Arguments for God-And why they suck.
Dualism- Part 1 of 3
After seeing theists and atheists make poor arguments for God and then try to attack or defend them I decided to make a series that shows some simple arguments for God, and why they are terrible or great. I will be skipping a lot of philosophical jargon in order to get to the point. I will do my best to show these arguments accurately and fairly, but keep in mind I think they fail and it’s my article.
Let’s start with Dualism.
Dualism is not strictly an argument for god, but there is an argument from dualism for god. God in this sense is what is called the god of classical theism. This is the god that most modern monotheists subscribe to even if they don’t know it. This god is described as having those “Omni” properties. They are Omni: benevolence, presence, intelligence, and potency. This means that god is wicked smart, everywhere, and can do anything. The benevolence part isn’t in the original omnis but it is often included today.
As a fun sidetrack we can look how these traits are highly problematic for the God of the bible. (Not written yet)
So what is dualism?
Dualism, also called substance dualism, is the proposition that the entire universe, and everything in it is composed of one of two substances. Those substances are usually called mind and body, or physical and non physical, or spirit and body. There are a ton of formulations, but the important part is that the substances are completely separate and do not overlap. They have very different and opposite qualities from each other. How does that lead to god? God is one of those substances. Well to be more precise, god is supposed to be the source of both substances, but is probably not made up of the physical one. So who started down this path and how?
A brief overview of the distinction between body and not body (mind) would be the matter of extension. One way in which mind and body are fundamentally different is that mind cannot be divided, where as a physical thing, like an apple, can be cut into infinitely smaller pieces. Another example of this dichotomy is that the mind (not brain) takes up no space, where as your arm, or leg takes up space.
I’m not writing about Ancient Greek Philosophy-sorry, not sorry
René Descartes basically revived the old arguments around dualism, which is why I’m not touching the ancient Greeks. They also weren’t monotheists, so it doesn’t help with our omni-god chat.
René Descartes
This dude was a French philosopher in the 17th century (1600s), and general knower of stuff. He did new styles of math, and plenty of juicy philosophy. Descartes basically changed shit up. He wandered Paris and saw some mechanical things on display and was like “whoa, if that motion doesn’t have a mind then does my motion need one?” (not a quote). It is also said that Descartes had a “lady automaton” that he crated and dragged with him everywhere he went. I think he was fucking it. The dude never married. Not like that’s a problem, but you now what, I digress.
Mind-Body Problem
The Mind-Body Problem (MBP) was championed by Descartes and can be described with this simple question: “what is the relationship between mind and body?” Early thinkers didn’t know that the brain was used for thinking. Some people thought that the brain was used to cool the blood, like a squishy radiator. Dualist like Descartes think that the brain is some sort of bridge between the physical (body) and non physical (mind) that makes up the universe. More specifically, Descartes thought that the bridge was the pineal gland. The pineal gland isn’t really it’s own independent thing. It’s basically a pinecone shaped gland in the brain that we know produces certain hormones that are very important to life. However no amount of brain surgery has revealed a little soul bridge inside of it. What would that even look like?
Interactions
Pardon me for summing up Descartes’ MBP explanation, it’s huge and complicated, but we can look at it with only a few key bits. Descartes thinks that the human is a special entity that has mind and body closely linked. He does not think that animals have minds, or souls. He thinks that the mind exists without the body but the human body may not exist without the mind. This is of course impossible to show as without a body the mind would have no vehicle to deliver it’s own will. How fucking convenient.
The MBP gives rise to a few pretty fun questions. One being: do physical states influence mental states? Do mental states influence physical states? If so, how? Elisabeth of Bohemia (EOB)crushed Descartes with this question. Her problem with Descartes’ MBP was that if the mind was a separate substance from the body how was the mind able to set the body in motion. Descartes answer really sucked, so hard we don’t need to go into it. And this is how we get it back to god.
The G Word
So how does this have to do with an argument for god? In the dualistic worldview god is not a physical thing. God is a force that is suppose to be acting on the world, somehow. But if EOB has a good and strong stance against how the non physical acts upon the physical, then she has a good criticism of the dualistic god claim.
Going back to the omni-stuff, we can criticize this notion of god by comparing it to weather or not it makes sense to say that god is both non physical but can still “do stuff.” If the Omni's are true than having a non physical god makes some sense, but let’s dig in. God being omnipresent, means it would have no physical locus. But having no physical location doesn’t make sense, as what is it like to point to something that is everywhere? How can a being, be everywhere? Being omniscient is also problematic. The only process of knowing that we have ever identified has everything to do with a physical brain. When we say our ABC’s there is activity in our brains that is measurable. A thing that can think, without the organ used for thinking (or something analogues to) is not thinking. And the most problematic omnipotence. If god has no physical presentation is has no power to do anything at all. We live in a causal universe. A ball doesn’t bounce without something hitting it, but that thing that hit it has to have a body in order to hit anything at all.
Some rejoinder could be, “but god can do anything.” My response is, then go back and define your god with a body, because saying that something nonphysical can hit stuff is silly. This really is it everyone. It’s just that simple. If your God is that of the Omni's it is simply a flaccid concept that died out in the 1600’s, you just don’t know it yet. I’d love to read your comments on how I’m horribly wrong.
Next time we do the ontological stuff.
Lastly we do the American Pragmatists and how this whole line of thinking is useless jargon to begin with.
Safety third!
