Ave Maria!
On Reasoning
Rev. Fr. Chas. T. Brusca
30 October AD 2010In Monsignor Ronald Knox' The Belief of Catholics, in keeping with most of Catholic tradition, Knox rejects the idea that we know God directly, and proposes the five proofs of God's existence as they are usually given in scholastic theology:
i. All motion requires a mover, and ultimately a First Mover called God.
ii. Every event is determined by a cause, and ultimately a First Cause called God.
iii. Nothing in our experience exists of its own necessity, but depends on something else for existence. Ultimately, this dependence goes back to a necessary existent being that we call God.
iv. We experience different degrees of natural perfection. This good and better imply a Best, which we call God.
v. Everywhere in nature we see order and system. In our experience order and system do not occur through random chance, but require an Orderer or Systematizer, which we call God.
It may be helpful consider the reasoning process to evaluate the force of these arguments.
Deductive vs. Inductive
If we know the general we can reason to the specific by deductive reasoning. Or, if we know specifics we can reason to the general by inductive reasoning.
Deductive Reasoning
If we know that “all men are mortal,” and we know that “Socrates is a man,” the inescapable conclusion is that “Socrates is mortal. The statement of these three terms is called a “syllogism”—consisting of a major premise, a minor premise, and a conclusion. If the two premises are correct, the conclusion is surely correct. But, even if the syllogism is properly structured, the conclusion will be wrong if the premises are incorrect: “All men are vegetables” combined with “Socrates is a man,” leads us to the false conclusion that “Socrates is a vegetable.” For deductive reasoning to be correct, we must start with accurate knowledge of the general, and apply correct logic in order to know the truth about something specific.
Our most common experience with deductive reasoning is in the Euclidean geometry with which we struggled in high school. Apart from statistics, most mathematics is deductive, for we start out with a general set of rules and use those rules to prove something about a specific case. Euclidean geometry is a particularly good example of deductive reasoning, for we start out with a mere handful of “axioms” and “postulates.” The “axioms” are simply common sense rules like “A quantity is equal to the sum of its parts” or “ If equals are added to equals, their sums are equal.” The “postulates” deal more with laying down general rules about the shape of things:
1. It is possible to draw a straight line from any point to any point.
2. It is possible to extend a finite straight line continuously in a straight line.
3. It is possible to describe a circle with any center and radius.
4. It is given that all right angles are equal to one another.
5. (The parallel postulate): If a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines, if produced indefinitely, meet on that side on which are the angles less than the two right angles.
In Euclidean geometry, one is asked to accept the axioms and postulates on faith as describing the general conditions of the Euclidean universe. The student is thus empowered to draw conclusions about specific things within that universe. (They seem reasonable. They do break down on any surface that is not a flat plane.)
As an intermediate step the student develops “theorems” which may be applied universally to the various figures studied in geometry. For example it suffices to prove that two triangles are “congruent” (one will fit precisely on top of the other) if we are given certain limited information about their sides and angles. If the three sides of one triangle are equal to the sides of the other (side-side-side), it can be proven that their corresponding angles are also equal, and that the triangles are congruent. If, on one triangle, two sides and the angle between them (side-angle-side) are equal to the two sides and the angle between them of another triangle, then those triangles must be congruent.
For our purposes, the important thing is that geometry is deductive because one starts with general knowledge and reasons to the specific.
Dogmatic theology is deductive, much like geometry, in that one starts out with the general truths which God has revealed about Himself, and uses logical thinking processes to reason to more specific cases. For example, it has been revealed to us that: “God created man” and “let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.” From this general information we can logically reason, for example, that man is greatly indebted to God, and has certain duties towards Him.
Inductive Reasoning
Most of our efforts to understand the world around us are “inductive.” That is to say that we make individual observations and try to make generalizations from them. For (a trivial) example, we might make a number of observations of what happens when we hold a pot of water over a flame. The presumably universal result for people making this experiment is that the water will become warmer and may eventually boil. We expect this result to be consistent because in all the observations that have been reported there has been no other outcome. This consistent outcome causes us to formulate a “scientific law” that “water boils when it is heated.”
Once a “scientific law” has been formulated, we are tempted to utilize it in deductive reasoning, for now we feel that we know something general that can be used to reason to the specific. There are two dangers in formulating such “laws.” It is possible that we did not make enough observations. Boiling water is cheap and easy—but some experiments are expensive, or dangerous, or difficult to conduct—if we conduct them only a few times there is the possibility that in a few more times the outcome would be different. More to the point, we are not always aware of all of the variables that must be considered. Is the atmospheric pressure significant? the pull of gravity? the presence of radiation?
In fact one can boil water without heat by reducing the atmospheric pressure, and a sufficiently large gravitational pull or high atmospheric pressure can counterbalance the effect of heat.
Over time, “scientific laws” are often modified as experimenters identify new variables with which to be concerned. For example, the mechanical “laws” of Sir Isaac Newton work relatively well to determine the motion of bodies—even in the twenty-first century we use them for common engineering problems, and even for space flight. Nonetheless, we know that they become less and less accurate when dealing with very high speeds or large masses, and when dealing with very small particles and very small distances.
If we claim to have a “law” that defines the cause of something, and hope to use that “law” deductively, we must be certain that “law” is based on an adequate number of observations, and takes all of the relevant conditions into account. In practice, it is always difficult to know all of the relevant conditions—it is the height of hubris to assume that our scientific knowledge makes us aware of all of the relevant conditions. Just a few centuries ago Galileo (17th century) was discovering the pressure of the atmosphere, probably gave no thought to gravity as a force that might vary, and had no conception of radiation—Isaac Newton (18th century) could not have imagined travel at near to light-speed, particles smaller than the atom, nor electrostatic nor nuclear forces. There is no guarantee that the 21st century has a lock on all of the forces in the universe!
From the philosophical point of view, the limitations of inductive reasoning can be used to cast doubt on the proofs of God's existence.
For example, the third proof: “Nothing in our experience exists of its own necessity, but depends on something else for existence. Ultimately, this dependence goes back to a necessary existent being that we call God” is sometimes contradicted by the claim that the universe is just naturally eternal—that it has always been here without creation, and isn't dependent on anything. This idea of an eternal universe goes back at least to Aristotle, is held by many Eastern religions, and was popular among Western scientists until the astronomical detection of the expansion of the universe. How does one deal with such a claim, which would seem to negate the third proof?
The eternal universe—if such a thing existed—would be the only such case of existence without a cause in all of our experience. Since it contradicts the vast evidence of human experience, the burden of proof lies with those who claim it to be true. But, in fact, modern science has contributed much to the undoing of the theory of an eternal universe.
If the universe were eternal, an infinite amount of time would have already passed, and this infinite amount of time would have allowed all of the physical processes that would even take place in the universe to have already gone to their final conclusion. Orbits would have decayed and planets fallen into their suns; stars would have collapsed upon themselves. There are heavy elements in nature that are breaking down into simpler elements through nuclear fission, and that other light elements are joining together through nuclear fusion—if an infinite amount of time has already passed, these processes would already be complete. Astronomers believe that the universe is expanding—that the stars are moving farther and farther apart—given an infinite amount of time there would be no stars anywhere near us. Thermodynamics suggests that the energy in the universe is transformed into heat over time, and the universe will “die” a “heat‑death.” The expanding universe would cause this heat to be red‑shifted away, and the universe would eventually “die” a “cold‑death” at a temperature of absolute zero. Given an eternal universe, one or the other of these “deaths” would have already taken place.
Other skeptics choose to challenge the fifth proof: “Everywhere in nature we see order and system. In our experience order and system do not occur through random chance, but require an Orderer or Systematizer, which we call God.” Indeed, the skeptic often attributes everything to chance. Again, this is in contradiction of the vast bulk of human experience. First of all, chance creates nothing—it is nothing more than the mathematical relationship of things that already exist (e.g. the probability of being hit by lightning, or drawing two black balls in a row out of a bag containing five red and five black balls). So, to say that creation is an act of “chance” is simply to misunderstand what chance is.
But what about chance bringing about order in a universe that already exists? We do, occasionally, see apparent order from random processes: Drop a bundle of sticks a thousand times, and you may find that on one of those times the sticks fell in the pattern of a square; roll a pair of dice a thousand times and you may get a few runs of a desired number—but nobody expects a consistent run of luck with random chance—indeed we get suspicious very quickly if the dice always roll the same number! The casino nearly always wins in the long run, precisely because the games are biased to give it a greater chance of winning than the customers (e.g. you can't bet on 0 or 00 but the house always wins when either comes up, without wagering anything).
The evolution people claim that life originated when the right materials in the right proportions mingled in the primordial sea—a feat they have yet to duplicate even under laboratory conditions. They have been able to change one type of bacterium into another, but their exhaustive efforts in doing so suggest that it would not happen in nature—it took three months of computerized “spell” checking to find a single error in the DNA they built to change a mycoplasma bacterial cell into a closely related cell.[1] That can hardly be referred to as “random chance.”
They further claim that accidental mutations can adapt a living cell in such a way that it becomes more fit to survive, the first step in a chain of accidental evolution from a lower to a higher creature. This we have not seen in any laboratory, and is not demonstrated by any “fossil record” or “missing link.” When alleged “missing links” are found, they turn out to be frauds or quickly disappear so they cannot be tested. Early evolutionists pointed to the bat as an obvious case of a mammal that adapted to a higher form because its mutations gave it a survival advantage—but the “fossil records” reveal no intermediate forms, just fully functional bats that seem to have come on the scene without evolutionary predecessors.
Don't hold your breath expecting watch parts to assemble themselves into a Rolex anytime this century—and that feat assumes the existence of watch parts!. Even the most atheistic investigator would attribute the finding of a watch or a ring or a key to a human watch-maker, ring-maker, or key-maker—no one would attribute any of them to spontaneous generation or evolution.
Thermodynamics tells us that in a closed system entropy (a measure of the disorder of usable energy) increases with time. Reservoirs of heat and cold that could produce useful work “run down” to equilibrium. The true believer in evolution will point out that the Earth is not a “closed system” for the Earth is constantly receiving energy in the form of sunlight—but they fail to explain how this energy raises the Earth to a more organized state—and they fail to explain how the universe could be anything other than a closed system.
Evolution is one of those highly politicized “sciences”—it has allowed governments to sterilize and even murder whole segments of the population; to conduct “scientific” experiments on human beings; to wage wars against inferior races. Suggested readings: http://www.rosarychurch.net/comment/lysenkoism.html http://www.rosarychurch.net/answers/rev092007.html
Once again, the traditional explanation of “an Orderer or Systematizer, which we call God” better explains what we experience in the real world.
NOTE:
[1] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/science/scientists-create-first-artificial-cell/article1576053/
