How To Think About God: Adler, William F Buckley Jr

This is a partial transcript from a Firing Line episode from around 1980 discussing Mortimer J Adler's Book How To Think About God.
Aristotle read aloud at this great website
http://www.learnoutloud.com/Results/Author/Mortimer-J.-Adler/650#play492
**personal note: I believe the universe had a beginning based on Scripture firstly, and also the modern cosmology supports a non-infinite series of causes. So, I believe reason does lead one to choose a beginning vs. an infinitely old universe. (actually infinitely old is oxymoronic/ironic). Aristotle wasn't privy to Scripture, we should cut him some slack.
Dualism Defended:
First, if theism is true, then physicalism as a worldview is false. God is not a physical being. Second, a number of people have argued that numbers exist and that they are abstract, nonphysical entities (e.g., sets, substances, or properties). Firstly, mathematics claims to give us knowledge. But if this is so, there must be something that mathematics is about. Just as the biologist discovers biological truths about biological objects (organisms), so the mathematician often discovers mathematical truths (he does not invent them all the time) and these truths are about mathematical objects. If one denies the existence of numbers, then it is hard to rescue mathematics as a field which conveys knowledge about something. Without numbers, mathematics becomes merely an internally consistent game which is invented. Without numbers mathematical and scientific knowledge is hard to maintain. But if numbers exist, physicalism as a worldview is false because numbers are not physical entities.

If physicalism is true, it is hard to see what one should make of the existence and nature of theories, meanings, concepts, propositions, the laws of logic, and truth itself. It would seem that theories themselves exist and can be discovered. The laws of logic seem to be real laws that govern the relationships between propositions. Propositions seem to exist and be the content of thoughts which become associated with the physical scratchings of a given langualge called sentences. Sentences may be made of black ink, be on a page, and be four inches long. But it is hard to see how the content of the sentence (i.e. the proposition or thought expressed by the sentence ) could be on the page. Such entities seem to be nonphysical entities which can be in the mind. Truth appears to be a relation of correspondence between a thought and the world. if a thought really describes the world accurately, it is true. It stands to the world in a relation of correspondence. But whatever else one wants to say about the relation of correspondence, it does not seem to be a physical relation like cause and effect.

Universals seem to exist and they are not material. A universal is an entity that can be in more than one place at the same time. Some universals are properties (redness, hardness, triangularity); others are relations (larger than, to the left of). Whatever else one may use to characterize the nature of matter, it is clear that a clump of matter is a particular. A piece of matter cannot be in more than one place at the same time. Physicalists deny the existence of universals at the level of general worldview, because universals are not physical entities.
For example, just because one cannot see the soul, weigh it , or say where it is, it does not follow that the soul does not exist. One cannot see, weigh, or locate numbers or values, but they still exist.

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[fctchk]

The processes which are now so richly explained by Evolution, Geology, Quantum Physics, and Astronomy we also used to attribute to God.

Witness here the bloviating Buckley and the addling Adler in a desperate last stand in an orgy of obfuscation conjuring up a god as an explanation for a universe that needs a god to have created it as much as a fish needs a bicycle.

[dingorex]

Gloria Steinem?

[Reggie1971]

LOL. I remember her using that analogy in the context of men.

However, it's used rather absurdly in the context of the question of exnihilism. It's like saying a watch needs a watchmaker like a fish needs a bicycle.

[tmcrwfrd]

Thanks for that. I'm just now re-re-reading the bk(HTTAG). aNSELM'S ARGUMENT I can handle, but still a prob with Mortimer's argument.

[ksmoker27]

Boy, there's a lot of unproven assumptions there in the last two minutes that themselves need to be argued for and proven before this argument can be shown to be sound. In the absence of those arguments, this argument is still inconclusive.

[MrLamontSanford]

correction: they want to REMAIN in their vices. Not 'remail.'

[MrLamontSanford]

Why don't you READ what was said here? Adler made it clear that once EXISTENCE came into being, THEN all these 'proccesses' of 'chemistry' explain CHANGE, but NOT the question of "why is there SOMETHING as opposed to NOTHING?" Atheists cannot pay attention!! You are blinded by hatred of morality-based religions, because they judge bad behaviors that you wish to cling to. Few atheists are sincere; they discard religion because they want to remail in their vices, NOT on intellectual grounds!

[MrLamontSanford]

Hey 'fctchk' =this is for intelligent, rational educated people, not emotional mental eunuchs. Go bag groceries or whatever it is you are good at.