There are two things I want to discuss, and I believe they have similar answers, although I think that despite all appearances they are different questions.

The first question is “How could the universe be created if it has the law of conservation of energy, which states that matter/energy can neither be created nor destroyed?”

The second question “How could something in the universe be created in the time-stream?”

The first question is more general, while the second is much more specific, and would help to tell us whether Teilhard de Chardin’s thesis of “creative evolution” is surd.

My answer to the first would be “Something that doesn’t exist doesn’t exist to be transgressed in the first place; hence a person that doesn’t exist can’t be transgressed in sin by my murdering them, because murdering someone logically requires that they have a life in existence for me to put out of existence in the first place. So, because the universe doesn’t exist prior to its creation, it doesn’t transgress its laws no matter how those laws are created (i.e. law of conservation), because those laws don’t actually exist to be transgressed.”

I think there is a parallel that runs through to answer the second question, such that the answer could go “While the universe prohibits the creating or destroying of matter/energy by its own means, God is outside of those means, and while God could not destroy matter*, God could create more into matter because that matter doesn’t exist to be transgressed. The laws of nature are universal but apply within naturally existent things, and something that doesn’t exist can’t have the laws of nature be applied to it.”

*I argue against God actually contradicting the laws of nature because God created the laws of nature, and what God in His omniscience would create a universe where He foresaw that He would be required to contradict His own laws He instituted from eternity? This is a God who contradicts Himself, and as such cannot be any God.

I have been reserving a longer post for the near future on the philosophy of science, because I have been studying the philosophy of science and the error of scientism since the beginning of the school year in preparation for a term paper in College Composition. Yes, very exciting it is.

Today in conversation someone made this comment to me;

What if in the future science discovered there was no God? What would you believe then?

Now, privately I thought I would no longer trust science, but that was for theological epistemological reasons about our ability to trust the “outside” world that I didn’t want to encumber my conversationalist with. Instead, I simply replied “Science won’t discover there isn’t a God, because science cannot tell us whether or not there is a God.”

I then proceeded to explain what science actually does; science studies material phenomena, and material phenomena is that which can be sensed in some way. Starting with the assumption that the material world is orderly, we can thus proceed to establish that what we observe in the material world is the playing out of matter/energy in accordance with things we understand and describe as “laws” of nature. If there are these laws, and nature can be observed, then we can deduce the interaction of matter and these laws, aka “material phenomena,” through observation. After gathering sense data through observation, we induct abstract theories meant to help explain to ourselves what is going on. As material phenomena can be observed, and expected to repeat the same/similar reaction to same/similar conditions, we can thus test these theories.

If the theory predicts X to occur, and X occurs, then we have good reason to accept the possible validity of the theory’s ability to explain X. If the theory predicts X, but Y occurs instead, then the theory must either be changed (if the prediction was a minor element within the grand schemata of the theory) or abandoned (if the prediction was crucial to the grand schemata of the theory). This is called the principle of falsifiability. This is what the scientific method looks like, and this is how science operates.

The problem with some theories that make predictions about the world is that they are not falsifiable; there is no imaginable way that if event Y occurs where the prediction was X that it couldn’t be explained away within the theory. In other words, the “theory” doesn’t require any harmony between what predictions would be made and what is actually observed. This is a non-scientific theory. The only real use of the theory is to those who are committed to a worldview that precludes a certain natural reality occurring, and so the “theory” is actually a systematic method of explaining away what is observed, rather than explaining why what is observed is observed at all. An example would be the fundamentalist response to an argument for evolution that reasons along the lines of fossils looks like this;

God is obviously just letting us make these false observations or letting there be these bones to test our faith. We’re supposed to have a stronger faith in God than our faith in science, that’s what God is trying to teach us.

This is, I will point out, not a scientific theory. I would also point out that this sort of response can’t be refuted through presenting more scientific evidence; as it presents a religio-philosophical argument against our trust in what we find in the natural world, the refuting argument must be religio-philosophical as well. This is not me saying that science is bad at what it does; I’m pointing out that all the science in the world can’t refute a philosophical proposition, as the proposition used is meant to interpret the data. Interpreting scientific theories is something science itself can’t do.

Thus, science will not ever prove or disprove the existence of God, because the existence of God cannot be determined through scientific experimentation. There is no falsifiable test that can be set up where the results can’t be interpreted equally in both a theistic and atheistic manner.

To grant more credence to the idea that such a scientific test can be set up than it is really worth, let me present this “scientific experiment.”

First, pray for the walls in your room to turn blue as a way for God to prove that He exists.

Second, observe; did your walls turn blue?

Now, here’s the thing; if your walls didn’t turn blue, that doesn’t mean God doesn’t exist. As God is not a law of nature that acts impersonally (already evident through the fact of prayer) and will always react the same to same circumstances, there is no falsifiability present in this experiment, no matter which hypothesis, be it “God does exist” or “God doesn’t exist.”

If the walls didn’t turn blue, the theist can easily reply that God doesn’t exist to prove that He exists; hence He isn’t obliged to act to prove Himself. The fact that the walls turn blue proves nothing except that if God exists He didn’t turn your walls blue.

The atheist can’t offer a valid argument on scientific grounds, as the grounds of the premise that God would react was itself false, as God is (by all reasonable concepts meant by ‘God’) not obliged to prove His existence. If the atheist really wishes, they could say they’ve disproved that God who must respond to the prayer “Make my walls turn blue” doesn’t exist, but that hasn’t gained them any meaningful inroads on the classical concept of God.

So, science cannot discover whether or not there is a God because God is not something science can study. Science studies material phenomena, and God is not a material phenomena.

I subscribe to a small flurry of blogs, each espousing a variety of beliefs and views. The breakdown is probably half Catholic news, theology, and philosophy, some plain philosophy, some other news, and some atheistic blogs.

What I’ve noticed especially prevalent in the atheist blogs is the misappropriation of science as the definitive worldview. A caricature of philosophy as a study opposed to science usually looks like this;

Philosophers have struggled for thousands of years to explain the universe and come up with nothing certain. Science has in only a couple hundred years sent a man to the moon! What accomplishment has philosophy in comparison?

The sensible reply, of course, is that philosophy doesn’t work to send man to the moon. To think that philosophy could ever put a man on the moon is like thinking a basketball player has no worthwhile skills because they can’t play poker well; they’re just different studies of reality. Science is appropriated towards studying natural phenomena that is observable, repeatable, and testable, and those theories used to explain the working of the natural world must be in some way falsifiable.

So its no wonder that philosophers would appear to do nothing more than run in circles while those “really sensible scientists” are demonstrating that man evolved from animals. But this sort of observation is simply one not taking into account the purpose of philosophy; philosophy seeks wisdom. Science seeks understanding of the natural world. Science and philosophy seek different things, just as the basketball player seeks the skills to consistently score 3-pointers while the poker players seeks the skills to tell whether his opponent is bluffing. The marks of a good basketball player are different than the marks of a good poker player. Good science and good philosophy likewise have different marks.

Edward Feser and Bill Vallicella at their blogs have been making many posts about naturalism and the problem it entails for belief, because, in naturalism’s denying that there are beliefs, naturally (pun!) naturalism can’t be believed, so it can’t possibly be true.

The argument goes something like this;

1) All that exists is matter/energy

2) What can’t be explained in terms of matter/energy cannot exist

3) Belief requires intentionality and ‘aboutness’

4) Intentionality and aboutness can’t be reduced to matter/energy

5) So, intentionality and aboutness cannot exist

6) Therefore, there are no beliefs

The argument cannot be believed, in which lies the problem of naturalism, because to suppose it requires supposing more than nature which means one can no longer suppose naturalism.

A more hacked version of the argument can simply run like this; all that exists are atoms. Beliefs cannot be reduced to being a property of any sort of combination of atoms. Therefore, beliefs do not exist.

Hence why I am simply logically unable to believe in naturalism; if I were to believe it to be true, I would be believing something, in which case I would no longer be believing in naturalism. A square circle; upon being understood what is meant, the logical impossibility of the concept is seen and no further argument needs to be given. Naturalism is simply basically wrong.

I have before made similar argument along the lines of propositions.

At my school there is an upstart Philosophy Club. To be brutally honest, most people there don’t understand the idea of philosophy in the first place, and I feel that most go there to try and say something “profound” that their classmates will nod their heads and chime in their agreement. Simply, this is not what philosophy is about. Philosophy is about answering life’s questions, determining reality, understanding existence, and seeking wisdom. A person who is not actively seeking wisdom but only seeking the approval of their peers for a philosophical-sounding statement is not a person engaging in philosophy.

This produces an interesting feeling within myself; many times I understand the argument a person is making better than themselves, or I grasp the problem with a certain line of reasoning. At the same time I understand I must be wary of not simply positing something to “win,” for then I would be losing the point of philosophy myself. My even posting about this treads a dangerous line between seeking wisdom and seeking to assert myself above others. When I speak, especially when I am contradicting someone, I must respect the unspoken boundary of respect, the difference between bashing an argument and bashing a person. Yet I constantly feel a desire to just say “No, you’re being clearly retarded, there is nothing profound in self-contradictory principles!” I chalk this up to my humanity, and I chalk up others philosophical ineptness to their lack of knowledge and study on philosophy as a whole.

My peers in the Philosophy Club aren’t stupid, yet this alone doesn’t guarantee that they really understand the implication of, for instance, stating “Everyone lives in their plane of existence.” I have noticed a few particularly bright moments among my peers, when for instance my “Argument against Reason” was eventually successfully refuted because it understood the very means of my argument, seeing that the means of the argument itself were part of the premises of the argument.

I am unsure what to conclude. There are some smart kids in there who can follow me around the block of reason if I lead, yet at the same time I see obstacles that continually trip up people’s actually philosophizing. I have been characterized as unkind for at times lacking patience when people were being particularly slow about getting around to their point, but I’m unsure whether or not this is a bad thing. I’m sure that shrewdness is not a bad thing, especially when in the end I am flatly contradicting someone and pretending I’m not asserting their wrongness in any blunt way may make them think I’m not actually contradicting them.

The Kalam Cosmological Argument runs like this;

1) Everything that begins to exist was begun by something else

2) The universe began to exist

3) Therefore, something existed before the universe to begin it

To follow is a defense of the 2nd premise, that the universe began to exist.

Now, first imagine going into the future. You can imagine that you will continue to go into the future for an infinite amount of time, not in that you will ever achieve going an infinite amount into the future, but only that there will always remain an infinite amount of future ahead of any time you can imagine in the future.

Affirming that an infinite future cannot be reached from the present, we must now think back in time; it would seem that because we could imagine ourselves going into the future without end, that an infinite past could exist as well. However, the past is fundamentally different from the future in that it has occurred; all the moments of the past that run up to the present time of your reading this post have been achieved.

Now, if an infinite amount of time cannot be achieved because there is always more ahead of what we can imagine, then it follows that an infinite amount of time hasn’t been achieved; if the past is infinite, then it must be supposed that an infinite amount of time must necessarily have been achieved to reach the present. Since we already know that an infinite amount of time can’t be achieved, then the past must be finite.

If the past is finite, then there must necessarily be a beginning. This would provide a proof for the second premise of the Kalam Cosmological Argument. Since the universe cannot have existed for an infinite amount of time, then it must have begun, which would point us to the question “What was there that could begin the universe?”

Inspiration is a tricky subject. I’m not speaking of the sort of inspiration of, say, the Holy Scriptures, but only the sort of inspiration it takes to be motivated to write, say, a blog post.

For the last couple days I haven’t felt incredibly inspired to write blog posts, and I am sorry for that. It has felt like a chore. However, I promise to get back to posting daily, starting tonight. I just need to find a topic.

Here is an analogy I use to think about our recognition and use of axioms or basic truths.

In our experience, something is incorporated into our awareness through practice (and my use here is not limited to only the wood-shedding practice of shooting 100 3-pointers a day, but also the sort of practice as opposed to theory) of that something. Consider musical instruments (if you have no experience playing any sort of musical instruments, then you’ll get what I mean with the next few examples); when you first started playing, the instrument itself was foreign to you, performing the requisite actions to get the right result took conscious thought at first, and every note you attempted to play was a torturous process of remembering the right fingering, keeping beat, playing the right rhythm, keeping the right form (for wind players, this would be called embouchure), reading the music on the page, blowing the precise amount of air to control note, pitch, and volume, etc. However, as one practices more with their instrument, they get the music “under their fingers,” being able to bend their mind towards not just getting the right note and rhythm, but to playing the piece dynamically, employing vibrato, precisely tuning the note in key with the chord.

In the beginning, the instrument was something outside your experience, outside of who you were. But, with practice, the instrument starts to become ‘centered’ within you, a part of you just as your limbs are. The mark of a master of any sort of instrument, be it musical, aesthetic (drawing, handwriting), motor (weapons, tools, cutlery, sports, etc) is that their trade has become nothing more than an extension of themselves. An ad-libbing musician thinks the tune in their mind and their body performs all the requisite functions from memory, because the foreignness of the instrument has been removed. Rafael Mendez, a masterful trumpeter, has a few wonderful things to say about musical instruments becoming second nature here.

To bring the idea more in relation to your experience, consider these experiences you’re probably familiar with.

Baseball; at first, utilizing your arm to its full potential and power feels awkward, but through repetition muscle memory develops until catching and throwing the ball in an efficient and powerful manner can happen without thought, becoming part of one smooth aesthetic enterprise of coordination, as demonstrated here.

Driving; how much give there is between the road and your tires in different conditions takes experience to be able to garner an expectation of how the entire car will react to your steering, accelerating, and braking. To have the car at your command is to feel a unity between mind and machine, as is needed for this.

Soccer; the bounce and arc of the soccer ball, the feel of your legs and feet, the pacing and precision needed to kick, dribble, and juggle, are gained through experiential practice with the soccer ball. The ability to “feel” where the ball is just through repeatedly kicking a ball in the same way and kick it up again is in juggling is something that almost seems like it shouldn’t be able to be achieved, yet it quite obviously can.

Now, what is my point in all of this? I wish to draw a line between experience of reality and our fundamental connection with reality, because I believe the same sort of experience that we draw can be trusted due to our ability to precisely interact and gain more precision through more practical experience of this reality. There are certain axioms that we grasp through repeated experience of; for instance, the effect of gravity and motion together that is needed to be able to juggle a soccer ball, the effect of friction and resistance to be understood not mentally but practically to drive, the feeling of motion and coordination in baseball.

If there can be drawn a direct connection between ourselves and reality, then it should be obvious that the laws of logic as basic truths necessarily follow and cannot in any circumstance be circumvented or denied. While we do gain our ability to think by experience of reality, reality appears to have no intention of lying to us, and we seem suited to grasp reality. Thus, axioms can and should be drawn and utilized in thinking about any thing, because we cannot actually imagine any thing that is not under some sort of relation to these axioms (i.e. logicality, rationality, truthfulness, order, etc).

A square circle or a blue white are understood to be logical impossibilities by merely understanding them in relation to the basic truths of logic, and require no further argument to be disproved.

Interesting consequences occur for naturalism and theism, and I obviously believe that theism is suited towards the existence of logic whereas naturalism is unable to explain axioms in nature.

The Problem of the Damned goes like this; why did God create a world that will have people who will experience eternal damnation when He theoretically could’ve created a world in which there were no people who rejected Him and had free will, per His omnipotence, omniscience, and omnibenevolence?

My first answer was based on the idea of absolute contingency; no person exists in any other world except the world they are found in. For God to not create a world is for God to not create those beings in any other world, because they could only exist in that particular world.

My second answer is this; evil is a good because as it produces an evolving world. If there were no evil, there would be nothing for me to overcome, and so there would be nothing to strengthen my moral good, my moral resolve, my love for God, my unity with God, etc.

God is infinite, and everything created is finite. Nothing could be created infinite. Everything created then, no matter how “arbitrarily large” it was created is yet an infinite distance from God. This distance can only be bridged through growth. The growth will never produce an infinite, but this fact of growing produces the unity necessary for beings to resonate with the Absolute; to resonate with Life is to grow, to grow is to resonate with Life.

On the other hand, damnation is not an infinite loss, as one loses only what finite-life they have. They are bankrupt of growth, but they cannot “fall” farther away an infinite distance. Damnation places beings outside of any chance of harmony with the Absolute, and so places them outside the ability of this divine-like growth. Thus, they fall away from Absolute Being to non-being; however, the difference between non-being and a finite being is always only finite.

So, damnation is a finite loss while salvation is an infinite gain. The salvation of the saved weighs out the damnation of the damned in every instance.

There seems to be a common mistake made in differentiating between Catholicism and Orthodoxy as far as doctrine. It’s often stated that “Catholicism and Orthodoxy differ on a few doctrines,” which I think is an insufficient description.

All doctrines in Orthodoxy Catholicism accepts. Since the Great Schism, the Eastern Orthodox Church has held no ecumenical councils, while the Catholic Church has plowed on addressing the issues of the day and engaging culture. So, all ecumenical councils before the Great Schism the Catholic and Orthodox Churches are agreed on; the difference is that the Orthodox Church doesn’t believe that any ecumenical councils have been held.

The difference then lies in that Catholicism has developed its doctrines for the last 1000 years, whereas the Orthodox has effectively not. The Catholic Church has more doctrines than the Orthodox Church, such as the filioque, papal infallibility, and even counter-intuitively, the canon of Scripture.

So, if there is to be a reunion of the Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches (I fear it would not be the entirety of Orthodoxy at one time, but, like we see now, separate Churches), there cannot be any compromise per se; one Church will have been right whereas the other will have been wrong. The solutions thus are;

1) The Catholic Church has always been right (and the Orthodox Church accepts the doctrines developed since the Great Schism)

2) The Orthodox Church has always been right (and the Catholic Church abandons any doctrines developed since the Great Schism)

Of course, there seems to be a midway between (1) and (2), but only if (2) is first true, such that;

2′) The Orthodox Church has always been right, but the Orthodox Church would retro-define some of the same doctrines developed in the Catholic Church since the Great Schism

(2′) actually seems quite likely, since I’d think it most probably that the Orthodox Church would accept just about all doctrinal developments as expressed in the councils excluding the First Vatican Council (which defined papal infallibility). At the very least, it would seem certain that the Orthodox Church would accept the same canon of Scripture.

Now, my own theory of how a reunion could be affected would be to say this;

3) Both the Catholic and Orthodox Churches have been right; the Catholic Church will maintain the doctrines as she has, and the Orthodox Churches will ratify all new doctrines of the Catholic Church since the Great Schism

(3) would be possible under the possibly radical theses that both the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches have infallibility; we see the Catholic Church expressing this positively, whereas the Orthodox Church has expressed it by not defining any doctrines in contradiction to the Catholic Church. It amounts to saying that the sundering of formal unity was mistake, and formal unity can be continued after doctrinal unity has been asserted by the Orthodox Churches (because it is in their valid authority [the same kind of authority present in the Catholic Church] to do so).

A Catch-22 results in the case of those Eastern Orthodox who reject a reunion in which (3) happens, meaning that those who didn’t enter into communion with the Catholic-Orthodox Church were those who have rejected the authority of the Church, while those who did enter into communion with the Catholic-Orthodox Church are those who are within the authority of the Church.

This sort of solution to the problem of the Great Schism would be saying that Catholics would now say they are both Catholic and Orthodox, and Orthodox would say they are both Orthodox and Catholic. One Church isn’t being subsumed into the other, dissolved to “make room” for the other to have total authority. Both Churches would be exercising authority, together. This reflects the notion of that the Catholic and Orthodox Church are both complementary lungs of the same body. “Europe has two lungs, it will never breathe easily until it uses both of them” (Pope John Paul II)