Before the Beginning:
The Problem of Divine Lonesomeness
Originally posted on Incinerating
Presuppositionalism
In the Beginning: A Question
A visitor to my blog named Glenn left a comment
on my blog Stolen
Concepts and Intellectual Parasitism, asking:
You appear to assume that there would be something
illegitimate in a believer thinking that God was both subject and object, and
that his being an object is logically prior to his being a subject, but that
both are eternal… You may have a reason for making this assumption, but that
reason does not appear to have been spelt out. Would you care to elaborate?
Thanks.
Glenn's question has to do with what I call the problem of divine
lonesomeness, a problem which we encounter as we probe the deeper implications
of the claim that a supernatural conscious being created everything distinct
from itself, including but not limited to the universe in which we live. The
problem is most closely associated with various strains of creation-theism,
most notably Christianity, whose doctrinal assertions about a “beginning” (cf.
Gen. 1) lead to dubious implications about the creator-deity before that
alleged “beginning.” In its most basic form, the problem of divine lonesomeness
highlights an irresolvable predicament crippling the creator-deity before it
could have any opportunity to create anything distinct from itself.
Creation-theism typically entails the affirmation of the existence of a deity
which is supposed to be conscious, which created everything distinct from
itself by means of conscious activity. As one brief summary on what Christians believe,
we find a fairly common expression of the nature of theistic creation:
God is Creator of everything, this vast
universe. All was created by His Word. He spoke it into being. It is written:
(Genesis 1:3) And God said... and it was so.
His Word is powerful.
Similarly, James MacDonald, a popular Christian radio sermonizer, recently
exclaimed:
Let me say: I do not believe in evolution. I do
not believe in so-called theistic evolution. I believe that the second person
of the trinity stood in a spaceless, ageless,
timeless chasm of nothing in eternity past and he SPOKE. Hebrews 11:3 says
"And the worlds were formed." That's Jesus Christ the Lord. In
Colossians [applause] In Colossians chapter 1 says [sic], "He is unique,
He is the creator" - and notice this - "He is the goal. For by him
all things were created, invisible, in heaven and in earth, visible and
invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities... ("Bending
My Knee (Part 2)," Walk in the Word, Friday July 11, 2008)
How a person can stand “in a spaceless,
ageless, timeless chasm of nothing” is not explained, but Christians assure us
this really happened. Now while some Christians may suppose that the universe
is not the only thing that their god created (MacDonald himself went on to
speak of “levels of angels and demons,” and it’s never really clear whether
these are supposed to be part of the universe, or something apart from it),
that there are things that exist outside the universe – “supernatural” things
that are not “bound” to the laws and constraints of the universe – and that
these things were also created by their god, this minor detail would be
essentially irrelevant to the issue at hand. For by affirming that all
existents distinct from their god, whether it’s just the universe, or the
universe and some other set of creations, were created by their god, believers
necessarily imply that there was a time or state prior to or preceding any act
of creation on their god’s part when their god existed all by its lonesome.
Accordingly, before it created anything distinct from itself, the creator-deity
was all that existed.
A Two-Fold Problem
So the problem of divine lonesomeness involves the question of how one can
legitimately posit the existence of a conscious being when there's nothing else
in existence for it to be conscious of. The problem is further exacerbated by
the stipulation that said conscious being is incorporeal, or bodiless, as is
supposed to be the case with the immaterial deity of Christianity. The problem
as it arises for Christianity, then, is really two-fold: not only (a) do the
implications of the description which Christians give of their god suggest that
it could have no object to be conscious of prior to creating anything
distinct from itself, but also (b) that description also indicates that it
would have no means by which it could be conscious of anything. Thus
both aspects of the subject-object relationship are fundamentally undermined,
which means the believer commits the fallacy of the stolen
concept when he points to a conscious being as the creator of the universe.
As described, the Christian god in its pre-creative state at best resembles a
non-conscious non-entity stranded in an utterly lonesome void. Unfortunately for
Christians, even if one could propose a plausible solution to the first aspect
of the problem of divine lonesomeness (which would have to consist of
identifying what could legitimately serve as an object of divine consciousness
prior to creating anything distinct from itself), the second aspect of the
problem of divine lonesomeness would still remain.
With these prefatory remarks in view, I find it necessary to ask in response to
Glenn's question, a question of my own:
If the believer claims that his god is the
object of his own consciousness in the context discussed (i.e., prior to
creating anything distinct from itself, where said god is supposed to have
created everything that is distinct from itself), how is this any different
than affirming the existence of a consciousness conscious only of itself?
A consciousness conscious of nothing but itself is
a contradiction in terms: before it could identify itself as consciousness, it
had to be conscious of something. (Atlas Shrugged)
So the question for the theist affirming the existence of a creator-deity
and consequently implying the scenario described above, would at minimum have
to identify what his god could have been conscious of prior to creating
anything distinct from itself, as well as the means by which it is supposedly
conscious of it. Traditionally theism, in the west at any rate, describes its
god in terms of consciousness: it is “personal,” it is aware, it knows, it
speaks, it remembers, it makes decisions, it judges, it has emotions (anger,
for instance), it has desires (a will, for instance), it plans, it watches,
etc. All these functions entail a consciousness very much like we know it as
human beings (indeed, many thinkers, including Rand as well, have pointed out
that God is essentially a selective projection of attributes of human
consciousness; for instance, see here).
As we probe deeper into this matter, it appears more and more that a starting
point of utter subjectivism seems unavoidable here for our lonesome deity, and
by extension for the believer’s worldview.
Now obviously a human being or other biological organism in the same kind of
lonesome situation (if such could exist) would not necessarily have this
problem. If for instance I were the only thing existing
the universe, I could, at least theoretically, be conscious of myself, for
consciousness is only one of my attributes. I’m not a disembodied or bodiless
consciousness, like an immaterial deity is apparently supposed to be. I could
be aware of my hand, for instance, or my foot, or my belly, each of which is a
part of my self. (Of course, I wouldn’t be conscious of these things very long
if I suddenly found myself existing all by my lonesome; without air, food,
water, warmth, etc., I wouldn’t be alive for a brief moment and then I’d die,
and then all that would exist would be my dead body.) Also, as a biological
organism, I have the physical provisions necessary for being conscious of these
various parts of myself, namely sensory organs and receptors, a nervous system
and a cerebral cortex to which sensory signals are delivered, etc. For
instance, I have functioning eyes, and therefore I can see. By seeing things, I
have awareness of them. If I didn’t have eyes, or if I had eyes that didn’t
work, I wouldn’t be able to see anything, and thus I’d not have awareness of
objects in visual form. The same with my other senses.
If we eliminate all our senses, by what means could we have awareness of
anything? By no means? How is this a viable answer?
Now the theist might come back and say that his god has attributes other than
only its consciousness, attributes that are distinct from its consciousness,
and these other attributes would provide themselves as the objects of its
consciousness in its lonesome state. This is a common rejoinder to the problem
of lonesomeness. But what are these other alleged attributes that are distinct
from its consciousness? Most typically, the theist will say that his god is
aware of its own being. But what does that mean? This
is certainly not sufficient to undo the implications already present in
theistic descriptions suggesting that their god is a pure consciousness, without
a body (“incorporeal”), without anything specific to point to as an attribute
existing independently of its consciousness (such as body parts in the case of
biological organisms). In fact, such a reply seems to be an attempt to cover
the probable fact that the theist himself doesn’t really get the point of the
problem of lonesomeness and offers a last-ditch effort to put up a smokescreen
by retreating into the utterly vague.
The Case of Patrick Toner
Patrick Toner, of
Think about the nature of consciousness.
Consciousness is not an entity: it’s a faculty of an entity. It is not a
substance like a human being: it is, instead, something that human beings (and
perhaps other kinds of things) have. Like walking or digesting,
consciousness “has no existence or possibility apart from the creature” that is
conscious. (I take it that Rand would agree with the assertion, even though –
again – this is not the reason she offers for asserting that it’s impossible
for consciousness alone to exist [cf. Peikoff 1991,
13].) That is to say, of course, you can’t have a consciousness with
nothing but itself to be conscious of: the existence of a consciousness – any
consciousness – implies the existence of a thing that is conscious. Now, with
that point made, one can easily see that any consciousness will necessarily
have something other than itself to be conscious of: namely, at the very least,
the thing that it is the consciousness of (the thing to which the
consciousness belongs). The theist need have no problem with this, but can
gladly grant that the existence of a Divine consciousness implies the existence
of a Divine being, and that the Divine consciousness can therefore assuredly be
conscious at least of God. Thus, theism does not conflict with
I note that Toner’s statement here seems to agree, at least in part, with Robert
Bumbalough’s objection to the use of the concept
‘substance’ to describe the god of Christianity (as many Christians have done), especially given the typical Christian apologetic
stipulation that consciousness is non-physical. Here Toner states explicitly
that “[c]onsciousness... is not a substance like a
human being.” Human beings, of course, on the Objectivist model, are
integrations of consciousness and matter. This is quite unlike what the god of
Christianity is supposed to be, as it is supposed to be immaterial,
incorporeal, bodiless, in fact non-biological. Now,
according to Toner, consciousness is merely an attribute, not an entity as
such. How convenient! And yet, as Objectivists, we already know this. (In fact,
it is refreshing to see a theist come out of the closet and affirm explicitly
that consciousness is not an entity. It is frequently unclear when dealing with
theists whether or not they understand this. I think the source of the
confusion for believers on this point is the Christian notion of a
"soul" which is separate from the "flesh," where the soul
(associated with the individual's consciousness) is treated as a distinctly
existing entity in its own right. The Christian doctrine of the soul is in
large part responsible for a most unscientific and irrational understanding of
man's nature.)
Toner is also correct in comparing consciousness to other biological actions,
e.g., "walking or digesting," for consciousness is essentially a
species of biological action. When we perceive, infer, judge, remember, emote,
we are engaged in a type of action that is conscious in nature. The
question at this point is: what is performing the action that is
conscious in nature? In the case of human beings and other biological organisms
which possess consciousness, answering this question is not problematic. For we
can point to the organism as a whole, along with its brain and nervous system
in particular, as the performer of the action in question.
But in the case of a so-called "immaterial" being, which would have
no brain or nervous system or anything apparently comparable to these, this
question becomes problematic. I'd even say it is unanswerable at this point. In
this way, we can already see that affirming consciousness in such a context
amounts to a stolen
concept, for the preconditions of consciousness (e.g., a brain, a nervous
system, sensory organs, etc.) are being denied in the case of the Christian
god. So while the Objectivist would agree that "the existence of a consciousness
- any consciousness - implies the existenncce of a thing that is conscious,"
it's not at all clear that this could at all be compatible with the divine mind
of theism. Indeed, since a supposedly incorporeal being would by virtue of such
description lack a body, the truism that Toner states is not compatible with
theism. Objectivism agrees with Toner’s statement because consciousness is an attribute
of certain biological organisms. But theism's god is not supposed to be a
biological organism, so the problem arises with no solution.
This is where Toner's attempt to avoid the problem of divine lonesomeness runs
into further problems of its own, and nothing he offers in his critique seems
to anticipate the obvious question: of what was the divine conscious prior
to creating anything distinct from itself? Saying that it was conscious of
itself, or of its own “Being” as some Christians I’ve personally interacted
with have said, is not sufficient for the above reasons. If the god is supposed
to be a bodiless conscious being, how is this different from saying that it is
a purely conscious being, and therefore that when it is said to be conscious of
itself, it is really being said that it is
consciousness being conscious only of itself? A bodiless consciousness has no
body, so it could not be conscious of its own hands or feet or heartbeat or
intestinal activity, etc., for it is stated explicitly that it lacks these
things to begin with. Toner’s own treatment of this matter gives us little
confidence to suppose that theists can give any plausible answer to it:
The trouble with this kind of objection is that it
ignores the most important point: the fact that God has no body already
sharply distinguishes his mode of knowing from ours. Since it is not, and
cannot be, part of the notion of God that he knows through sensation, this
implies that his lack of a body wouldn’t keep him from knowing himself: he
would have to have other ways of knowing. But this doesn’t mean that God
(i.e., God’s consciousness) cannot be aware of God (i.e., the bearer of God’s
consciousness). It simply means the way of becoming aware is different: which
is pretty much what you’d expect! (Ibid., pp. 214-215)
This is painfully unhelpful, and quite frankly I’m startled that Toner
would even judge such statements sufficiently worthy to insert into his
critique of Objectivism at this point. He’s essentially saying that we should
not expect his god’s consciousness to be limited in the way that human and
animal consciousness is limited, simply because it’s different. This is the
“it’s just different!” defense that juvenile theists are so well known for. And
Toner is right in indicating that this is something we’d expect, precisely
because there really is no viable answer to the problem of divine lonesomeness.
It is at this point that Toner begins shifting the issue, from the first aspect
of the problem of divine lonesomeness (what could possibly serve as the object
of the divine consciousness prior to creating anything distinct from itself?),
to its second aspect (by what means could an incorporeal, bodiless being be
conscious of anything?), without dealing with the first at all adequately.
Before I examine Toner’s treatment of this second aspect, I note that Toner
finds it necessary to reject the doctrine of divine simplicity in order to
avoid the damage caused by the first aspect of the problem of divine
lonesomeness (see his footnote 3, p. 231). I have seen other defenders of
theism make the same move.
Toner says that his god “would have to have other ways of knowing,” that
is, other than by sensory input. As is commonplace with theists, he gives no
indication as to what these “other ways” might include. And even if one were to
accept this contentless retort (perhaps by imagining
that there is some alternative without having any genuine idea of what it might
be), it would only pertain to part of the problem of divine lonesomeness,
namely the means by which his god supposedly has consciousness, and not
at all persuasively. It would not address the question of what it would
be conscious of. At this point Toner is quickly but subtly shifting away from
this latter issue, hoping that by focusing on the former issue – the epistemology
of his god’s knowledge – will keep us off balance. Rightly suspecting that no
Objectivist would find anything he’s given so far at all persuasive, Toner
quotes Peikoff at this point, who writes:
“Spiritual” means pertaining to consciousness, and
consciousness is a faculty of certain living organisms, their faculty of
perceiving that which exists. A consciousness transcending nature would be a
faculty transcending organism and object. So far from being all-knowing, such a
thing would have neither means nor content of perception; it would be nonconscious. (Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand, p. 32)
In response to this, Toner writes:
Certainly, Peikoff is
correct in saying that our only direct experience of consciousness is of our
own. It is quite true that we are living organisms, and our consciousness is a
faculty we possess. It’s also true that our consciousness is a faculty of
perceiving that which exists. It is, however, indefensible to extrapolate from
these facts to the impossibility of an analogous faculty of knowing existing in
a non-bodily being. For while I grant (in fact, I insist) that for human
beings, all knowledge originates in the senses, I do not grant that this
licenses the inference that all knowledge originates in the senses. If
there were a good reason to think there is a non-physical, yet intelligent,
being, then there would be a good reason to think that not all consciousness is
necessarily just like ours in its method of acquiring knowledge. Thinking of a
consciousness that is not exactly like ours does not clash with the
preconditions of thought: there is nothing self-defeating or contradictory
about it. (Op cit., p. 215)
Much of what Toner writes here expresses agreement with Peikoff,
but he hastens to put that all aside. Essentially, Toner is simply saying,
"That's true in the case of human consciousness, but that doesn't matter
in the case of God's consciousness," and then proceeds to affirm what is
under dispute. We already know and expect that theists think their god is different
from human beings and other biological organisms; in my analysis above I've
been quite willing to take this into account. His defense at this point boils
down to, ‘Yeah, God doesn’t have a body, He doesn’t have senses, He doesn’t
have a nervous system or a brain or sensory organs, but He knows anyway!”
I guess I’m just not seeing the persuasive force of this formidable apologetic.
What's curious here is that Toner considers the consciousness of his god to be
"analogous" to human consciousness in some way, but he gives us no
reason to suppose there's any truth to this. In what way is anything which theists call "supernatural" analogous to that
which is natural, biological, and dependent upon physical processes, such as
human consciousness is? Whatever it is that Toner calls 'consciousness' in the
case of his god, it allegedly obtains without sensory organs, receptor cells, ganglionic connections, an entire nervous system, brain
activity and the such, as we find in every case of consciousness in nature. And
unlike human beings, saddled as they are with a consciousness which needs to
develop as they develop, a supernatural consciousness can be one which
possesses all knowledge for all eternity, never needing to learn, never making
errors, it is able to wish things into existence, such as entire universes, or
alter them at will, such as water into wine, etc. The theistic wonderbeing smacks all the elements of an imaginative
concoction, a fantasy based on a world-renouncing projection. And yet it is
“analogous” to human consciousness?
Perhaps it is only analogous in name only, since the same word is being used to
denote the attribute we find in biological organisms, such as human beings and
other animals, and whatever it is that the theist’s god is supposed to have (or
be). It is as if one were to say, “Of course man is conscious,” and Toner
should reply, “My God is too!” but beyond this no actual similarity is to be
found. We may ask, “How is your bodiless, incorporeal god conscious?” and Toner
gives us no reason to suppose his response could be any more substantive than,
“No how!”
Toner calls it “indefensible to extrapolate” from facts which we know are true,
to conclusions which those facts could only suggest: that consciousness
requires (a) a means of perceiving and (b) something distinct from its own
perceiving to serve as its initial object(s). Toner could not be more explicit
in declaring his license to ignore facts that we discover and validate about
consciousness when he writes:
what we can conclude from our knowledge of our
own cognition is that human knowledge necessarily rests on sensory data. This
provides no argument to the conclusion that no consciousness of any kind could
possibly rest on a different kind of data. (Ibid., pp. 215-216)
At this point, had Toner any tangible evidence to support the position that
consciousness is possible without not only sensory data, but also sensory
organs, receptors, a nervous system, a brain, etc., we
might expect him to produce some of it. But of course, he does not do this.
Instead, his defense simply consists of bald denials which appear to have no
better basis than what he may merely be imagining, for he gives us no
indication how we could distinguish what he calls a consciousness without body,
without sense organs, without a nervous system, etc., from what may simply be a
fantasy. This is why most Objectivist philosophers pay so little attention to
theistic apologists, as when the going gets rough, the
defenders of the religious worldview bail out without any parachute on their
own. For it is quite easy to lose patience with defenses as unserious as the
kind we find with most apologetic arguments, which, if allowed to proceed to
their final conclusion, ultimately reduce to a most desperate formula, such as
“that may be the case with things we find in nature, but that does not
constitute a refutation of the imaginary alternative I have in mind.” It is
because the alternatives which theists have in mind have their basis in
imagination, that their failure to produce legitimate evidence on behalf of
their position is to be expected.
As with other theists, Toner’s god is the ultimate exception to everything we
find true about reality through our examination of nature. This is the
essential hallmark of supernaturalism:
facts can be ignored because facts are of this world and thus have no bearing
on what “the supernatural” is like. Everything we discover about consciousness
from actually existing specimens open to rational investigation does not apply
in the case of a supernatural consciousness. If the consciousness of biological
organisms which we find here on earth require sensory organs, a nervous system,
a brain, etc., that’s fine so far as biological organisms are concerned. But
the theist’s god is exempt from these, per his stipulation, because it is not
biological. At what point do we recognize that we’ve crossed over from the real
into the imaginary? The theist’s own objections give us no confidence that he
even knows there’s a difference.
Left Behind: Man’s Ways of Knowing
It is important at this point to note that Toner fails to identify any
epistemological process by which one could come to the conclusion that such a
consciousness as he gives to his god could be real. In one of his quotes above,
he states:
If there were a good reason to think there is a
non-physical, yet intelligent, being, then there would be a good reason to
think that not all consciousness is necessarily just like ours in its method of
acquiring knowledge. (Ibid., p. 215)
So far as I can tell, Toner never identifies what he considers to be “a
good reason to think that there is a non-physical, yet intelligent being,” a la
a god like that found in Christianity, but I doubt he’s suppressing evidence
here. Why believe that such a consciousness, which is, contrary to what Toner
himself states, fundamentally dissimilar to any conscious we find in
nature (including human consciousness), actually exists? What is the basis for
believing the claim that such a thing exists, and how do we distinguish this
basis from something that may in fact be merely imaginary in nature? We must
keep in mind at this point that not only is the consciousness of Toner’s god
supposed to exist without a body and any apparently legitimate object distinct
from itself, it also is supposed to enjoy precisely the opposite orientation to
its objects that any consciousness we find in nature (including human
consciousness) has. For in the case of human beings, the objects of our
awareness do not conform to the content of our awareness. That is, the object
of consciousness holds metaphysical primacy over the subject of consciousness.
That’s the primacy of existence principle: things are what they are, regardless
of what we believe about them, think about them, know about them, wish about
them, pretend about them, ignore about them, etc. Wishing doesn’t make it so,
because the objects of consciousness have metaphysical primacy in the
subject-object relationship. But in the case of Toner’s god, its consciousness
is not so restricted. On the contrary, its wishes
hold metaphysical primacy over all objects in its awareness, for not only did
it allegedly create those objects, it can revise their identity at will. (For a
direct discussion of this metaphyiscal antithesis,
see my blog Confessions
of a Vantillian Subjectivist.)
Above we saw that Toner insists "that for human beings, all
knowledge originates in the senses." But how do his claims about a
consciousness with no body, no sense organs, no nervous system, no brain,
qualify as legitimate knowledge? How do they reduce to the level of sensory
input? Toner never walks us through this, and yet, it is crucial to the
internal coherence of his overall position. Whatever our conclusions may be,
our path towards validating them must comport with the basic nature of our
consciousness and its concommitant constraints. As I
asked in The
Axioms and the Primacy of Existence,
...what inputs inform the theist's concept of
consciousness beyond his own firsthand experience such that he thinks it is
meaningful to suppose that there exists a consciousness possessing the exact
opposite relationship that his consciousness has with its own objects? What gives
his concept of consciousness such latitude? What units has he discovered and
integrated into his concept of consciousness which allows him to affirm two
contradictory metaphysics? We know already that the method by which he
informs his concept of consciousness must be consistent with the nature
of his consciousness, for he has no alternative to using his own consciousness
in developing and securing the knowledge he seeks to hold. So this rules out
his own use of the primacy of consciousness as a means of arriving at a point
where he can reasonably affirm the primacy of consciousness. For instance,
since the primacy of existence applies to his own conscious interaction with
the world around him, he cannot reasonably adopt a method of affirming the primacy
of consciousness which reduces to the assumption that reality conforms to his
conscious operations. Not only would this be fallaciously circular, it would
short-circuit the nature of his own consciousness and invalidate any conclusion
he wants to draw. He cannot, for instance, rationally say that the primacy of
consciousness is valid because he wants it to be valid, for his consciousness
does not have the power to alter reality; his wants and wishes are ineffectual.
In the case of human identity and the knowledge we can reliably acquire, we
have no alternative but to adhere to the primacy of existence principle. So if
we affirm a claim as legitimate knowledge of reality, as a true understanding
of actually existing things, then the method by which we came to that knowledge
must itself adhere to the primacy of existence principle. We cannot, for
instance, say “Mermaids exist because it would make me feel better if they
did.” Who would be persuaded by such an argument? Only those
who reject the primacy of existence principle. So the question for Toner
is twofold:
(1) What method do we use to secure the claim that
the consciousness-possessing deity he describes and hopes to defend is real as
legitimate knowledge of reality? and
(2) Does that method adhere with the primacy of existence principle?
Toner does not identify the method by which he allegedly knows that a
consciousness exempt from everything we know about consciousness is biological
organisms really does exist. So unfortunately he leaves these two questions
completely unattended. Taken in context, all this suggests that Toner’s god is
really nothing more than imaginary, and that our leg is being pulled.
The God Who Could Not Hear
When Jesus is made to say “Who hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Mt. 13:9), I
can only suppose he is excluding the god of heaven, because as an immaterial,
bodiless being, it would have no ears to hear anything. The theist will insist,
however, that his god still hears, even though it does not have ears, or
tympanic membrane, or cochlea, or auditory nerves, etc. How does it hear? No
how. It “just” hears in spite of lacking these things. In fact, it hears in the
absence of sound waves, just as surely as the voice of James MacDonald's god,
as it "stood in a spaceless, ageless, timeless
chasm of nothing in eternity past and... SPOKE," echoed throughout the
void out of which it pulled the universe, like a rabbit out of a hat. The same
god hears your thoughts, the preachers tell us, even though thoughts do not
create sound waves – certainly not any that would reach beyond the limits of
the universe. But their god listens and hears these things anyway. The
explanation for this is really no further than the believer’s ability to
imagine, for in fact that is exactly what he is demanding that we do: imagine
that his god exists and can hear our thoughts. An imaginary being can do
anything, even if it does not have the kinds of attributes and properties we
have to do similar things. Why? Because an imaginary being does whatever its imaginer
wants it to do. Besides, explanations for these things are moot. The important
thing is that the believer believes that the all-hearing, all-seeing
voyeuristic deity is reall, and that he fears him.
All efforts to validate the questionable assumptions brought out here are to
serve this end: that the believer be crippled with fear, for this is "the
beginning of knowledge" (Prov. 1:7).
Christians typically respond to these kinds of criticisms in a rather
thoughtless, dismissive and unpersuasive manner, even though they will insist
until the cows come home that their god is not imaginary. They agree that their
god is not biological, that it does not have a body, that
it does not have a brain, a nervous system, sensory organs and such, but they
insist that their god is still conscious. In fact, it’s an omni-consciousness,
conscious of everything everywhere all of the time for all eternity. It has no
eyes, but it “sees” all anyway. And even though apologists never explain how
this could be (they only give weak, evasive responses, like Toner’s), they
apparently have no qualms asserting it to be the case and typically try to
shift the burden by insisting that the non-believer prove that their god could
not see everything. As we read between the lines of the apologists’ attempts to
address questions like this, what we really find is something along the lines
of: “Prove my fantasy is not true outside the universe.” Needless to say, this
is not a very productive approach to validating one’s worldview.
The Attack of the Burden-Shifters
The theist, then, can be predicted then to insist that the non-believer take on
certain challenges in order even to pose the kinds of questions I've asked
here, such as proving that consciousness as such requires or depends on sensory
input, sense organs, a nervous system, a brain, etc. Never mind the fact that
this is what we find in the case of all biological organisms which possess some
level of consciousness. Specimens from nature do not count, because the
believer's "truths" pertain to a realm beyond nature, a realm,
incidentally, which the believer has a very hard time distinguishing from the
fantasies of his imagination. In an attempt to feign gravitas on the part of
his position, the theist may very well point to such phenomena as thinking,
logical inference, predication, and other conceptual applications as examples
of conscious activities, assuming that these operations do not require sensory
input. And even though it has already been shown (with at least one theist
explicitly agreeing) that the Christian god, given its description as
omniscient and infallible, would not possess knowledge in the form of concepts
(see my blog Would
an Omniscient Mind have Knowledge in Conceptual Form? and my interactions
with Peter Pike’s responses here,
here
and here),
theists still assume that their god’s consciousness handles its alleged content
in a manner similar to ours (i.e., conceptually). And yet, concepts are formed
on the basis of sensory input. So why suppose so cavalierly that the conscious
operations here do not require sensory input? The theist taking this approach
seems to believe that, if a conscious operation is not itself identical to sensation
in nature, then it does not involve the senses and/or does not require or
depend on sensory input. But this would be a non sequitur implicating the
theist’s ignorance of how the mind works. This is crass example of how casually
theists retail in stolen concepts. Again, the conscious activities mentioned
not only need to have an object (Thinking about what? Logical
inference about what? Predication about what?
Etc.), they also require that the conscious agent in question
have awareness of that object, and this requires having a means of awareness.
Of what does the consciousness in question think, and by what means does it
have awareness of what it thinks? In these two aspects, we recognize that
consciousness depends on something prior to itself, both in terms of the object
of consciousness, and the means of consciousness. (I would also argue that
there is a third aspect in which consciousness depends on something prior to
itself, and that is its purpose. Animals possess consciousness for a purpose, namely
for their ability to live. Development of this point can wait until a later
occasion.)
In Conclusion: The Reprise of Divine Solipsism
Given the problem of divine lonesomeness and theism’s inability to provide any
substantive answer to it, we are right to point out that Christian theism,
which posits a supernatural creator which is needed to have created everything
that is distinct from itself, begins with a starting point of divine solipsism,
which is, according to a rational worldview, the ultimate expression of
subjectivism. Few apologists explicitly admit theism’s unavoidable solipsistic
implications, probably because few apologists really give any serious thought
probing the issues involved, and also of course because they resist any move
which might appear concessionary. Christian apologist Mike Warren came the
closest that I can remember when he wrote to the Van Til
List the following message:
The Christian view is solipsistic in the sense
that there is no other autonomous mind except God's. All other minds exist
because of God's ex nihilo creation of them, and thus
are completely dependent on Him for their existence and functioning. The only
universe that exists is the one that springs from the divine mind. (RE: An anti-theist's
attempted refutation of presuppositional apologetics, Feb. 29, 2004)
It is hard to find any clearer endorsement of subjectivism
than we find in a worldview which claims that the universe “springs from” some
form of consciousness. And yet we so frequently find defenders of such
positions referring to their opponents as necessarily espousing a subjective
worldview.
So to answer Glenn’s question, there is in fact something illegitimate about
positing a consciousness which allegedly existed prior to anything distinct
from itself for the reasons described here. Theists give no good explanation of
what their god could have been aware of prior to creating anything distinct
from itself, nor can they identify any means by which it could possibly be
conscious. Their descriptions cripple their own conceptions by cutting them off
at the ankles, thus resulting in blatant stolen concepts and obliterating their
own worldview’s own fundamentals as a meager bonus. As in the case with their
responses to other successful criticisms of Christianity, its defenders can be
expected to come back with an armful of sneering ridicule, acerbic
condescension and overheated attitude without producing anything remotely
approaching knowledge that you can bank on.
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