Thoughts on God, part one...

[lalai]

Mmm...

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I'm not a big fan of organized religion, although I like incense and candles, the stained glass and stunning architecture. I also appreciate the sense of community, the pancake breakfasts, and if church has people thinking about the golden rule at least one hour a week, it can't be all bad.

The closest I come to a belief in God is my belief in love - faith in love as a guiding force adds meaning to my life and sustains me. I'm not so concerned about whether there is or isn't an afterlife, although my love for those who have passed keeps them alive in my heart and I am comforted to know that those who love me will keep me in theirs.
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yeah..l

 

[lalai]

Mmm...

Quote:
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I'm not a big fan of organized religion, although I like incense and candles, the stained glass and stunning architecture. I also appreciate the sense of community, the pancake breakfasts, and if church has people thinking about the golden rule at least one hour a week, it can't be all bad.

The closest I come to a belief in God is my belief in love - faith in love as a guiding force adds meaning to my life and sustains me. I'm not so concerned about whether there is or isn't an afterlife, although my love for those who have passed keeps them alive in my heart and I am comforted to know that those who love me will keep me in theirs.
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yeah..l

 

[cantdog]

Perdita:

Lewis seems to describe his moral law in terms that make it sound exactly like a conscience, which he classes, as so many of his era do, outside of our instincts.

He sees conscience as an aspect of soul, and souls as only for humans, so he has to divide the conscience from the heritage of the merely animal.

I believe he posits that there must be two categories: instinct/conscience, animal/divine; the rest of his discourse is persuasion as to where the line between the two lies, assigning impulses to one of the other as he likes the picture to look.

His conscience, the Moral Law, could just as easily be a function of the conscious mind, actuated by an espousal of a Golden Rule (or a desire to act as one's parents would have wished), entirely culturally derived.

Two impulses in conflict, and the mind deciding which one has more appeal. Living in aworld where no one does anything altruistic would be disadvantageous; if you were the one drowning, you'd surely hope someone was feeling altruistic!

Many people would turn away home after watching the spectacle of the death, though. I find the way a person reacts in an emergency to be influenced by training more than anything else. I've been in lots of emergency situations as a fireman.

I find his Moral Law a little contrived.

 

[Pure]

While I think there are pretty good "moral arguments" for there being "God", I don't think Lewis has got the best ones, even though they may be 'in the ballpark' in certain respects. The Catholic, Jesuit (and philosopher) Fr. Copleston had some good ones, he made in debate with Betrand Russell (BBC, 1948); see especially the third phase, moral arguments, in the following transcript,

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/p20.htm


As well one should see the almost Catholic philosopher, Simone Weil. Also A.E. Taylor, in "Does God Exist".

I think Amicus is correct that 'instinct' is probably not the best term to use, but the term 'desires based on biologically 'wired' goals" gets a bit awkward. The main arguments are not really affected.

Without getting into to much detail, or becoming too technical, these are the problems with two of Lewis's arguments:

Another way of seeing that the Moral Law is not simply one of our instincts is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in a creature's mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two impulses. You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the man who is drowning: but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same. And surely it often tells us to try to make the right impulse stronger than it naturally is? I mean, we often feel it our duty to stimulate the herd instinct, by waking up our imaginations and arousing our pity and so on, so as to get up enough steam for doing the right thing. But clearly we are not acting from instinct when we set about making an instinct stronger than it is. The thing that says to you, 'Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up,' cannot itself be the herd instinct. The thing that tells you which note on the piano needs to be played louder cannot itself be that note.

Possibly there is something (motivational) beside the two warring instincts, but one needn't go that route. In many cases one can simply say, "One instinct got the better." In the drowning case, we do use imagination to think of consequences( if there is enough time). I can think of the man's wife and kids, etc. I can think of being pulled down, on the other side. So either side is strengthened by imagination. IF I only can imagine my getting pulled down, that 'instinct' (desire) will likely prevail. OTOH, if imaginings about helping the fellow, avoiding orphaning his children etc. are lively, and I know I can help, I may jump in. That desire become stronger through exercise of imagination. NOT necessarily through a third 'moral arbiter' entity, that says, 'Wake up, altruistic desire.'

Further, as Ryle, pointed out, all such arguments invite infinite regress. If there is a 'third source (type)" of motivation, outside any two in conflict, then where there are two third sources (moral impulses) in conflict, I need a fourth type of motivation to sort out the conflict of the third

Here is a third way of seeing it. If the Moral Law was one of our instincts, we ought to be able to point to some one impulse inside us which was always what we call 'good,' always in agreement with the rule of right behaviors. But you cannot. There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which it may not sometimes tell us to encourage. It is a mistake to think that some of our impulses — say mother love or patriotism — are good, and others, like sex or the fighting instinct, are bad. All we mean is that the occasions on which the fighting instinct or the sexual desire need to be restrained are rather more frequent than those for restraining mother love or patriotism. But there are situations in which it is the duty of a married man to encourage his sexual impulse and of a soldier to encourage the fighting instinct. There are also occasions on which a mother's love for her own children or a man's love for his own country have to be suppressed or they will lead to unfairness towards other people's children or countries. Strictly speaking, there are no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the 'right' notes and the 'wrong' ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law is not any one instinct or set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the instincts.

He is saying there must be something 'orchestrating' the instincts, since no one, can be invariably relied on (or is appropriate to rely on). Yet this orchestration, 'choosing' one instinct/desire over the other is handled routinely throught the animal kingdom. A mouse can mate or flee; approach food or flee, etc. IF the mouse has been starving for a couple days, it will likely go for the food; while that makes sense, overall, it's also what enables me to catch him in a trap (i.e., the food seeking leads to his destruction.). BUT most mice do pretty well at avoiding danger and traps. Lewis is right, no one desire prevails, but the mouse brain coordinates the desires/instincts in a way commensurate with survival. The 'mouse brain' makes the 'kind of tune' Lewis talks about, with the lower level instincts/desires being the notes.

I think Cant made this point more briefly and elegantly; Lewis--following St. Paul-- has too sharp a division between spirit and flesh, conscience and animality, etc. For in fact animals solve all the dilemmas Lewis presents (Mothers decide whether to fight for the children, or flee; often they choose the former; but if they choose the latter, they don't get involved in wondering "Why is the spirit willing, while the flesh is weak.")

 

[cantdog]

Arguments for God's existence derived from moral grounds??

If there's any subject slipperier than God, it's morality. What a soup! Only a fool would attempt it.

 

[cantdog]

Does anyone imagine they could engender belief with arguments anyway?

I might have been tempted to make the leap of faith toward God, instead of the leap of faith I did make, toward atheism, if I could have joined thereby a community whose values and manner of living answered my own ideals. If, by becoming Methodist, for instance, I would be amongst a group who have found the way to live, then I might have done that.

I believe that people join religions which they find compelling and congenial, rather than ones which have great proofs of the existence of their God. Such proofs are constructed after the fact and have little influence on actual faith.

Consequently, a religion which wants to proselytize ought to expend its energy living a good life and promoting a proper and just ideal. If they are admirable, people will want to become more like them. Conversely, attacking people on spiteful grounds and issuing forth hypocrisies is repellent and discredits the community.

cantdog