Month: January 2025

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 5

Was the fool right or was Anselm? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

I don’t find the ontological argument convincing.

I know a lot of you will disagree with that one, and that’s okay. Many Thomists don’t. I know there are a few that do, but I am not one of them.

That being said, I still will say something when someone else gets an argument wrong, but that’s the curious thing. While Paulos blew it on the ontological argument, it seems he got the ontological argument correct in its formulation. He even goes into the history of it with Anselm and with the disagreement from Gaunilo.

It left me wondering why it is he got this argument right in its presentation and yet got the cosmological argument so incredibly wrong?

It has been said that most every philosopher in history who studies claims about theism since Anselm has had something to say about the ontological argument. I am not surprised it shows up on something like this. I am also not surprised that Paulos punts to David Hume again.

Anyway, let’s look at one long argument Paulos has.

If one assumes that God is both omnipotent and omniscient, an obvious contradiction arises. Being omniscient, God knows everything that will happen; He can predict the future trajectory of every snowflake, the sprouting of every blade of grass, and the deeds of every human being, as well as all of His own actions. But being omnipotent, He can act in any way and do anything He wants, including behaving in ways different from those He’d predicted, making His expectations uncertain and fallible. He thus can’t be both omnipotent and omniscient.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 41). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Uhhhh. Why?

You see, if God knows everything, the only reason He would change what He will do in the future (Although I do think there is no past or future with God, I hope you understand what I am saying) is because He gets new information. He can’t because He is omniscient. So why would He change what He is going to do? That makes Him a being in time anyway.

It really amazes me that these new atheist types talk so much about science and reason and asking big questions and finding answers. It sounds so incredible to them. They want to go out there with their curiosity and find the answers to what they ask!

Except for in religion.

Then they just drop a question, don’t bother to see what anyone has said about it for 2,000+ years, and then walk away celebrating like they made a major accomplishment. Then if a Christian comes along and asks what they think is a hard question for something like evolution, the atheist turns and mocks them for not doing their research to find the answer.

My saying about atheists is that too many of them honor reason and evidence with their lips, but their heads are far from them.

Still, we have only scratched the surface with how much worse Paulos will get.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 4

Do improbable events just happen all the time? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

In this chapter, Paulos is taking on the anthropic principle. Now as readers know, I’m not really a science guy so I’m not going to try to approach it from that angle. Seeing as he is a mathematician, I am going to try to give Paulos the benefit of the doubt on the math, despite I think I have great reason to distrust him, which we will get to later.

At the start, Paulos says this:

1. The values of physical constants, the matterantimatter imbalance, and various other physical laws are necessary for human beings to exist.

2. Human beings exist.

3. The physics must have been fine-tuned to the constants’ values to make us possible.

4. Therefore the fine-tuner, God, exists.

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (p. 28). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Little problem at the start. For one, this is quite simplistic. Second, does Paulos interact with any scientists who advocate this? No. There are secular scientists as well as Christian ones who have written on this. Where is their work cited? Not here.

He does at least mention Lee Smolin, who hypothesizes a theory of universes breaking off from other universes, a sort of Darwinian theory of a multiverse. The problem is even if this is true, how does this help? I am trying to explain one universe and you are suddenly going to say there are countless universes. It’s like a police officer trying to explain one dead body only to be told that there are 500 more out there and he thinks, “Oh. Well, I guess we can close up and go home then.”

From here, he goes into something called a Doomsday argument. Honestly, I’m looking at this and wondering what this has to do with the price of tea in China. He says that this kind of thinking makes more sense than various end-times scenarios held by many religious people. Perhaps it does, but Paulos assumes that all Christians hold to those kinds of end-times scenarios.

So let’s review. Has Paulos really interacted with the science behind this argument? Not for a moment. Has he looked at the philosophy used by some philosophers as well to explain why our existing in this time and space is unlikely? Of course, he hasn’t. Instead, Paulos has decided to punt to the subject of math and I suspect hope that in the end, none of us will notice that he has not interacted with any of the relevant material on the anthropic principle, and keep in mind I say this as someone who is not scientifically inclined and thus does not use the argument.

Paulos is unfortunately the kind of atheist who likes to do magic where he thinks he can say a few words and wave away a problem with his position. If these kinds of shallow answers seem convincing to him, that tells me more about his atheism than it does about his arguments. Atheists who want to take their worldview seriously should distance themselves from Paulos and encourage other atheists to do the same.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)

Book Plunge: Irreligion Chapter 3

Can God be funny? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.

This is an odd chapter. It’s dealing with the idea of pseudoscience and there was very little relevant to our purposes. As it is, I only highlighted one section in this chapter, and it’s not because I disagree with it, but because it is something worth commenting on.

Although the above isn’t particularly amusing, it isn’t reverential, either, and does suggest a couple of questions about religion and humor. Why is the notion of a fundamentalist comedian funny, or at least quite odd? Why does the idea of God as a comedian seem more appealing (at least to me) than the traditional view of God? Why does solemnity tend to infect almost all discussions of religion? Certainly an inability or reluctance to stand outside one’s preferred framework is part of the answer. So is an intolerance for tentativeness and whimsy. The incongruity necessary for appreciating humor is only recognizable with an open mind and fresh perspective. (A famous “argument” for an abstract proposition symbolized by p comes to mind. It’s ascribed to the philosopher Sidney Morgenbesser and illustrates, or maybe mocks, this fluid capriciousness. “So if not p, what? q maybe?”)

Paulos, John Allen. Irreligion: A Mathematician Explains Why the Arguments for God Just Don’t Add Up (pp. 25-26). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

Do we ever think about Jesus laughing?

Why do we think of the Puritans as boring and stuck-up people?

Why do we associate negativity with words like “sermon” and “preach.”?

I have noticed that I think comedy is dying in the West, but I honestly think it’s because of leftism gaining a hold politically. If it gets to the point where you are not allowed to make jokes about X because they’re politically incorrect, we are closer to tyranny. My recommendation is to let the jokes be made and let the market decide.

Months ago I said that we shouldn’t protect people from jokes about X and I did have someone say that we should definitely allow comedians to make jokes about kids with cancer. My thought to something like that is, yes. Let them make jokes. Then let us silence them not by violent means, but in the market of public ideas. We don’t buy their books or listen to their shows or watch their videos or anything like that. That is the way freedom works. Freedom of speech is there not to protect speech we like, but speech we don’t like.

Christians need to be funny. We should get the most joy out of life compared to anyone else. Sometimes when we are told we believe some bizarre things, we should accept it. Yes. They are wild. What is even funnier about how wild they are, is that they’re also true.

I agree with Paulos to a point here. I do think we should treat God as holy, but that does not mean as boring. We are meant to enjoy Him and enjoy His creation. He created the world to be enjoyed and we are creatures that have the ability to laugh because we find something funny. We should use it.

We’ll continue next time.

In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)