Questions about Natural Law and Theology

[son_of_angels]

Okay, the voice of the Skeptic (especially through the philosophers Hume and, to a lesser extent, Kant) has been whispering doubts into my ear, though I hold to my faith as strong as I possibly can.

Nonetheless, it seems that the existence of God, since he exists, is not such that it must exclude the possibility of anything, since "with God all things are possible," and the fact that a being who is ACTUALLY all powerful would likewise be able to cause anything which he would will to occur, likewise for that thing to occur. It seems a mystery to discuss the notion of Preference with God, because, as I know my preference exists within the limits of certain first motives and, if the Spirit is actual, divine inspiration. Hence the Preference of God, like any form of preference (by the definition of the word) must have a Cause. How can God, who is the entire causality of everything have an accident, namely preference, which is itself requiring of a Cause higher than himself, or does he?

Nonetheless, it would seem that since God exists, anything which has the feasible reality to exist or to occur, or even that which does not, likewise may well occur, depending on the particular will of God.

Here is my question. If science can explain empirically every phenomena in creation, barring perhaps a first cause or those things, like Math, which exist beyond empirical possibility, is it then possible for us to conceive of a religious devotion to a God bound up in the stuff which any man with a microscope may thence worship? Is there any reasonable cause for prayer?

Considering that most scientists, and reason itself, would tell us that our realm of knowledge cannot stop growing except through our own deaths and destruction, will not every strange occurrence be eventually explained in terms of science/reason. Moreover, considering that our mind itself is something sensible and affected by experience, is it not then likely that the notion of a "personal relationship" or even "inspired relationship" with God is false?

I do not believe the Holy Spirit is not at work within us, nor that miracles are impossible, but would any philosophy/theology persons like to respond to my plight.

[jasJis]

Well, for one thing, not everything can be emperically defined and determined by science. All that "is" cannot be explained objectively.
Why is it that a sunrise can cause similar emotions to a wide variety of people? Why is it that people can recognize and share the beauty of a landscape? What are the bonds between peoples that cannot be explained or justified as a needed fact in society? Love exists because it's effect can be seen in the way people behave. But how can it be measured? Can it be explained by hormones, endorphines, biological factors, sociological behaviors? Is it genetic that one person can love another in a measurable quantity?

The Skeptics had little inkling at how little science actually knew. They thought that Complete Knowledge was actually comprehensible.

Why do we recognize the graphing of fractal as 'beautiful'? Why are they like that? We don't know, nor will know, by pure emperical science.

I think Einstein said something like 'Science without God is knowledge without understanding. Religion without science is thought without reason.' Galileo (my personal favorite) said something like 'Science is the only way humanity can glimpse the Perfection of God in His Creation.' I really should look up the actual quotes, but you get the idea. Science and Faith are both reasonable, though reason alone doesn't explain all that is around us, so both are needed.

[Cam42]

[quote name='son_of_angels' date='Oct 24 2005, 06:16 PM']Okay, the voice of the Skeptic (especially through the philosophers Hume and, to a lesser extent, Kant) has been whispering doubts into my ear, though I hold to my faith as strong as I possibly can.

Nonetheless, it seems that the existence of God, since he exists, is not such that it must exclude the possibility of anything, since "with God all things are possible," and the fact that a being who is ACTUALLY all powerful would likewise be able to cause anything which he would will to occur, likewise for that thing to occur.  It seems a mystery to discuss the notion of Preference with God, because, as I know my preference exists within the limits of certain first motives and, if the Spirit is actual, divine inspiration.  Hence the Preference of God, like any form of preference (by the definition of the word) must have a Cause.  How can God, who is the entire causality of everything have an accident, namely preference, which is itself requiring of a Cause higher than himself, or does he?

Nonetheless,  it would seem that since God exists, anything which has the feasible reality to exist or to occur, or even that which does not, likewise may well occur, depending on the particular will of God.

Here is my question.  If science can explain empirically every phenomena in creation, barring perhaps a first cause or those things, like Math, which exist beyond empirical possibility,  is it then possible for us to conceive of a religious devotion to a God bound up in the stuff which any man with a microscope may thence worship? Is there any reasonable cause for prayer?

Considering that most scientists, and reason itself, would tell us that our realm of knowledge cannot stop growing except through our own deaths and destruction, will not every strange occurrence be eventually explained in terms of science/reason.  Moreover, considering that our mind itself is something sensible and affected by experience, is it not then likely that the notion of a "personal relationship" or even "inspired relationship" with God is false?

I do not believe the Holy Spirit is not at work within us, nor that miracles are impossible, but would any philosophy/theology persons like to respond to my plight.
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Essentially, you are asking the question of the ontological argument. In other words, an ontological argument for the existence of God is an argument that God's existence can be proved a priori, that is, by intuition and reason alone.

If you read St. Anslem's Proslogion, you'll get a good idea of what is going on.

Here is the basic argument:

1. One can imagine a being than which none greater can be conceived.
2. We know that existence in reality is greater than existence in the mind alone.
3. If the being we imagine exists only in our mind, then it is not a "being than which none greater can be conceived."
4. A being than which none greater can be conceived must also exist in reality.
5. Failure to exist in reality would be failure to be a being than which none greater can be conceived.
6. Thus a being than which none greater can be conceived must exist, and we call this being God.

Basically, we can call this "faith seeking understanding." That is kinda a tag line for this whole philosophical mode, however, it is at the heart of what you are getting at.

From this, we can start the move to the 5 Ways of Thomas Aquinas. These are stated in the Summa Theologica.

However, if you want a more current version (and slightly modified) of the ontological argument, here is the view of Alvin Plantinga:

1. By definition a maximally great being is one that exists necessarily and necessarily is omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good. (Premise)
2. Possibly a maximally great being exists. (Premise)
3. Therefore, possibly it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists (By 1 and 2)
4. Therefore, it is necessarily true that an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists. (By 3 and S5)
5. Therefore, an omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good being exists. (By 4 and since necessarily true propositions are true.)

(Now, the modifications come (and some debate the validity); the axiom S5 and the "possibility premise" that a maximally great being is possible. Given these, the conclusion indisputably follows. The more controversial of these two is the "possibility premise" since S5 is widely (though not universally) accepted.

The axiom S5 says that if a proposition is possibly necessarily true, then it is necessarily true. That is the controversy.)

However, it should not be the focus of this but rather the idea that the traditional ontological argument really does come the closest to answer your question.

[son_of_angels]

Here's a question, if God can be proven a priori, how then can it be demonstrable unless an effect is, to use Kant's reasoning, made "objective" by its adherence to such an a priori synthetic understanding?

For example, the natural sciences are possible because of the actuality of mathematics, because an experience that inheres only in the individual are brought underneath Arithmatic, which is NOT something anyone can experience.

If God is not "demonstrable" through reasoning from effects, but only through "pure reason" then it would seem that Natural Theology in general is a vain and useless form of doubting.

Edited October 24, 2005 by son_of_angels

[Cam42]

[quote name='son_of_angels' date='Oct 24 2005, 07:21 PM']Here's a question, if God can be proven a priori, how then can it be demonstrable unless an effect is, to use Kant's reasoning, made "objective" by its adherence to such an a priori synthetic understanding?

For example, the natural sciences are possible because of the actuality of mathematics, because an experience that inheres only in the individual are brought underneath Arithmatic, which is NOT something anyone can experience.

If God is not "demonstrable" through reasoning from effects, but only through "pure reason" then it would seem that Natural Theology in general is a vain and useless form of doubting.
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That is the problem with Kant. Kant's philsophy is flawed.

Here is a question that Kant could never answer but there is a coherent answer to it...

Do you love your father? I will assume yes. Show me.

I would suggest that you look into Bernard Longeran's book, Insight. It is a great look into this idea that you are questioning.

However, here are some thoughts that I have......it is by no means complete, however.

Kant saw that causality is not the only aspect of the world for which the problem arises. The "categories" (to use his own term) of thing and property, necessity and contingency, unity and plurality, and so on, are also imposed by the mind upon phenomena.

What can we say, then, of "things in themselves," or things prior to and independently of the apprehension of them by our senses and our minds? All we can say of them is that they do somehow give rise to the phenomenal world by impinging on our subjectivity; we are necessarily and forever debarred from real knowledge of them. However, according to Kant, there are positive gains to be had from this restriction of our knowledge. Perhaps the most important is that the bogy of determinism as a threat to human free-will can be laid to rest once and for all. Sure enough, determinism applies to human beings as appearances, in which respect we are totally subject to physical and chemical laws. But as we are in ourselves we may all the same be free; and indeed we ought to believe we are, in order to behave responsibly.

The traditional arguments for God's existence all make, from Kant's point of view, what is fundamentally the same mistake; they assume that the intelligible structure or framework which the human mind imposes upon things, in the course of gaining knowledge of them, belongs to things prior to and independently of human knowledge. Kant regarded himself as destroying the pretensions of knowledge in order to make room for faith. He points out that the very considerations which show that proof of God's existence is impossible, dispose equally of the possibility of disproof. And we ought to believe in the existence of a deity on moral grounds, as an omnipotent being who will ensure that in the long run the happiness of finite persons such as ourselves will be in proportion to their deserts.

Kant thinks that we must act dutifully for duty's sake; but we have a right to hope that such conduct will be rewarded in the hereafter.

Kant distinguished three theoretical arguments or types of theoretical argument for the existence of God, all of which he said were fallacious.

The "ontological" argument (Kant invented this term for it) concludes that God must exist, in rather the same kind of way that bachelors must be unmarried; God's existence may be inferred directly from an analysis of the concept "God," just as any bachelor's being unmarried follows from an analysis of the concept "bachelor."

I would concede to Kant that "cosmological" arguments, blend considerations derived from experience with ones based on sheer reasoning. But I would deny that this invalidates them; and would urge that just the same applies to most of the judgments which we make, especially in science. For example, due to a certain range of experiences enjoyed by herself or reported by others, as of fossils in rocks, a paleontologist may assert the existence some seventy million years ago of a previously unknown species of dinosaur.

I believe that there is a single fundamental mistake in the theories of knowledge of Kant, on which he objects to rational theism depend and which vitiates his account of other types of knowledge. That is, that any entity or state of affairs the existence of which might be verified by appeal to experience, must itself be an actual or conceivable direct object of experience. But the particles of modern physics, the thoughts and feelings of persons other than oneself, and the events of the remote past are prima facie evidence at least to the contrary.

If the empirically valid law of causality is to lead to the original being, the latter must belong to the chain of objects of experience, and in that case it would, like all appearances, be itself again conditioned."

Kant, who was impressed by the sceptical conclusions which followed from Hume's premisses, strongly reasserted the intelligibility of the world as apprehended both by common sense and by science; but wrongly inferred that, since such apprehension plainly involves mental creativity, the world thus apprehended must be a merely seeming world of appearances dependent on human minds, and not, as would be held by all who are not subjective idealists, existing and being as it is largely prior to and independently of those minds.

The right conclusion is that the world shows signs of mental creativity, but (following common sense and materialist objections to idealism) that it is absurd to say that this mental creativity is human. The creativity is consequently to be attributed to a Mind other than the human.

I apologize if this is a bit disjointed, but I am trying to put this together from various notes that I had taken in college as well as trying to formulate the question on the fly. But I do think that it speaks to your question.....hopefully, I will be able to keep up with myself and your questions.

[toledo_jesus]

[quote name='Cam42' date='Oct 24 2005, 08:31 PM']That is the problem with Kant.  Kant's philsophy is flawed.

Here is a question that Kant could never answer but there is a coherent answer to it...

Do you love your father?  I will assume yes.  Show me.

I would suggest that you look into Bernard Longeran's book, Insight.  It is a great look into this idea that you are questioning.

However, here are some thoughts that I have......it is by no means complete, however.

Kant saw that causality is not the only aspect of the world for which the problem arises. The "categories" (to use his own term) of thing and property, necessity and contingency, unity and plurality, and so on, are also imposed by the mind upon phenomena.

What can we say, then, of "things in themselves," or things prior to and independently of the apprehension of them by our senses and our minds? All we can say of them is that they do somehow give rise to the phenomenal world by impinging on our subjectivity; we are necessarily and forever debarred from real knowledge of them. However, according to Kant, there are positive gains to be had from this restriction of our knowledge. Perhaps the most important is that the bogy of determinism as a threat to human free-will can be laid to rest once and for all. Sure enough, determinism applies to human beings as appearances, in which respect we are totally subject to physical and chemical laws. But as we are in ourselves we may all the same be free; and indeed we ought to believe we are, in order to behave responsibly.

The traditional arguments for God's existence all make, from Kant's point of view, what is fundamentally the same mistake; they assume that the intelligible structure or framework which the human mind imposes upon things, in the course of gaining knowledge of them, belongs to things prior to and independently of human knowledge.  Kant regarded himself as destroying the pretensions of knowledge in order to make room for faith. He points out that the very considerations which show that proof of God's existence is impossible, dispose equally of the possibility of disproof. And we ought to believe in the existence of a deity on moral grounds, as an omnipotent being who will ensure that in the long run the happiness of finite persons such as ourselves will be in proportion to their deserts.

Kant thinks that we must act dutifully for duty's sake; but we have a right to hope that such conduct will be rewarded in the hereafter.

Kant distinguished three theoretical arguments or types of theoretical argument for the existence of God, all of which he said were fallacious.

The "ontological" argument (Kant invented this term for it) concludes that God must exist, in rather the same kind of way that bachelors must be unmarried; God's existence may be inferred directly from an analysis of the concept "God," just as any bachelor's being unmarried follows from an analysis of the concept "bachelor."

I would concede to Kant that "cosmological" arguments, blend considerations derived from experience with ones based on sheer reasoning. But I would deny that this invalidates them; and would urge that just the same applies to most of the judgments which we make, especially in science. For example, due to a certain range of experiences enjoyed by herself or reported by others, as of fossils in rocks, a paleontologist may assert the existence some seventy million years ago of a previously unknown species of dinosaur.

I believe that there is a single fundamental mistake in the theories of knowledge of Kant, on which he objects to rational theism depend and which vitiates his account of other types of knowledge. That is, that any entity or state of affairs the existence of which might be verified by appeal to experience, must itself be an actual or conceivable direct object of experience. But the particles of modern physics, the thoughts and feelings of persons other than oneself, and the events of the remote past are prima facie evidence at least to the contrary.

If the empirically valid law of causality is to lead to the original being, the latter must belong to the chain of objects of experience, and in that case it would, like all appearances, be itself again conditioned."

Kant, who was impressed by the sceptical conclusions which followed from Hume's premisses, strongly reasserted the intelligibility of the world as apprehended both by common sense and by science; but wrongly inferred that, since such apprehension plainly involves mental creativity, the world thus apprehended must be a merely seeming world of appearances dependent on human minds, and not, as would be held by all who are not subjective idealists, existing and being as it is largely prior to and independently of those minds. 

The right conclusion is that the world shows signs of mental creativity, but (following common sense and materialist objections to idealism) that it is absurd to say that this mental creativity is human. The creativity is consequently to be attributed to a Mind other than the human.

I apologize if this is a bit disjointed, but I am trying to put this together from various notes that I had taken in college as well as trying to formulate the question on the fly.  But I do think that it speaks to your question.....hopefully, I will be able to keep up with myself and your questions.
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If I turned your post into a philosophy class I would get an A. I feel sorry for your professors.

[philothea]

I have a headache now. Thanks a lot, guys. :

[Cam42]

[quote name='philothea' date='Oct 24 2005, 09:54 PM']I have a headache now.  Thanks a lot, guys.  :
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That really isn't hard.....it's just philosophy.

[son_of_angels]

Thank you for the response. My original question, and, indeed, the doubts that would plague me constantly are these.

1. Even if there is a God, do my beliefs concerning his relationship to me simply come from impressions and thoughts, which are simply, to use Hume, contiguous with other thoughts. In other words, do I have an experience simply with a God I am creating. What then is the Holy Spirit?

2. If Science were to explain every passion, every movement of my mind as a biological condition, can I still believe in God as a being with whom I have a relationship?

Edited October 25, 2005 by son_of_angels

[morostheos]

[quote name='son_of_angels' date='Oct 24 2005, 10:27 PM']Thank you for the response.  My original question, and, indeed, the doubts that would plague me constantly are these.

1. Even if there is a God, do my beliefs concerning his relationship to me simply come from impressions and thoughts, which are simply, to use Hume, contiguous with other thoughts.  In other words, do I have an experience simply with a God I am creating. What then is the Holy Spirit?

2. If Science were to explain every passion, every movement of my mind as a biological condition, can I still believe in God as a being with whom I have a relationship?
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As a scientist, my answer to your second question would be that science could never explain everything. Science is very much like the spiritual life in that the more you know, the more you realize how little you know. I personally think any scientist that believes science will someday be able to explain everything is on a power trip and is not being realistic.

In addition, as science is limited to explaining natural occurances, it should have no effect on one's relationship with the supernatural, which is outside the realm of science.

[Cam42]

[quote name='son_of_angels' date='Oct 24 2005, 10:27 PM']Thank you for the response.  My original question, and, indeed, the doubts that would plague me constantly are these.

1. Even if there is a God, do my beliefs concerning his relationship to me simply come from impressions and thoughts, which are simply, to use Hume, contiguous with other thoughts.  In other words, do I have an experience simply with a God I am creating. What then is the Holy Spirit?

2. If Science were to explain every passion, every movement of my mind as a biological condition, can I still believe in God as a being with whom I have a relationship?
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To answer the first.

According to Hume, all human knowledge is based on and confined to "impressions" of experience and "ideas" which are faint copies of these. Examples of "impressions" are a patch of Prussian blue as seen, the sound of an oboe playing middle C as heard, or a flush of anger as felt- in fact, anything which can be the object of direct "experience" in a fairly broad sense. The corresponding "ideas" would be that particular type of color or sound or mood as remembered or anticipated, rather than as directly undergone. What is not such a faint copy of an impression or group of impressions is not an idea properly speaking, and so a word or a phrase purporting to convey it does not have real significance. Whenever we come across a term the meaning of which is a puzzle to us, we may properly ask, "From which impression is this idea derived?" and if it turns out that it is derived from no such impression or item of experience (or if it is not a complex "idea" put together from such "impressions"), we may properly dismiss it as meaningless. Now, we have no impression of the relation of cause and effect; for example, we do not directly perceive the impact of one billiard ball on another imparting motion to that other, but only the impact followed by the motion. The often-repeated sequence consisting of impression of type A followed by impression of type B-say, the experience as of a brick striking a window followed by the experience as of a window being shattered-leads us confidently, and as it happens always correctly, to expect the latter after the former; this leads us to say that the former "causes" the latter.

All of our knowledge of matters of fact which are not a matter of immediate impressions of experience or of memory is dependent on the relation between cause and effect. For instance, my knowledge that my friend is now in France might depend on a letter of his to that effect of which I have an impression before me now, or a remembered conversation with him. And all the extrapolations from past to future upon which rational activity depends rely on the assumption that the relation between cause and effect will remain as it is now (how could we plan in a world where trees and houses were liable at any moment and for no assignable reason to dissolve into steam before our eyes?). But we cannot justify our confident expectation that it will do so; that the sun always rose on the morning of the last trillion days provides no proof that it will rise tomorrow. Almost complete scepticism seems to follow; since all our knowledge which is not a matter of immediate experience or of direct memory depends on the holding of the laws of cause and effect; and the laws of cause and effect have no firmer foundation than our psychological habits. Fortunately, custom is able to fill a role which rational argument cannot; we are psychologically predisposed to expect law-like behavior in things, and this expectation is in fact fulfilled, even though we cannot in the nature of the case show why this must be so.

Traditional scholarship has emphasized Hume's scepticism; in the last few decades more stress has been laid on the view of his which I mentioned last, that we have "natural beliefs which neither need nor are capable of rational support." Hume's demonstration that, while causality is utterly crucial to our understanding of the world, a consistent empiricism cannot justify belief in causality, is a tribute to his genius and an indication of his permanent importance for philosophy. It was Hume's failure (on either interpretation of the bearing of his thought) to justify causal reasoning which particularly impressed Kant; and he brought about his so-called "Copernican revolution" in philosophy largely to meet the difficulty. It was not the case, as previous philosophers had thought, that our minds must or could conform to a world existing prior to and independently of themselves; on the contrary, the world so far as we can know it must conform to our minds.

Hume's notorious analysis of causality had indeed demonstrated that, unless causality were imposed on the real world by our minds, it could have no firmer foundation than our mental habits. Furthermore, as Hume had also pointed out, we treat and must treat the causal connection as necessary; and it would be bad logic to treat it as so merely on inductive grounds, assuming it would have to obtain in the future just because it had always happened to obtain in the past as far as our experience went. Nor is it any part of the meaning of the concept "event," that every event must have a cause.

It may well be felt that while Hume's crude form of empiricism did indeed lead to scepticism, and while Kant's attempt to repair the breach is ineffective for all its prodigious ingenuity, a more refined variety of empiricism has much to commend it. There does seem to be something in Hume's insistence, re-affirmed in his own way by Kant, that knowledge-claims do have to be justified at the bar of experience. For example, if someone professes out of the blue to know that there is a moose on the campus of the University of St. Thomas, a state of affairs which so far as I know has never obtained, I am liable to be sceptical; but I quite properly become more confident when several independent witnesses assure me that they have seen the animal in the place in question. But no-one has ever seen a positron, the thoughts or feelings of another person, or an event which happened more than two hundred years previous to her own time; yet we do often claim knowledge of such things as a matter of course.

I cannot perceive another's feelings of anger or boredom; but I can certainly perceive evidence in her attitude or speech or gestures of which the best explanation is that she is bored. No-one can now perceive the death of Abraham Lincoln by shooting; but they can perceive a vast amount of evidence, in records surviving from that time, which can hardly be explained except on the assumption that he did die in such a manner.

However, if the basic principles of empiricism are expanded to take account of such awkward cases in the way I have just described, it is by no means clear that they any longer rule out rational theism. For it may be insisted that the existence of something like God is needed to account for a very general fact which is a matter of experience in a wide sense-that the universe is intelligible. Alternative explanations, or claims that no explanation is needed, may well be held to be less satisfactory. One might suggest in the manner of Hume that only the sensible aspect of the universe is real, while the intelligible is either an illusion or a useful subject device. But this leads to scepticism, since so much of what we usually count as knowledge, as Hume himself found, depends on the assumption that such elements of its intelligible aspect as the causal nexus are real.

Since Hume's time, it may plausibly be maintained that Darwin has hammered the final nail into the coffin of the argument, by showing how the apparent design which is so striking a feature of all living things may be explained by mutation and natural selection over a very long period of time. It would take a great deal of space adequately to consider the question of how far the argument to design can be defended against such objections; but here it suffices to say that the points raised by Hume and Darwin in this connection are simply not relevant to the argument that I have been setting forward, which infers creative intelligence from the intelligibility of the world, not design from its order. The other argument has been attacked by Hume and his successors on the ground that we have no experience of the kind that could justify such causal inferences.

It might be a different matter if we had often observed universes being created by gods; we could then argue, with some show of plausibility, that since other universes of a nature similar to this one had been created by gods, it is reasonable to say that this one too has been so created. However, we are clearly not in this position, as we have not observed many universes being created each by a god; hence, on the conception of causal reasoning here presupposed, we are not entitled to draw the inference.

Physicists do not say that streaks of a certain sort on photographic plates are caused by alpha particles because they have often seen alpha particles moving about and leaving such streaks. They say it because a wide range of phenomena can only be explained if there are alpha particles, among the effects of which are visible streaks of the kind described. Nor can anyone truly say that the noises, gestures, and marks on paper which she sometimes observes, are due to the thoughts and feelings of other people, on the ground that she has often observed such thoughts and feelings immediately succeeded by such noises, gestures, and marks on paper. And yet, we assume as a matter of course, and rightly assume, that the words, actions, and writings of other people are often expressive of their thoughts and feelings.

Plato's Christian successors soon caught on to the fact that one intelligent will, which conceives and intends it rather as human beings conceive and intend their own actions and products, is ultimately the only satisfactory explanation for the existence and nature of such an intelligible world. Hume, as a consistent empiricist, in effect denied the world's intelligibility, and his account of knowledge, which has proved a fruitful source of atheism, leads just as ineluctably to scepticism.

And as I said earlier,

[quote]The right conclusion is that the world shows signs of mental creativity, but (following common sense and materialist objections to idealism) that it is absurd to say that this mental creativity is human. The creativity is consequently to be attributed to a Mind other than the human.[/quote]

Again, this is pretty disjointed, but you can get the basic idea. So, just as Kant couldn't answer the question, "Do you love your father?" Hume would simply refuse to answer that question.

And the question that you ask.....What then is the Holy Spirit? it is that which leads people to faith in Jesus and the one who gives them the ability to lead a Christian life. The Holy Spirit is the paraclete or the 'Counsellor' or 'Helper' which guides us in the way of the truth.

How can we know this? Faith. Do you love your father? Show me.

[son_of_angels]

What sort of scientist are you?

[Cam42]

To answer your second question.....I can't, because the premise is flawed.

[quote]2.  If Science were to explain every passion, every movement of my mind as a biological condition, can I still believe in God as a being with whom I have a relationship?[/quote]

Science can't explain every passion, so the question is impossible to answer in a logical way. It is much like asking the question, "Can God make a rock so large that he cannot lift it?"

The premise is flawed and the answer is not possible from a logical point of view.

[Cow of Shame]

[quote name='morostheos' date='Oct 24 2005, 09:45 PM']As a scientist, my answer to your second question would be that science could never explain everything.  Science is very much like the spiritual life in that the more you know, the more you realize how little you know.  I personally think any scientist that believes science will someday be able to explain everything is on a power trip and is not being realistic. 
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Hear, hear!!

[Jaime]

[quote name='son_of_angels' date='Oct 24 2005, 09:27 PM']Thank you for the response.  My original question, and, indeed, the doubts that would plague me constantly are these.

1. Even if there is a God, do my beliefs concerning his relationship to me simply come from impressions and thoughts, which are simply, to use Hume, contiguous with other thoughts.  In other words, do I have an experience simply with a God I am creating. What then is the Holy Spirit?

2. If Science were to explain every passion, every movement of my mind as a biological condition, can I still believe in God as a being with whom I have a relationship?
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Here is the problem that you are going to run into. (And Cam will correct me if I'm wrong) Your question cannot be answered by philosophy. Your question is based on science and has to be answered by science.

You're not going to get any help there either. For a scientific methodology to be beneficial (and again the scientists can correct me if I'm wrong) there has to be a controlled environment to study the variable in question. In this case the variable is God. By the definition of who God is, setting up a controlled environment is impossible. The variable is defined as to being everywhere. Thus you cannot have an enviroment absent of the variable to be studied. Therefore you cannot prove or disprove the existence of God through reputed scientific means.

You cannot prove the supernatural by using natural methods.

However let me qualify this. I did not study philosphy and I am not a scientist. Theology and psychology don't substitute for philosophy and hard science.