Douglas Adams’ Garden
Paul Goodell
Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?
– Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
[Author’s note: below is a short story attempting to answer Douglas Adams’ question. I’d like readers to ponder whether Adams’ question is correct, and, if we use it, how we can decide the dispute between the main character and John.]
I’d never had a place where I could keep a garden. When I was house-hunting, I looked closely at the back yards to see if they could support a decent garden. That was the big selling point for me with the house on Dent Street: the back yard. About thirty feet behind the house there was a rather large patch that no tree covered and where no rocks infested the soil. It seemed like a perfect place to plant my garden.
Shortly after I moved in, I went to work. I planted tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, and squash. I added lettuce on the inside to give it a little more leafy diversity, and planted tulips on the outside edges to keep away rabbits. One year later, my garden looked great. It was beautiful – not in a sappy kind of way, but in a simple way that didn’t need any artifice to justify it. It was just … beautiful.
Then one day my neighbor John decided to improve my garden by running his roto-tiller all over it. I was at work at the time, or I would have said something.
When I came home, John was putting the finishing touches on his “improvements”. All my vegetables had been either cut down or pulled up and mashed into a pulp. The tulips were all crushed and massacred. He’d turned my garden into a Jackson Pollock panting. It was terrible.
“What the hell are you doing?” I screamed at him as I ran towards the remains of my beautiful garden.
“What?” yelled John over the rumbling of his roto-tiller. He turned the machine off and repeated his question.
“My garden!” I said. “What have you done to my garden?”
“I improved it,” John said. “It was this boring, orderly mess. Everything was kept in separate rows. All the colors were imprisoned. There was no life there. Now the colors are free to roam and do whatever they want. Now your garden is beautiful.”
“What?” I said, momentarily at a loss for words. “It took me over a year to make that garden. I … I’m going to have to start all over again now.”
“Why would you want to start again?” John asked. “Just leave it the way it is. It’s beautiful now. If you changed it, you would ruin the beauty of it.”
“How can you say this is beautiful? It looks like a hundred vegetarians threw up. It’s disgusting.”
“What are you talking about?” John asked, an incredulous look on his face. “This is free. Your old garden was a tragedy of bourgeois, conservative values – everything in its place, neat and tidy and repressed. This is fresh and exciting. There are no boring categories or isolating preconceptions smuggled into the structure. This is the only kind of thing that is beautiful.”
“This isn’t beautiful, you idiot,” I said, struggling to restrain myself from punching John in the face. “It’s a mess. What I had before was beautiful, and you’ve ruined it.”
“Who are you to say what’s beautiful?” asked John. “Now I don’t even know why I wasted my time. You obviously have some crypto-fascist concept of beauty or you’d have no problem with this masterpiece I just made for you.”
“I have a problem with you destroying my property,” I said.
“See!” said John, wearing an almost feral expression of vindication. “There you go again. It’s not about beauty, is it? It’s about materialism and bourgeois values.” His mouth twisted in distaste. “I’m sorry I wasted my time on you. You’re clearly hopeless.”
“You’re crazy,” I said. And I called the police.
April 6th, 2009 at 9:45 pm
‘Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.’ GKC
‘God is that which can make something out of nothing. Man (it may truly be said) is that which can make something out of anything. In other words, while the joy of God be unlimited creation, the special joy of man is limited creation, the combination of creation with limits. Man’s pleasure, therefore, is to possess conditions, but also to be partly possessed by them; to be half-controlled by the flute he plays or by the field he digs. The excitement is to get the utmost out of given conditions; the conditions will stretch, but not indefinitely. A man can write an immortal sonnet on an old envelope, or hack a hero out of a lump of rock. But hacking a sonnet out of a rock would be a laborious business, and making a hero out of an envelope is almost out of the sphere of practical politics. This fruitful strife with limitations, when it concerns some airy entertainment of an educated class, goes by the name of Art. But the mass of men have neither time nor aptitude for the invention of invisible or abstract beauty. For the mass of men the idea of artistic creation can only be expressed by an idea unpopular in present discussions–the idea of property. The average man cannot cut clay into the shape of a man; but he can cut earth into the shape of a garden; and though he arranges it with red geraniums and blue potatoes in alternate straight lines, he is still an artist; because he has chosen. The average man cannot paint the sunset whose colors be admires; but he can paint his own house with what color he chooses, and though he paints it pea green with pink spots, he is still an artist; because that is his choice. Property is merely the art of the democracy. It means that every man should have something that he can shape in his own image, as he is shaped in the image of heaven. But because he is not God, but only a graven image of God, his self-expression must deal with limits; properly with limits that are strict and even small.’ GKC
April 18th, 2009 at 10:29 am
How is that an answer to Douglas’ question?
All you’re doing is highlighting the fact that different people find different things beautiful. Neither of your characters justifies their opinion by saying: “this is the beauty that that the fairies intended”. And in direct answer to your question, I expect that their differences will be settled in the small claims court.
Tom Cook: I’m sure your Art-Morality, slightly misquoted quote, belongs to a certain O. Wilde, not G.K. Chesterton. Hope you double-checked your second source as well.
April 18th, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Osian:
Assuming his readership of Victorian literacy, Chesterton was spinning on Wilde. In times less neurotically concerned with originality, it wasn’t such a faux-pas to do so. Wilde’s point (’Morality, like art…’) was that morality ought to be artistic, in that we are the creators, the ones that decide where to draw the line. Chesterton (’Art, like morality…’) is instead saying that art consists within fixed limitations. Again, Wilde was saying that morality is our own artistic creation, and Chesterton that creating new moralities (going against tradition) is positively unartistic.
Another great example is Chesterton’s marvelous ‘If there were no God, there would be no atheists’ which is a fantastically witty rearrangement of ‘If there were no God we would have to invent one.’
As to my second ’source’, it would be admittedly disconcerting to discover that it was not G.K. that wrote those words, since I copied them by hand from my own battered copy of ‘What’s Wrong With the World.’
In Paul Goodell’s tale, the anarchist neighbor presumably would agree that fairies are unnecessary. For there to be distinct fairies, occupying specific locales as fairies are wont to do, there must necessarily be limitations set upon nature. As another illustration of this fact, there is an undeniable connection in the unconscious between limitations and fairy-tales. ‘You must return by midnight, or the spell will be broken, and your carriage become again a pumpkin.’ ‘Unless she be kissed by the prince and only the prince, she will sleep forever.’
April 19th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Fair doos… Being more familiar with the works of Wilde than those of Chesterton, I wasn’t aware of this rebuttal from the latter. Clever wordplay indeed (though I fear, nothing more).
At the risk of sounding pretentious, perhaps it would be diligent to include more context to the original argument, to disambiguate, and educate the ignorant (i.e. me).
April 19th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
Osian,
My implicit answer to Douglas Adams’s question is that, without something “at the bottom”, nothing can be beautiful. Was John wrong to do what he did? Maybe. But, unless there is something “at the bottom” of the garden that makes it beautiful, you can’t say that what he did made it any less beautiful.
Humans throughout history have had a concept of beauty rooted in an understanding of a kind of objective beauty, an ideal understood and appreciated by anyone and everyone. (I’ve written about this same phenomenon in the realm of morality and moral language: http://www.theonlyorthodoxy.com/2008/02/05/speaking-gibberish-in-a-more-delicious-society/.) Thus they could meaningfully say that X was more beautiful than Y, because they believed that a real kind of beauty existed. If, however, such an ideal does not exist, than to say that one thing is more beautiful than another is to say “I like this thing more than the other thing.” It says nothing about the object and everything about the speaker.
But no human culture before WWI ever actually thought this way. They thought that, when calling something beautiful they were saying something with real meaning, not just stating their preferences. If there is nothing “at the bottom” of the garden, however, then calling it beautiful is no different than calling it delicious.
Douglas Adams himself admits as much by asking the question at the top of this essay, actually. If he didn’t really (if unconsciously) believe that there were “fairies at the bottom” of the garden, his sentence is a non sequitur. It’s a rhetorical question asked of himself alone, as if he said, “Can’t I enjoy this glass of scotch if there is no ice in it?” Does that question have real meaning? No. Is that the kind of question Adams asked? No. Otherwise, why ask it?
If there is no objective ideal of beauty which something can resemble more or less closely, then all that exists is preference. At that point, if people disagree about whether something is beautiful the question is not whose preference is correct, but whose preference will win out. It becomes a question of power, not of rightness. (This principle, not incidentally, exists in the realm of morality as well.) That’s why John destroys the protagonist’s garden, and why the only response the protagonist can make in the end is to call the police. What point is there in persuasion — unless what he persuades John about is who is stronger (not who is correct)? The only reason to engage John’s reason would be because an actual objective ideal of beauty existed that John had transgressed by roto-tilling the garden. Otherwise, what’s the point? Forcing John to obey his own ideal of beauty would the protagonist’s only recourse.
April 20th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
I am quite clearly out of my depth on the philosophical side of this discussion. You can read far deeper than I into these allegories.
But what I find uneasy about such discussions (be they yours or Chesterton’s), is that they fight a little too persistently to find a meaning.
“I find the garden beautiful.”
Occam’s razor forbids me from continuing this sentence with a qualification (”I find this garden beautiful because…”). This conditionality opens up a whole debate that does not need to be had (see essays above), and retracts from the awe I felt in the first place.
“I find this garden beautiful.”
That is enough.
April 20th, 2009 at 9:25 pm
“‘I find this garden beautiful.’ That is enough.”
Hmmm … How about this: “I find the same garden, roto-tilled and mashed up, beautiful. That is enough.”
How do we reconcile these two mutually exclusive statements using reason? Can we? If so, if either is actually sufficient, the other must be false. But if the other is false, it means that the garden is beautiful for a reason beyond the mere fact that someone thinks it beautiful.
If we can’t, then my finding this garden beautiful is clearly NOT enough. I must also have the ability to enforce that belief on people who disagree with me (and want to see something other than my beautiful garden in that same space). Trying to persuade them using reason becomes, by definition, an exercise in futility, like trying to convince people that mud and kerosene are delicious.
Occam’s razor? Hmmm … Now I seem to be the one lacking understanding. I’d thought that the razor of Mr. Occam only came into play when there exist two explanations for a phenomenon that both explain the phenomenon equally well. In that case — and only in that case — we should choose the simpler explanation. Outside of that particular scenario, however, Occam’s razor doesn’t apply, because in that case an explanation’s simplicity has no bearing on its explanatory power.
April 21st, 2009 at 2:25 pm
I agree that finding reasons for beauty retracts somewhat from the awe that is felt. This is true in an experiential sense.
(And indeed there is a deeper sense in which truth itself provides us with experiential pleasure of its own sort- there is a certain pleasure, for instance, in a Rudyard Kipling-esque provision of the reasons for certain phenomena in nature, how the leopard got his spots, etc. This is probably the motive behind so much of mythology, to provide some intellectual ground for our mystical experience of nature, however half-baked those grounds may be. Ultimately, Keats was wrong with his ‘beauty is truth, and truth beauty.’ When beauty stands alone for its own sake, and refuses all grounding in anything else, like a vapor it disappears.)
But what retracts even more than finding positive reasons, are reductionist reasons such as ‘that is only what your brain chemistry is making you feel at the time’ or ‘that is what your culture, with its garden walls and misogynistic, domestic boundaries, is telling you is beautiful.’ At this point some other argument is required to defend the original awe from intellectual deconstruction.
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:30 pm
Paul: I think you misunderstand my point. I do not disagree with your logic. What I disagree with is the process of applying logic to an emotional response.
I believe that the question “Why is the garden beautiful?” holds no merit. I believe that any conclusions that drop out of this question are also inherently without merit. To convince me otherwise, first show me that there is a reason for the garden’s beauty. Or as Douglas Adams might have put it: Show me that there _are_ fairies at the bottom of the garden.
I am hardly the first person to argue Occam’s razor in this context: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor#Religion. Due respect, but your concept of beauty does not help to explain the universe as I have experienced it, therefore having duly considered your argument, I cut it away.
Tom: Thank you for completely understating my viewpoint. I think we’ve reached the point at which we have to admit the inevitable stalemate
But alas, I cannot make that leap with you from your penultimate to last paragraph.
April 22nd, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Sorry…
The “dot” at the end of the link might mean that your browser doesn’t go directly to the “Religion” section of the page, so I’m printing it again:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor#Religion
April 22nd, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Osian,
I suspect that what appears to be a misunderstanding is really the expression of a difference in temperaments, as well as fundamental assumptions (a la Mr. Cook). I see a situation like the one described and my mind immediately creates logical statements — If A, then B. A. Then B. If two mutually exclusive phenomena are both considered beautiful, which consideration is closer to the truth? Is either one closer to the truth? Is there any truth for them to get closer to? Why?
These are the questions that my mind brings up in such situations. I’m somewhat unusual in that regard, though, and I recognize that those questions don’t often come up in other people’s minds. That fact doesn’t by itself answer or invalidate the questions, however.
As for the linked article, I’m somewhat confused. The section on religion seems somewhat tautological. Referring to Aquinas’s “First Cause” philosophical proof of God’s existence, the article says: “The majority of the scientific community generally does not accept these arguments, and prefers to rely on explanations that deal with the same phenomena within the confines of existing scientific models.”
This statement begs the question, however, which is whether something exists outside of existing scientific models. It is an empirical question, but not one science itself can answer. Good scientists are, of course, the first to acknowledge with this point: http://www.theonlyorthodoxy.com/2007/10/22/reality-of-the-unseen/.
The question seems to be, “Did something make the universe, or did the universe make itself?” According to everything we know about the properties of matter and the nature of the chain of causation, something making itself is impossible. That 93% of those in the business of coming to those kinds of conclusions express doubt about this seems somewhat troubling to me.
April 23rd, 2009 at 7:02 pm
Paul, I think your argument about ‘two-mutually-exclusive-phenomena-both-considered-beautiful’ ought to be developed. You mean to say that a roto-tilled garden is beautiful to one, and a cultivated garden beautiful to another. But Osian perhaps maintains that beauty is a subjective feeling, and beautiful feelings do not contradict one another, even when they react to logically contradictory concepts. (harmonious garden vs. dys-harmonious garden.) You are speaking metaphysically, Osian is speaking pseudo-non-metaphysically. He is caught in the necessary web of language, and to be consistent must maintain, like all nominalists do, that metaphors are lies, and language is intrinsically deceptive. But even when he reduced ‘the garden is beautiful’ to feeling, by stating as much, he implicitly states the partial contrapositive: ‘no [non-beautiful thing] is [the garden].’ and also the full contrapositive: ‘all [non-beautiful things] are [not that garden].’
The way out of this problem, I think, is by asserting the necessity of tethering propositional statements such as ‘the garden is beautiful’ to objective reality. (metaphysical reality.) We must be metaphysical realists, believing in real universal essences, if we are to avoid nominalism. Interestingly, Occam was one of the first nominalists, believing that essences are merely concepts in the mind which fortuitously correspond with repeated application to objects. (Interesting, too, that Osian, whose name has five letters and begins with ‘O’, is a seeming nominalist as regards beauty, and has referenced Occam.) : )
Occam thought he was avoiding metaphysical complexity with his theory of finding parsimonious explanations. The complexity he avoided was not the disagreement of two neighbors over a garden, but another complexity: the multiplicity of universal substance as it appears in individual instances. He apparently argued, I am told by the encyclopedia of philosophy, that “There is no universal outside the mind really existing in individual substances or in the essences of things…. The reason is that everything that is not many things is necessarily one thing in number and consequently a singular thing.” [Opera Philosophica II, pp. 11-12]
Thus Occam’s position was that ‘humanity’ or ‘beauty’ or any universal must be only in the mind, since for it to be in reality, the substance must be divided. (One wonders how he escaped the pan-egoist and pan-psychological correllaries to this idea. If there is only one substance for each universal, then how is it not divided in each mind?) Occam disagreed with Aristotle and St. Thomas’s idea of abstraction of real universal essences from particular objects. But that’s ultimately a disastrous disagreement I think. It leads to a view of metaphysical knowledge that is anti-natural and gnostic (Occam thought that Revelation was the only way man could know anything about God) and it also leads inevitably to radical empiricism. That’s why atheists (such as the creators of the wiki page) love Occam so much, because he’s the earliest thinker to till the ground for a radical empiricism.
But as William James pointed out, (and as you, Paul, point out as regards the tautology of looking for First Cause considerations from science) it is a bit of a misnomer to call an empiricism ‘radical’ that intentionally denies universal propositions. And intentionally refuses to consider first causes, or super-natural causes. And intentionally denying universal propositions any sort of existential import, but affirming existential import for all particular propositions. (All [S] is [P] does not imply that all [S] merely exists, whether it is [P] or not, but some [S] is [P] implies that [S] exists, whether it is [P] or not.)
St. Thomas is complex on the surface, but simple deep down. (God’s subsisting love is his primary principle.) Occam is rationally simple on the surface (like all heretics) but deeply irrational deep down.
April 26th, 2009 at 7:54 pm
I sense that this discussion is now getting closer to the nuts and bolts of what we are actually talking about.
Paul: I apologise if I’m wrong in this regard, but I’m still not convinced you understand what I’m saying.
1. Let me assure you that you are not special in the sense that these questions come to you. What is special is that you fall into the trap of taking them on. Let me put it another way:
Observation A: “Do you see that forest?”
Observation B: “I see no forest. I merely see a collection of trees that happen to be growing in the same neighbourhood.”
These are seemingly two contradictory arguments, but I hope that neither of us would fall into the trap of debating which is more true. All parties can see that an attempt at claiming one viewpoint to be more true than the other hinges on a point of view. No ultimate truth can be extrapolated from the debate. This is where I apply Occam’s razor to shave the debate into the trash can of arguments that get us nowhere to understanding the world.
[Please recognise that I argue this point by analogy. You may argue that it is a false analogy, but please do not expand the analogy to find a hole in it; I do not use it in an attempt to state any real-world proof beyond clarifying my original argument.]
2. The debate about whether something exists outside of the scientific realm usually gets quite messy in terms of word play. Essentially though, what it boils down to is the fact that those on your side of the argument are convinced that those on my side of the argument are overlooking a fundamental WOW factor about the universe. So your argument goes:
>> “Science cannot measure love, or selfishness, or [where have I heard this one before?] beauty.”
In case you haven’t noticed, we have dropped straight back into the lap of Duglas Adams’ original question, and so rather than repeat myself, I refer you to my previous writings.
As a challenge for you though, is there any entity which you can enter into this statement, which are not related to emotions, and to which the scientist cannot answer Yes?:
Religionist: >> “Science cannot measure love/hate/selfishness/beauty/good/evil.”
Scientist: >> “No. But I question whether these emotions are actually a thing to be measured. Prove to me that these things have a fundamental grounding in the existence of the cosmos, and I’ll concede the point.”
Religionist: >> “Science cannot measure height/density/light-speed/Higgs-fields/curtains”
Scientist: >> “Err… actually, yes it can.”
The other direction I have heard (first hand) this argument go is to say:
>> “God could turn a beam of light into a Pretzel if he wanted to…”
If this is true, then I would certainly have to contemplate the possibility that some power lies outside the scientific realm. However, I would be more inclined to ask how the hell God did that. For example, I know that God can change a beam of light (an electromagnetic wave) into an electric signal, and then into a sound wave. But I can replicate this transformation, which is why my radio works.
So why also should I not be able to replicate God’s trick of turning light into a Pretzel? I may have to change my understanding of the laws of physics to do so, but I find my question lies firmly back inside the realms of Science. I fail to see the “magic” in God’s Pretzel making.
To bring Tom in on this too, I would be grateful if you could clarify your point:
What is it to which you refer (emotions excepted) that lies outside the scientific realm, and to which I intentionally refuse to consider first causes?
3. Quote: >> “Did something make the universe, or did the universe make itself?”
I’m not completely 100% discounting the possibility that there was a God who made the universe. But if I am to accept your conclusion (i.e. “something making itself is impossible”), I have to ask some more uncomfortable questions:
>> “Why should I conclude that it was the Christian God, and not the Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Greek, Egyptian, Aztec, John Frum or Boggy Woogy God who created it?”
>> “What material did these Gods have to work with that they were able to create the Universe from them (being as you have adequately convinced me that it could not have been made of nothing)?”
Moreover, I presume you shy away from the question of who or what created God himself, with some vague mumbling about eternal divinity. Why is it easier for you to believe in the eternity of a God than the eternity of a Universe?
April 26th, 2009 at 9:39 pm
Osian,
The first time I read your comment, I misread the first line to say: “Paul: I apologise if I’m wrong in this regard, but I’m still not convinced you understand what YOU’RE saying.”
I was somewhat saddened to find I had misread it.
Please accept my belated welcome to our little enclave–your contributions to our discussions have been excellent, and I hope you stick around to make many more.
April 26th, 2009 at 9:55 pm
In a more substantive reply to your last post, you appear to me to be drawing a false dichotomy between “scientist” and religionist.” Your argument appears to presume–correct me if I’m wrong about this–that either the scientist OR the religionist must be exclusively right in the methodology he uses to study reality. They appear, in your view, to be cowboys in a town not big enough for the both of them.
This leads you to the radical proposition that love, emotions, beauty, morality etc. do not exist in an objective sense, solely because they cannot be measured scientifically.
I’m willing to be persuaded that you are right–that those things do not exist objectively–but I think the burden of proof is yours to carry there, as the overwhelming majority of humankind believes that their anger at stubbing their toe is as real as the chair on which they stubbed it.
Applying the Razor you’re so fond of, allow me to propose an equally likely, but less complex explanation: Science and theology are definitionally limited fields of inquiry. Science considers empirically testable phenomena–and only empirically testable phenoma. Granted, sometimes the empiric measurement is indirect, or even doubly or triply indirect in biochemistry, quantum mechanics, or astrophysics, but it is still, at root, the analysis of things that can be measured through the five senses.
It’s tautological to conclude that those things are all that exist solely because they are the only things science measures. The simpler–and less circular–explanation, is that those things exist, and science measures them, but other things may exist that science doesn’t measure, to which science is definitionally unequipped to speak. Theology is, in large part, the study of those things science cannot measure.
As to your question about God turning a beam of light into a pretzel–sure He could, if He chose. Assuming He set up the rules that dictate that beams of light cannot become pretzels directly, it stands to reason that He could, if He wanted, make an exception to the rules for His own purpose. If God is truly sovereign in the way Christians claim, it’s definitional that he stands above His own natural laws.
I think the more interesting question is whether he could do something logically (as opposed to physically) contradictory, like square a circle or make 2 + 2 equal 5. Again, He could, surely–but I wonder how He could do so without destroying the objective existence of circles, squares, and whole numbers generally. Maybe that’s why He, as a general matter, doesn’t. . . .?
April 27th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
Osian,
Since Jeremy responded (quite well, I think) to your first two objections, I’ll address your final two objections.
You said, “I’m not completely 100% discounting the possibility that there was a God who made the universe. But … I have to ask some more uncomfortable questions: Why should I conclude that it was the Christian God, and not the Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, Greek, Egyptian, Aztec, John Frum or Boggy Woogy God who created it?”
Discounting the fact that it’s impossible to 100% discount some kind of Maker, I don’t see why this question is uncomfortable — for me, at least. I do see why it would be uncomfortable for you, since at that point the question ceases to be “Is there a God?” and becomes “What kind of God (or god, or gods) is there?” There are other arguments in favor of why the force behind of creation of the universe has a will and a personality and is, in fact, the Christian God, but those don’t follow from the First Cause argument. The First Cause argument isn’t designed to prove those points.
Next, you said, “Why is it easier for you to believe in the eternity of a God than the eternity of a Universe?”
Because, on its own terms, the universe cannot be eternal. On his (or its, or their) own terms, God can be. Belief in the eternity of matter is an act of the blindest kind of faith. Belief in a being which created the universe, on the other hand, is an act of reason.
As far as we can tell, all phenomena in the universe are by nature contingent — that is, they don’t exist in themselves but were caused by something else. But the nature of causation demands that each cause have a beginning. An infinite regression of contingent causes, which is what belief in an eternal universe entails, is not only a logical but (from all we know of the actual universe) a physical impossibility. It’s nonsensical and can only be sustained by an a priori rejection of any kind of argument regarding non-contingent causes.
This is where the First Cause argument comes from. Following the long chain of contingent causes further and further back, said Thomas Aquinas, we eventually come to a cause which is necessary, which exists in itself. This is the First Cause. Nothing caused it, because it exists in itself. There are no contradictions or absurdities involved with accepting this argument. It complies with logic (unlike the belief in an eternal universe), but rests outside the ability of science to observe or explain (unlike the universe).
There are other reasons (including personal experience) why I believe that this First Cause is the Christian God, but they don’t necessarily lie within the scope of this discussion. I do have a question for you, though:
Is there a reason — beyond personal preference, and complying with both logic and empirical observations of how the universe behaves — why you believe in an eternal universe?
May 2nd, 2009 at 10:18 pm
“Is there a reason — beyond personal preference, and complying with both logic and empirical observations of how the universe behaves — why you believe in an eternal universe?”
I didn’t say that I believed in an eternal universe. The question I asked was aimed at highlighting a contradiction between one kind of eternity that you are happy to accept, and another that you are not.
Science has not yet answered the question of “why is there something, rather than nothing?” So I’m happy to leave that as an open question in my mind until science catches up. What I am deeply unwilling to do, is jump to a conclusion (i.e. “God”) simply to smooth the discomfort that my mind feels at finding itself filled with more questions than answers.
However, just for the sake of arguing the point (and to demonstrate that logic is not exclusively yours on this matter):
The concept of the conservation of energy is pretty much universally accepted. The implication from this is that even assuming that “everything has to be caused by something else”, there is no reason that we could follow this regression back in time indefinitely.
In other words, simply because x caused y, it does not mean that x created y (otherwise you violate energy conservation). Both x and y have always existed, and from time to time, just happen to interact with each other.
I find this possibility entirely logical given the original empirical observation that matter and energy cannot be created.
“…we eventually come to a cause which is necessary, which exists in itself.”
I don’t disagree. But it could equally be argued that the universe is the necessary cause you mention, which exists in itself.
May 2nd, 2009 at 11:35 pm
Jeremy, thank you for your welcome. Much appreciated
“…their anger at stubbing their toe is as real as the chair on which they stubbed it.”
I don’t think it’s fair to put the burden of proof on me. Since I don’t believe it exists, it would be equivalent of my having to prove a negative. Surely, one must prove the existence of something, not it’s inexistence.
However…
There are very few effects in this world that cannot be replicated by reversing the cause. (I know that sounds ambiguous, so I’ll elaborate.)
A racket hitting a ball causes the ball to go flying. But if the ball were to be thrown at a stationary racket with the same velocity, the net effect would be identical - that the ball flies on the exact same trajectory.
An egg dropped onto the floor will transfer it’s energy outwards, smashing the shell and splattering its contents. I am assured by scientists who know about these things, that if it were possible to apply the equal (but opposite) energy to each individual splinter of eggshell, the egg would un-smash itself, and raise to the same height from which it was dropped.
These are the effects that real world matter and energy have on each other. As Newton proposed, if A has an effect on B, then B has an equal but opposite effect on A.
So given that anger possesses an existence which is just as valid as the chair’s, and further given that the flight of the chair towards a person’s foot causes anger, we should logically conclude that applying anger in an equal but opposite direction (perhaps the subject would experience gratification??) could be used to send the chair back from whence it first came.
“…solely because they are the only things science measures…”
If you think that’s what I believe, then you have my belief system backwards. I do not believe that things exist because we measure them with science. I believe that what exists is measured by science. Any additional magisteria you introduce (e.g. religion), complicates the situation, not simplify it.
The next bit I’ve covered before:
I do not believe that there is anything that science cannot (in principle) measure. Please take up my challenge which I invited you to earlier:- What is it (beyond emotion) that you are saying science does not measure?
“…science measures them, but other things may exist that science doesn’t measure…”
If you are arguing the non-overlapping magisteria of science and theology, that’s fine. But don’t then go on to argue that theology can also explain the beginnings of the universe and other measurable phenomenon. Keeping them separate must mean that they stay so.
May 3rd, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Osian has been kind enough to “highlight a contradiction” in the theological search for a First Cause. He is content to kindly show that there is no reason why the universe cannot be its own First Cause, as God is His own First Cause. (…excluding, of course, the perhaps minor observation that the universe is, entirely, a gigantic mess of contingent beings and events.)
The eternality of the universe has been debated by theologians and scientists alike. E.g. John Milton, qua theologian, thought that the universe (qua dark matter) must be eternal, and some scientists- the big-bangers- think that’s not necessarily the case. Arguing against the big-bangers were the oscillationists and the steady-staters, both of whom accused the big-bangers of bringing religion into science! (one wonders at the audacity of claiming that the ’scientific’ cosmological impulse can ever really be free from religious motivations and concerns… one thinks of Carl Sagan, smiling and laughing giddily, while he declares that the universe is without meaning.)
Theologians and scientists do not differ in their motivations, or even in some cases in their subject matter, but only in their method. The theologian starts where the scientist starts, and ends where the scientist starts. The scientist starts where the theologian starts, and he vows to never return. That is his method. But he must never forget where he started, both geographically (Catholic, scholastic Europe) and metaphysically (Nature is real, regular, repetitious, dependable; man’s mind can be trusted to resemble reality- itself an unverifiable assumption). Like an eyeball, a retina that has a ‘blindspot’ because that’s where the nerve bundle exits the retina, science has a blindspot to metaphysics and religious questions, but it’s precisely that blindspot, so concentrated in one area, that gives science its degree of organization and unusual rigor of detached observation. E.g. most medical clinical studies try to isolate one variable among many. We’ll let patients smoke if they want, but we’re going to equally distribute into two groups, by age, heart disease, gender, diet, and a hundred other criteria. The trick is, being anal about every variable except for the one you are trying to observe. The way this works psychologically- we may even define this as the essence of science- is the paradoxical maintenance of an ‘anal’ attitude regarding a hundred small variables, and a strangely detached, disinterested attitude towards the one variable being observed. Now, how can this be maintained? How can we care about every variable except the one we actually care about? How can be pretend to be indifferent toward the most important question or variable?
How this is done, is precisely by being psychologically ’secure’ in the biggest questions, the ones that mean life and death (both spiritual and physical) for humankind. Historically, what this means is that science could not be developed until Western culture was absolutely psychologically comfortable in its theism. It is not until you are certain that God’s providence governs the whirlwind, that you can actually go and measure the whirlwind by a hundred angles, pretending that the whirlwind is no more important, in terms of suspended fear and wonder, than the whirlybeetle. To fail to see science’s motivation as psychologically dependent upon theism is perhaps an ahistorical error. But to suggest, as Osian (and ten thousand post-Freudians) have so unsportingly done, that religion is unduly motivated in finding answers, or is motivated “to smooth the discomfort that my mind feels at finding itself with questions”… is to get things exactly wrong. It is not that religion looks unduly for answers. (It looks duly for them.) It is that atheism and agnosticism looks duly for answers… but to the wrong questions. When the agnostic says ’science-doesn’t-know-yet’ about a First Cause, he really means to say, ‘the moment what you called a First Cause was discovered to be a Second Cause, I will address it as such.’ For how can science ever assent to a First Cause, which doesn’t repeat itself, (or isn’t yet finished) if it limits itself to what is repeatably observable?
(Faith with its immediate assent, and scientific reason with its suspended assent, work together on the biggest questions, which demand answering at every moment of our lives, because of death: St. Thomas taught that when once faith has made its assent, reason validates and verifies what faith has accepted- simultaneously- as the decision is carried out. It’s not that reason (or even the scientific method) is suspended, it’s that reason and the scientific method must humble themselves to work alongside their sister faith. Walker Percy gives the examples of a marooned sailor who reads a message in a bottle, ‘there’s freshwater in the next valley’, and as he sets out towards the valley, he simultaneously verifies the claim, using whatever data is gathered along the way: a trickling sound, deer tracks, etc.)
Actually, theism requires more psychological strength to be maintained, not less. Theism is psychologically discomforting (and atheism comforting) on two different levels: 1. Every evil thing (a child’s death) that happens was foreordained by a ‘loving’ deity to whom I owe thanksgiving and praise. In difficult cases, people lose their faith precisely to resolve the psychological stress of believing in God. Theism is hardly a half-baked ’solution’ to the problem of evil. No- it creates the problem. It exaggerates the problem. 2. I will face judgment for every thought, word, or deed, however internal or private. There is no area in a theistic universe which may be truly labelled as ‘mine’. Nor is there any door marked ‘exit’. Suicide only leads to the culmination of judgment.
As to the “contradiction” and comfort-seeking impulse that Osian attempted to show in Jeremy’s mind, I would instead suggest that it is the scientistic agnostic (no, not even the happy atheist) who faces the thorniest psychological contradictions:
“I do not know who put me into the world, nor what the world is, nor what I am myself. I am terribly ignorant about everything. I do not know what my body is, or my sense, or my soul, or even that part of me which thinks what I am saying, which reflects about everything and about itself, and does not know itself any better than it knows anything else.
-
“I see the terrifying spaces of the universe hemming me in, and I find myself attached to one corner of this vast expanse without knowing why I have been put in this place rather than that, or why the brief span of life allotted to me should be assigned to one moment rather than another of all the eternity which went before me and all that which will come after me. I see only infinity on every side, hemming me in like an atom or like the shadow of a fleeting instant. All I know is that I must soon die, but what I know least about is this very death which I cannot evade.
-
“Just as I do not know whence I come, so I do not know whither I am going. All I know is that when I leave this world I shall fall forever into nothingness or into the hands of a wrathful God, but I do not know which of these two states is to be my eternal lot. Such is my state, full of weakness and uncertainty. And my conclusion from all this is that I must pass my days without a thought of seeking what is to happen to me. Perhaps I might find some enlightenment in my doubts, but I do not want to take the trouble, nor take a step to look for it: and afterwards, as I sneer at those who are striving to this end…I will go without fear or foresight to face so momentous an event, and allow myself to be carried off limply to my death….”
-Blaise Pascal
May 4th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
“‘…we eventually come to a cause which is necessary, which exists in itself.’
“I don’t disagree. But it could equally be argued that the universe is the necessary cause you mention, which exists in itself.”
You’re right, Osian. You could say that. Of course, you would have to preface that statement with, “Even though this contradicts the observable nature of matter and nearly everything we know about the universe, I still affirm that …” But you’re right. You could make that statement. It would amount to an article of faith, not a real scientific statement, but you could make it.
With the conservation of energy, you’re still talking about everything within the system. What got that system started? Nothing? Matter (and, hence, energy) cannot be created or destroyed, but it was obviously created at some point. The question of “how” may be outside the scope of science, even on its own terms (since the known laws of physics would, if I’m not mistaken, break down around the point of the singularity preceding the Big Bang), of course.
May 5th, 2009 at 1:35 am
It is not the fairies at the bottom of the garden which make it beautiful, but the fact that it is alive. Which, by the way, is not due to magical fairy dust.
John says that the reason the garden was not beautiful is because “There was no life there.” This implies that only something living can be beautiful.
The fact that John thinks that by killing everything in the garden he will give it life and make it beautiful just shows he is a tad batty.
I don’t think this is a very good answer to the question.
May 21st, 2009 at 7:09 am
“…It would amount to an article of faith, not a real scientific statement…”
The disappointing thing is that you don’t realise how far wrong your statement is. It is as far from being an article of faith as you could possibly imagine. Rather, it is a proposition. A suggestion. An experimentally falsifiable model, which if proved correct, will lead us down one path of understanding, and if proved wrong, will lead us down another.
“…but it was obviously created at some point.”
Is this seriously the basis of your argument: that everything is simply “obvious”.
Is this the same “obviousness” that once stipulated that the sun “obviously” orbits the earth, or that the earth was “obviously” created 6,500 years ago?
The question of “how”… is definitely NOT outside the scope of science. You don’t seem to be aware that big-bang is rather old science by now. The latest model, called inflationary theory, no longer surrenders to the ‘unknown’ science of the singularity, where gravity and relativity break down. In fact, far from tip-toeing around the question of how the big-bang came to be, the inflationary model suggests (much as Galileo once suggested that the sun-earth orbit is actually the other way around) what was there before – and therefore what created – the big bang.
Read further, and you’ll find that string-theory makes even bolder suggestions/predictions, and once fully developed may extend our knowledge further.
The point is that science keeps on marching, and pushes your God further into the gaps (from being the unknown entity who created the earth, to the unknown entity who created the universe, to the unknown entity who created whatever created the universe, to…)
May 21st, 2009 at 8:35 am
“…as God is His own First Cause. (…excluding, of course, the perhaps minor observation that the universe is, entirely, a gigantic mess of contingent beings and events.)”
No. Quite the opposite. The universe is not one gigantic mess. It clearly follows some kind of pattern (hence why we are able to predict the outcome of experiments). And even if it were a “giant mess”, I don’t see how this would invalidate the comparison I’m making.
Moreover, the argument does not say that the universe is its own first cause. Again, quite to the contrary, it suggests that there IS NO first cause. An entirely different proposition altogether.
“started… geographically… Catholic, scholastic Europe…”
I’m not sure how the pre-Christian mathematicians of east Asia would feel about your apparent arbitrary selection of a “starting” point. Or for that matter, the ancient Egyptian and Aztec cosmologists. Or even the Muslim scientists (who, presumably, didn’t care too much for the teachings of the Church).
“E.g. most medical clinical studies… How can be [sic] pretend to be indifferent toward the most important question or variable?”
Science is not indifferent to the variable at all. In your example, we allow people of the same age/race/hair-colour to smoke a different number of cigarettes in order to measure the effect on (say) lung-cancer. We are not indifferent to the number of cigarettes being smoked at all. In fact, for the results to make any sense at all, we need to keep a strict measure of the amount being smoked. This is far from being “indifferent”
From my understanding of your argument, what you’re trying to do is contrast this “indifference” to a measurable variable, with the “security” that religion provides the scientist to be allowed to possess this indifference. But this is a false comparison. As explained, the “indifference” you try to spin into the game here is forced, and fits the argument like a chess queen in a game of checkers. Your analogy and arguments fall flat. Measuring the effects of smoking on someone’s health does not require me to consider the meaning of life (and death). No amount of philosophy and word-trickery will change this fact.
“…being psychologically ’secure’ in the biggest questions… until Western culture was absolutely psychologically comfortable in its theism.”
Apart from the observation already mentioned (that science began before the church), it is simply wrong to say that religion has somehow given science “permission” to begin. Of course science must be secure in its methods, but if anything, religion has got in the way of the freedom to this security. To this day, scientists have had to fight the church to be allowed to present their theories (Galileo is again the obvious example to use, but I’m also reminded of Stephen Hawking’s account of what the Pope told him and assembled scientists, that they were not allowed to study the moment of the big-bang itself as it was deemed to be the moment of creation (a proposition since invalidated).)
“Actually, theism requires more psychological strength to be maintained, not less…”
Well of course. It requires a lot more imagination/courage/folly to believe in something for which there is no evidence, than for something that there is.
“Theism is psychologically discomforting (and atheism comforting) on two different levels… Nor is there any door marked ‘exit’.”
I would go further. It can be psychologically scarring for a child to think of him/herself as being evil for daft an minor offences, often committed by someone else (e.g. the original sin of eating an apple).
“…it is the scientistic agnostic… who faces the thorniest psychological contradictions: “…” -Blaise Pascal”
I do enjoy reading your quotations. I’m not sure what this one proves though. Other than the fact that Pascal asked a lot of meaningless questions. And besides, I see no “contradiction” in the act of simply not knowing something.
May 21st, 2009 at 11:43 am
I hear your objections, Osian. And, incidentally, I’m aware of inflationary theory and string theory (though I claim no expertise regarding either). But in relation to this particular conversation, appealing to our ever-increasing understanding of — and theorizing about — the universe amounts to a very large game of hot potato. A pass-the-buck exercise pushed further and further back.
Everything we know about the physical attributes of matter seems to strongly suggest that it is not, in fact, eternal. Perhaps the reality is otherwise, but based on what we know now, that clearly doesn’t seem to be the case. To speculate otherwise is to assert that, at the most fundamental level, the universe is other than we have known it throughout all history. That is, it is to assert an article of faith.
Everything we know about the “some kind of pattern”, the stubbornly orderly nature, behind the universe dictates a cause-and-effect dynamic for every single material phenomenon in existence. This dynamic is the foundation for all human knowledge, and for science as a discipline, and without it neither could exist. To assert that the universe as a meta-phenomenon is exempt from this dynamic is to assert that, at the most fundamental level, the universe is other than we have known it throughout all history. That is, it is to assert an article of faith.
(Note: These claims don’t belong in the normal tradition of science. They aren’t the same as saying that the ether doesn’t exist, that the earth orbits the sun, or that gravity is really matter warping space/time. They are more like saying “A = non-A”.)
Perhaps that faith will one day graduate into certain knowledge. That is clearly a possibility. But that possibility doesn’t change the nature of what the belief is now.
May 21st, 2009 at 11:54 am
Hello Lola. Thanks a lot for joining the conversation.
Perhaps I was unclear. The “life” expressed in John’s words included metaphorical life, not just literal life. In the same way that we say that a painting or picture is “alive” if it has lots of vibrant colors. John thought that the protagonist’s orderly arrangement of plants stifled the free expression that all true art has, and thus robbed the garden of “life”. That line wasn’t meant to imply that John, the protagonist, or the author believes that only living things are beautiful.
I could call a vibrant sunset beautiful, but it isn’t alive. It exists, but so does a rock, but it isn’t alive either (although I also think some rocks are quite beautiful). The question of why that is is the one I tried to tease out in this essay.