Wednesday, August 3, 2016

The Unbearable Simplicity of Being

Richard Dawkins, a favorite materialist whipping boy, loves to lambaste the idea of God. One of his primary arguments is that a Creator would be more improbable than anything it creates because it would have to be more complex.

So is he right to assume that God would have to be complex? (I know I like to tell people I’m sort of complex, but not that complicated.)

Spitzer takes this topic on in noting that “since Plato, and more explicitly, Thomas Aquinas, a rationale was developed for precisely the opposite contention, namely, the absolute simplicity (noncomplexity) of God.”

Here’s the trap that all materialists get into: they are stuck in their own closed loop. If you are trying to deduce the nature of reality from a vantage point that is restricted (or reductionistic), then the results will be also be limited. “Dawkins (and some other scientists) has a difficult time understanding how an absolutely simple reality can think, but if one takes thinking out of a materialistic context (e.g., a brain or a machine) and views it instead from the vantage point of a “completely unifying acting power”, the problem vanishes.”

And it’s a leap that is that simple.

We know that reality must have at least one uncaused cause, because otherwise something would have to come from nothing. And we know that is not possible. So something has to come from something or reality would be nothing.

Even physicist Stephen Hawking acknowledges that something must transcend the physical cosmos, and asks the provocative question: “Even if there is only one possible unified theory, it is just a set of rules and equations. What is it that breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe?”

But let’s say complexity would be possible for an uncaused cause, why would this not work? First, complexity entails parts and parts are restricted. And if the uncaused cause is the pure act of existing through itself, then there can be no restriction. It must simply be the whole that creates the parts.

“No amount of complexity of restricted parts will ever be able to generate an unrestricted act of mentation, because in their totality they will always be restricted.”

And while God may not have parts, could He have relationships? “In brief, if an uncaused cause must be unrestricted and absolutely simple, then it can be in perfect relationship to itself (like an act of self-consciousness) where there is no differentiation of parts, but only differences in relationships within its self-reflective act.”

I see an opening for the Trinity here.

So from the perspective of the materialist, all this amalgamation of physical and metaphysical evidence may not suffice as proof. And while that may be part of the plan all along, so that faith can step in, it may also be a good enough inference.

“[John Henry] Newman held that truth claims did not have to be grounded in an infallible source of evidence or in a strictly formal deduction. They could be grounded in the convergence (complementarity and corroboration) of a multiplicity of probabilistic evidential bases. In so doing, certitude would not be grounded in one base alone, but in a multiplicity of likely or probable evidential bases. Thus, even if one (or more) of these bases undergoes modification, the certitude intrinsic to the convergence remains intact (though it may be lessened).”

And that’s good enough for me.