible for the existence of changeable things. Because it is unchangeable, it cannot have a cause even in principle. A cause implies a change, so if something is unchangeable then it doesn't need nor can it even have a cause.

It must be emphasized that Aristotle is not speaking of the thing that triggered the Big Bang, but rather of a "substrate" that grounds the existence of changeable things, even if the universe is eternally old. Just like a room full of dancing people, even if infinitely old, still has to have a floor in order to hold the people up.

So now hopefully it is clear why Sagan's objection makes no sense, and is in fact complete gibberish. Asking where God came from is asking about a change in God, that he came from somewhere, or was caused by something. But the whole point of classic monotheism is that God is the unchangeable reality that grounds the existence of changeable things. So Sagan's objection translates as follows:

• What changed the thing that is not changeable?

You can see that this is a nonsense question. It entails a contradiction. It's like asking:

• Which mountain is higher than the highest mountain?

Alexander Pruss on the Principle of Sufficient Reason

A very brief rundown of some of the arguments Alexander Pruss has offered for accepting the principle of sufficient reason (the principle that for any state of affairs, there is some explanation for its existence).

Epistemological Argument: Once we accept that the PSR is false, and hence some contingent facts have no explanation, then skepticism results: a demon may not be deceiving you, but your perceptions might be happening for no reason at all. Thus if the PSR is false, then we cannot know empirical truths. But we do know empirical truths. Therefore, the PSR is true.

Evolution: The confidence of the theory of evolution is strong argument for the PSR. We presuppose the PSR when examining evolution, otherwise we could conclude that there are some facts with no explanation, and thus that a monkey just appeared out of nowhere and evolved into people.

Inference to the Best Explanation: For a particular phenomenon, we look at all the possible explanations and infer that the best one is the most likely. But we never think to include “no explanation” as a possibility.

No Widespread Violations of the PSR: Why aren’t there violations of the PSR all around us, if it is false? Why aren’t strange things popping into existence all over the place with no explanation? If the PSR is false, then we should think that a brick popping into existence in mid-air is perfectly possible. But we already discount that from having a high probability, so perhaps the PSR is a priori.

Philosophical argumentation: If the PSR is false, then we could just claim brute fact whenever we do philosophical arguments. Why is it true that it is morally right to switch the trolley car to kill one person instead of five? Who cares. It’s just a brute fact.

Al Farabi and Avicenna's Cosmological Argument

Although they were not together, the cosmological argument of Al Farabi and Avicenna is close enough that there is no need for a separate post for each one.

I. "What it is" vs "That it is"

Consider the definition of something. A dog. A dog is a carnivorous mammal with four legs, a tail, and a snout. But just from knowing what it is, we cannot tell that it is. I.e., that it exists. We have to go out into the world to see if dogs actually exist:

Or consider the Higgs boson. This is the elusive particle that physicists were looking for using large particle accelerators or "atom smashers." They knew that the Higgs boson had certain properties, such as a specific charge and spin. But they did not know whether it existed, and for this reason built atom smashers such as the Large Hadron Collider. Again, we could know what a Higgs boson is but just from that not know that it exists.

So for most objects of our experience, their definition, or essence, does not entail their existence. In other words, these objects are not the source of their own ongoing existence. So since their ongoing existence does not come from themselves, it must come from outside them. In other words, they must be dependent on other factors for their existence. For example, a lake does not entail its own existence; its existence is maintained by warm air, gravity, and so forth. But these factors also do not entail their own existence, and we see that warm air depends on a source of heat, and gravity depends on mass, and a source of heat depends on nuclear reactions, and so on.

This leads into a regress…

II. Dependent Objects Imply an Independent Object

What kind of regress are we talking about, here? We don't mean a regress stretching back in time, but rather a hierarchical regress of dependent members here and now:

If object A does not entail its own, ongoing, existence, then it must depend on other factors for its own ongoing existence, as we saw. But the same applies to those other factors. Now consider a chain of clamps that only stay closed if held by another clamp:

The only way this chain of clamps will stay closed if there is at least one "permanent" clamp holding shut one of the clamps, which then in turn holds together the rest of the clamps. One clamp must be "independent": not held shut by any further clamps:

Similarly, if object A is receiving or dependent on further factors for its ongoing existence, and those factors are themselves dependent upon further factors, then this must terminate in something not dependent upon any further factors:

To put it another way, all these objects whose essence (what it is) is separate from their existence (that it is) must trace to something whose essence is its own existence. That is to say, existence itself.

III. Existence Itself = God?

Now that we have arrived at the conclusion, existence itself, what must this thing be like? It must be eternal, as existence cannot not exist. It must be immutable, as nothing cannot exist and so existence must always exist. It must be unchangeable, because change entails a gain of something that was lacking, and a lack of something is the non-existence of something, and existence itself cannot have non-existence. It cannot be material, or have spacial location, or exist in time, because all these things entail change. It must have all positive properties to a maximum degree, because anything less than maximum would entail a lack of something, which is non existence. This would entail such properties as maximum power, maximum knowledge, and maximum goodness:

Cosmological Arguments: An Illustrated Guide

See below for illustrated versions of the cosmological arguments for the existence of God. This list will expand as I create them:

1. Plato's Cosmological Argument
2. Aristotle's Unmoved Mover
3. Plotinus's One
4. Al Farabi's and Avicenna's Cosmological Argument
5. Al Ghazali's Kalam Cosmological Argument
6. Averroes's Cosmological Argument
7. Maimonides's Cosmological Argument
8. Aquinas's First Way
9. Aquinas's Second Way
10. Aquinas's Third Way
11. John Duns Scotus
12. Spinoza's Cosmological Argument
13. Leibniz's and Clarke's Cosmological Argument
14. Richard Swinburne

Peter Boghossian's "A Manual For Creating Atheists"

Instead of a full review of Peter Boghossian's new book "A Manual For Creating Atheists", I figured I would just focus on one tiny section that relates to my specialty: arguments for the existence of God.

Boghossian aims to create a full method of talking people out of "faith", by which he seems to mean "theism". His technique involves learning the Socratic method and being nice and gentle to believers, unlike, say, Dawkins. I leave my opinion of this idea to the side for now, but it strikes me as being very….I don't know. Evangelical. Like…"Jehovah's Atheists" or something. Proselytizers. The flip side of the apologist coin. It makes me think of the various times in history where rebels fought against a communist dictator only to end up becoming…communist dictators.

But I digress. My focus will only be on his treatment of cosmological, ontological, and teleological arguments. Since the evidence for the existence of God will generally be in the form of these arguments, I want to see what kind of objections he offers.

Cosmological Arguments

He starts off in Chapter X: Apologetics 101. First up is what appears to be the cosmological argument. First, he quotes Ray Comfort, a Christian apologist:

“Why is there something rather than nothing? You have faith that there was no Creator.” “Bear in mind that an atheist believes that all these miraculous coincidences took place by chance. But he doesn’t just believe that man and woman came into being without a Creator, but that all of creation did—amazing flowers, massive trees, succulent fruits, beautiful birds, the animal kingdom, the sea, fish, natural laws, etc. His faith is much greater than mine.” —Ray Comfort, You Can Lead an Atheist to Evidence, but You Can’t Make Him Think (2009, p. 2) 

And then he says:

This is the best argument I’ve heard for the existence of God. 

OK, let me stop right here. An argument from Ray Comfort is the best argument he's ever heard??!! Ray Comfort?! Ray Comfort is one of the worst defenders of Christianity the world has ever seen. He is infamous for using a banana to prove God's existence. He is an evolution-denier as well. This is like playing chess against a newborn and then claiming that this was the best chess opponent you've ever seen. Has Boghossian never heard of Plato, Aristotle, Maimonides, Aquinas, Leibniz, or Richard Swinburne?!

But I'll remain charitable. Let's just say that he addressing the cosmological argument in general:

It’s the trump card played by believers. However, it doesn’t work. There are several related ways to respond to why there’s something rather than nothing: “Why assume nothing is the default?” This is a question that has no answer. As prolific German philosopher Adolf Grünbaum states, “Why be astonished at being at all? To marvel at existence is to assume that nothingness is somehow more natural, more restful. But why? The ancients started with matter, not the void; perhaps nothingness is stranger than being” (Holt, 2012). 

I could retort here that existence needs explaining. That I don't need to explain why there isn't an elephant in my bedroom right now, but if there were one, I would need to explain why there is.

But even that isn't necessary. One of the major cosmological arguments simply says that contingent things need an explanation. "Contingent" means that it could exist, or not, logically speaking. Most things we are familiar with are contingent. Your parents might never have met. The Earth might not have formed. Mt. Everest might not have formed. These things exist, but might not have. They are contingent. And so they stand in need of an explanation for their existence. The argument could be put like this:

1. All contingents have an explanation

2. The set of all contingents is itself contingent

3. Therefore, the set of all contingents has an explanation

And that explanation cannot be something contingent, because then it would be part of the set we are trying to explain. So it must be something outside the set, i.e. something non-contingent. Something non-contingent would be logically necessary, and hence capable of existing in any possible alternate world, including ones in which no matter exists, or no space, or energy. So something non-contingent must be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and capable of explaining the existence of contingent things. I would challenge Peter Boghossian to show which premise is false in this argument. Premise 1 is well-supported by science, and we never see a counter example. And premise 2 follows logically from what it means to be contingent: if one member of the set could not exist, and two members of the set could not exist, and all members of the set could not exist, then the set itself could not exist as well, and is therefore contingent. 

Continuing:

Similarly, “How do you know the universe didn’t always exist?” Even if appeals are made to the Big Bang, one can never know either that reality is one endless time loop with Big Bangs strung together for eternity, or that à la American theoretical physicist Brian Greene, we’re part of a larger multiverse with an infinite number of Big Bangs constantly occurring. 

Note that the argument above says nothing about the beginning of the universe. Perhaps the universe is eternally old. Nonetheless, all contingents have an explanation for their existence…etc. Answering "it always existed" tells me how old something is, but does not tell me the explanation for its existence. "Why is the hammer in the fridge?" "It's always been in there." "OK, but it could have always been on the counter. What is the explanation for it having always existed in the fridge rather than always on the counter?"

Richard Taylor, in his book Metaphysics, provides an interesting breakdown of this contingency argument. He argues that if you were to come across a translucent sphere in the forest, you would want to explain its existence. And saying that it always existed in the forest does not offer an explanation. Why an eternally existing translucent ball rather than an eternally existing blue one? 

And even if we do accept by fiat, given our limited knowledge, that something rather than nothing is extraordinary, does that give license to make up answers as to why this is the case? It begs the question: is it better to pretend we know an answer to something we don’t actually know, or is it better to simply be honest and say, “I don’t know?”

Of course we should not just make up answers. But if the contingency argument is sound, and a necessary something-or-other exists, then you can extract at least some properties from it that line up with what has traditionally been thought of as "God", such as eternality, spacelessness, timelessness, immateriality, power, etc. Those attributes automatically drop out of the necessary, non-contingent something-or-other that is the conclusion of the contingency argument. They aren't "made up".

But we can go even farther than that. Take Aquinas's cosmological argument. Like the contingency argument, it does not require that the universe began to exist. Rather, what it argues is that any particular object is dependent on further states of affairs for its ongoing existence from moment to moment. For example, a liquid lake is dependent upon warm air for its moment-to-moment existence. But the warm air is also dependent upon further, current, factors, such as atmospheric pressure and heat from the Sun. But those states of affairs are dependent upon yet further states, and so on. This chain has to terminate, not in the Big Bang, but in a present state of affairs that is not dependent upon any further states of affairs. If it were dependent on something further, then it just wouldn't be the termination point in the first place. And once Aquinas gets to something not dependent upon anything further, something that is just subsistent existence itself. Something maxed out. And from that, he quite easily argues for the typical divine attributes: since it is maxed out, it must be all-powerful, all-knowing, etc. In fact, he goes into great detail on each of these attributes and answers objections.

The possibility that the universe always existed cannot be ruled out. This by definition casts doubt on a creator. No faith is needed to posit that the universe may have always existed

Again, see above for two cosmological arguments that do not require a beginning to the universe. In fact, of about a dozen or so cosmological arguments defended by the major figures of philosophy, only two of them argues that the universe must have had a beginning. Specifically, the arguments from al Kindi and al Ghazali argue for a beginning to the universe. None of the others, from Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Aquinas, or Leibniz require the universe to have a beginning.

And there's more. Aristotle's famous unmoved mover, for example. Aristotle first begins by proving that the universe must be eternally old by proving that change could never have started, because if it did, then something would have had to start it and thus would have been a change itself, and so something else must have started that, and so on ad infinitum. So his first step is to argue that change eternally existed, and will always exist. And from that, he argues that not everything can be a changeable changer, because then change could stop. There must be something that is an unchangeable changer (an unmoved mover) that continually causes change without ever stopping, to keep in line with the first premise that change is eternal.

And yet more. Consider Plotinus's argument for The One. He argues that most objects are composed of parts, which are themselves composed of further parts, and so forth. A human being is composed of organs, which are composed of cells, which are composed of molecules, and so on. The simplest constituent of the universe must therefore not be composed of parts, and must be unchangeable. It is the simplest thing in the universe, ineffable, and beyond being or non-being. Plotinus calls it The One.

So you can clearly see that even if the universe is eternally old, this does not touch the cosmological argument in 10 out of its 12 versions. So merely stating that the universe could be infinitely old does not come close to refuting the idea of a creator.

Ontological Arguments

Now, Boghossian starts out with what at face value is an awful argument for God's existence and could easily be seen to be appeal to ignorance (you can't prove not-X, therefore X):

The basic idea is that because you can’t prove that there’s not a God, then God must exist. Of all of the defenses of faith, it is most difficult to comprehend how someone could actually offer this as a legitimate defense for faith or for belief in God.

As worded, he is correct that this is a terrible argument. Boghossian challenges his interlocutors with "little blue men on Venus", saying that there is no evidence for their existence and that they must therefore exist. He continues:

Most people will get the point and then say there’s something different about God. That is, this line of argument works against everything except God. (Here I’m reminded of defenders of Anselm’s argument for the existence of God. Every time someone would bring up an objection, they’d state that the argument only works with God.) When the respondent says there is something special about God that makes this argument not work, then I always press them to know what’s different about God. I’ve yet to hear a coherent answer to this question.

The difference is that God is, as postulated, is a non-contingent, or necessary, being. This argument would work with anything that is necessary, such as mathematical propositions. And from modal logic, there cannot be a merely possible necessary being.

Let's look a little closer. The word "possible" means something could be true, or not. It isn't logically impossible. It is possible that JFK was not assassinated, even though he was. It is possible that he was assassinated, and he was. Both situations are possible. The word "necessary" means something must be true and cannot logically be false. It is necessary that  2 + 2 = 4. It could not have been otherwise. The word "impossible" means that something is logically impossible. It could not have happened. It is impossible that a bachelor is married. Since "bachelor" means "unmarried man", it is logically contradictory for someone to be both married and not married. I.e., be a married bachelor.

These are called "modal claims". One useful tool for examining modal claims is called "possible worlds". These are not actually existent worlds, but just concepts to examine what we mean by "possible" and "necessary." Think of them as alternate realities. The way the world could have been.

So we would say that there are possible worlds where JFK was not assassinated. And there are no possible worlds where there is a married bachelor. And 2 + 2 = 4 in all possible worlds. So the word "necessary" translates to "true in all possible worlds." And the word "possible" translates to "true in some possible worlds, and false in others."

Now, when dealing with a necessary being, it is contradictory to say that that necessary being is merely possible, because you would in effect be saying that it exists in A) all possible worlds, and B) some possible worlds. This is contradictory. Something cannot simultaneously exist in all possible worlds, and not all possible worlds. In other words, there cannot be a merely possible necessary being.

In short, if something is possibly necessary, then it is necessary. If it is possible that a necessary being exists, then by definition it exists in at least one possible world. But, being necessary, then it exists in all possible worlds, which of course includes the actual one. The argument could be written like this:

1. If it is possible there is a necessary being, then there is a necessary being
2. It is possible there is a necessary being
3. Therefore, there is a necessary being

Premise 2 is the point at which the argument hinges, and is the focus of the argument Boghossian gives above. A theist could say that since no argument has been given to show that God, a non-contingent (necessary) being, is logically impossible (i.e. does not exist), then it follows that God is at least possible, in which case premise 2 is confirmed and the argument goes through.

Now, one might object that just because it has not been shown that God is impossible, it does not follow that God is possible. And that is correct. However, a theist could use it as at least some inductive support for the premise. If one cannot find a prima facie contradiction in the concept of God, and atheists have spent 2500 years trying to do so without unqualified success, then a theist could use that to argue that there is no contradiction, otherwise it would have been found by now. Or at least, the burden is definitely on the atheist at that point.

In short, the theist could say: "You have not proven that God does not exist due to any logical contradiction, and therefore God exists in some possible world, and therefore, because he is a necessary being, in all possible worlds. Or to put it another way, you have not proven God is impossible, therefore God exists."

So the apparently terrible argument from ignorance that was made by the theist could be interpreted as a perfectly logical modal ontological argument. Now, even if the theist didn't mean it this way, it still behooves us to try to interpret our interlocutors in the best possible way, even going so far as to attributing to them a better argument they could have made but did not. This is basic principle of charity 101.

Conclusion

This is all I could discern of the main arguments for the existence of God in Boghossian's book. Were I a theist, I would be one because of evidence such as Aristotle's cosmological argument, or Plotinus's. I would not be a theist due to "faith", interpreted as "belief in something without evidence." I would be a theist because I would agree that contingent objects are dependent on further factors, and that there must therefore be some non-contingent reality explaining their existence. I would believe because there is evidence. If I were a theist, Boghossian's book would not put a dent in my belief. The book seems to be aimed at evangelicals and fundamentalists as found in the Southern U.S., not at any academic or thoughtful theist.

Plotinus's One

A look at the neo-Platonic version of God called "the One", most famously associated with the philosopher Plotinus. This can be read in Enneads, Book 6.

I. Prerequisite: Plato's Forms

Since Plotinus was a Platonist and Platonism hinges on the Forms,let's first do a crash course in the Forms.

Consider any drawn triangle, or even a carefully constructed computer triangle:

No matter how carefully drawn it is, it will always have imperfections that make it less than a perfect triangle. For example, even the computer triangle consists of pixels, and so will consist of jagged lines and other features that are not true features of triangles:

What this indicates is that any physical triangle is only an approximation of a triangle, and not a real one. The real triangle would be the one of pure knowledge; the archetype, or Form.

The same thing applies to almost everything else that exists. For example, any particular elephant might be missing a leg, or have genetic imperfections, and thus only be an approximation of its archetype. According to Plato, these archetypes really exist as immaterial Forms, and are what constitute the real world. The physical world is but an inferior copy or approximation of the world of pure archetypes.

The problem is that if true reality consists of knowledge, then this knowledge must be grounded in a mind or some kind of intellectual source.

II. The One

Consider what the most fundamental principle in the universe must be like. It must be very simple, not composed of parts or sub-principles, because if it were, then each of its parts or sub-principles would be more fundamental than it. For example, the principle of A+ B is not as fundamental just A alone or B alone. Or consider an atom. An atom cannot be the most fundamental thing, because it consists of parts: neutrons, protons, and electrons. And its parts consist of parts. Protons consist of quarks, and so on:

So the first principle, the bottom-most layer of reality, cannot consist of parts. It also cannot be changeable, since change throughout time would be more complex than a homogenous and unchanging thing:

Such a thing is ineffable, and is beyond either being or non-being. This is The One:

III. The Intellect

However, the Forms must be anchored in it somehow, since they are pure knowledge and pure knowledge cannot just "exist" on its own, but must exist in an intellect. But the One is utterly simple, so how can it contain all these complex archetypes? The answer is that the One is not intelligent. Rather, an intellect emanates or proceeds out of it, and it is in this secondary principle that the Forms are grounded:

IV. The Soul

But this is still not enough to explain the world. If we have a simple One, and an Intellect in which Forms are grounded, all we have are static forms and all that would exist are immaterial Forms of knowledge. But we see physical objects and animals changing, coming into being, passing away, and going about their daily activities. So there must be a third principle which emanates from the Intellect which instills activity in things:

V. Conclusion

So we have from Plotinus a Trinitarian God which consists of the simplest first principle, an intellect to ground the Platonic archetypes, and a source of movement and activity.