(An untenable appeal to “brute fact”)
As a scientist
I am equally
incredulous that
you would patently
surmise our present
condition as resting
wholly on the premise,
on the supposition
that it all just so
happened to come about
by chance; your sole, rich
rebuttal resting
on the simple, strident,
sure exclamation:
“Well now here we are!”
Gary Edward Geraci
-
Author:
Gary Edward Geraci (
Offline) - Published: April 17th, 2021 14:52
- Comment from author about the poem: As a young agnostic/practical atheist, this saying, “Well now here we are!” in so many words, was a favorite, go to rationalization of mine. I would fall back on it time and time again when needing to give a reason to say a random interlocutor who was probing me for an explanation of our world if there was no God to create it. “I don’t know but here I am - if it is by chance then chance has favored my creation because here I am, as good as the living gets and right here before you in genuine flesh and blood!”, to elaborate even more rhetorically. But I’ve since been learning the more challenging, abstract concepts of the “Principal of Sufficient Reason” (PSR) and “Brute Facts”. (From Dr. Edward Feser’s book: “Five Proofs of the Existence of God”.) One, the PSR, appeals to the thinking that “everything is intelligible or has an explanation for why it exists and has the attributes it has” the type of thinking I was unwilling to commit to during that time of my life. The other, the brute fact, relinquishes any attempts for further rationalization or discussion by committing to an untenable position that “the most fundamental laws would, however, lack any explanation. That the world is governed by them would just be an unintelligible “brute fact”.” This was by far the intellectually easier and more rebellious stance and so I was taking it as it also did not involve any judgements of the sinful behavior I was committed to at the time or pressures to become more virtuous or upstanding in the religious sense.
- Category: Spiritual
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Comments2
Good write Gary.
Btu we could then ask them 'How did it all just come about? Who, or what, created and creates everything?'
Even if there was a 'Big Bang' - who or what caused it?
'God is' - a Being without beginning or end. We would go insane trying to humanly work out how a being can have no beginning. We may be able to picture the 'no end' part though.
You’re right and what a sophisticated level of understanding (a gift of the Holy Spirit) to finally come to the conclusion that the question “Well then who created God” is untenable as God is the Uncreated Creator: The Self-Existent, Eternal God.
I feel we have been over, at least in part, this ground in your ‘Fragments No. 4 “I Simply Refuse”’, Gary and I have in in part of my ‘Finale’. However since you raise it once more, the masochist in me feels compelled.....
The “Well now here we are!” is what appears to be a quote – I cannot source. I prefer “We’re here because we’re here” (which I feel has much the same meaning) has its origins, unbelievably, in world war one trenches but now has wider applicability. – perfectly encapsulates all we don’t, and possibly will never know, about our existence.
There is no ‘supposition’ – your middle stanza. Or if you insist, the existence of a god is equally a supposition. I don’t know if, why, or how ‘ it all just so happened to come about’, with the emphasis on the ‘if’. Being an atheist is in one sense much easier, given infinite time and space beyond our own universe (think about it, but not too long as to get in there for a length of time could lead to a dissociative state)
The tail end of your commentary introduces ‘sin’ into the mix. This is already getting too long for my liking, so I’ll confine it to:
‘Sin’ doesn’t require a god to affirm its existence most philosophies and discourses do or are able to differentiate between right and wrong.
BTW I enjoy your writes - and the chance to respond.
Thanks DD and I don’t think theists give up any real meaningful (measurable) time by believing in the now confirmed, Big Bang Theory. Besides, I came across a rather convincing rebuttal the other day that really puts to task the notion of an infinite universe: “so why is the night sky dark? Think about it: if the universe always existed, light from even very distant stars should’ve reached us by now. The light from every star in the heavens should’ve reached us after infinite time. And since we are surrounded by them, the whole sky should be blazing with light from all those countless stars. We should look up, even at night, and see a wall of light that is bright like the face of the sun. But that’s not what we see, and that is a clue that the universe is not infinitely old but had a beginning.” The words of eternal life: true happiness and where to find it by Jimmy Akin. I enjoy your responses and I just read your poem “Finale” and left a comment.
DD - I’ll also leave something a little more in depth from Dr. Feser’s book as quoted above: he provides one of these for each of his 5 proofs. I’ve got to reread them all the time as I am in no way fluent in this sort of demonstration: Rationalists Proof of God (from the Principle of Sufficient Reason)
1. The principle of sufficient reason (PSR) holds that there is an explanation for the existence of anything that does exist and for its having the attributes it has. 2. If PSR were not true, then things and events without evident explanation or intelligibility would be extremely common. 3. But this is the opposite of what common sense and science alike find to be the case. 4. If PSR were not true, then we would be unable to trust our own cognitive faculties. 5. But in fact we are able to trust those faculties. 6. Furthermore, there is no principled way to deny the truth of PSR while generally accepting that there are genuine explanations in science and philosophy. 7. But there are many genuine explanations to be found in science and philosophy. 8. So, PSR is true. 9. The explanation of the existence of anything is to be found either in some other thing which causes it, in which case it is contingent, or in its own nature, in which case it is necessary; PSR rules out any purported third alternative on which a thing’s existence is explained by nothing. 10. There are contingent things. 11. Even if the existence of an individual contingent thing could be explained by reference to some previously existing contingent thing, which in turn could be explained by a previous member, and so on to infinity, that the infinite series as a whole exists at all would remain to be explained. 12. To explain this series by reference to some further contingent cause outside the series, and then explain this cause in terms of some yet further contingent thing, and so on to infinity, would merely yield another series whose existence would remain to be explained; and to posit yet another contingent thing outside this second series would merely generate the same problem yet again. 13. So, no contingent thing or series of contingent things can explain why there are any contingent things at all. 14. But that there are any contingent things at all must have some explanation, given PSR; and the only remaining explanation is in terms of a necessary being as cause. 15. Furthermore, that an individual contingent thing persists in existence at any moment requires an explanation; and since it is contingent, that explanation must lie in some simultaneous cause distinct from it. 16. If this cause is itself contingent, then even if it has yet another contingent thing as its own simultaneous cause, and that cause yet another contingent thing as its simultaneous cause, and so on to infinity, then once again we have an infinite series of contingent things the existence of which has yet to be explained. 17. So, no contingent thing or series of contingent things can explain why any particular contingent thing persists in existence at any moment; and the only remaining explanation is in terms of a necessary being as its simultaneous cause. 18. So, there must be at least one necessary being, to explain why any contingent things exist at all and how any particular contingent thing persists in existence at any moment. 19. A necessary being would have to be purely actual, absolutely simple or noncomposite, and something which just is subsistent existence itself. 20. But there can in principle be only one thing which is purely actual, absolutely simple or noncomposite, and something which just is subsistent existence itself. 21. So, there is only one necessary being. 22. So, it is this same one necessary being which is the explanation of why any contingent things exist at all and which is the cause of every particular contingent thing’s existing at any moment. 23. So, this necessary being is the cause of everything other than itself. 24. Something which is purely actual, absolutely simple or non-composite, and something which just is subsistent existence itself must also be immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, fully good, intelligent, and omniscient. 25. So, there is a necessary being which is one, purely actual, absolutely simple, subsistent existence itself, cause of everything other than itself, immutable, eternal, immaterial, incorporeal, perfect, omnipotent, fully good, intelligent, and omniscient. 26. But for there to be such a thing is for God to exist. 27. So, God exists.
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