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Although you have not taken up my posts to you, I wanted to relate them briefly to an earlier discussion. You referred to an "anthropomorphic delusion". First, a delusion is something so implausible that it is bizarre that one can believe it. I would say that even if the existence of God is not securely established, it is plausible enough. Second, it is idle to complain that it is "anthropomorphic". Since there is no direct experience of the Deity (with the possible exception of mystics, who find the experience beyond speech), and all such speculation must proceed analogically, the question is "of the beings common to our experience, which would God most resemble?", and the judgment is that He would most resemble man, who alone of all the beasts is capable of forethought and invention. Why is it plausible? Well, which does the world we live in most resemble: something elaborately planned and constructed, or something that fell together by chance? If we found a mechanism as elaborate as a watch on an apparently deserted island, we would infer that the island had been visited, not that the watch had come together spontaneously out of the elements. Now, I am willing to admit that even if the universe, and particularly this world, are immensely improbable, they could have come together by chance, and therefore that the cosmological proof is not decisive. However, the assertion that it could be a matter of chance is hardly decisive either, and so the matter is, at best, inconclusive. Hence, belief in the existence of God is not delusional... |
