Ganssle Thinking About God

1. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-0-8308-7748-5
Verlag: IVP Academic
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 187 Seiten

Can we really think about God? Can we prove God?s existence? What about faith? Are there good reasons to believe in the Christian God? What about evil? Can we really know with our finite minds anything for sure about a transcendent God? Can we avoid thinking about God?The real problem, says philosopher Gregory E. Ganssle, is not whether we can think about God, but whether we will think well or poorly about God. Admittedly there is a lot of bad thinking going around. But Ganssle, who teaches students, wants to help us think better, especially about God. He thinks philosophy can actually help. In the first part of this book Ganssle lays the groundwork for clear and careful thinking, providing us an introductory guide to doing philosophy. In the second part Ganssle then takes us through the process of thinking well about God in particular. He asks us to consider whether there are good reasons to believe that God exists. He thinks there are! In a third part Ganssle addresses the thorny issue of the existence both of God and of evil. He thinks there?s a valid way through this problem. In the final part Ganssle helps us thread our way through questions like: What is God like? What can God do? What can God know? How does God communicate? He thinks that there are some clear answers to these questions, at least if you?re talking about the God of Christianity. If you're looking for your first book for thinking clearly and carefully about God, then you'll appreciate the good thinking found in this book.

Greg Ganssle (PhD, Syracuse) is professor of philosophy at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. He is the author of several books, including A Reasonable God: Engaging the New Face of Atheism and Thinking About God, and he is the editor of God and Time.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ganssle, Gregory E.

Leseproben

WHAT IS PHILOSOPHY?

This book is called Thinking About God: First Steps in Philosophy. When we undertake to think about God, we are doing philosophy. Philosophy is the name of an academic discipline, but it is also a kind of activity. Now philosophy brings to many people’s minds strange pictures such as that of a robed guru sitting on top of a mountain reciting deep but obscure phrases. I do not think that this picture of philosophy is very helpful. (I am not much of a mountain climber and robes make me look fat.) What is philosophy anyway, and how does a person do philosophy? Let me tell you a story that will illustrate what philosophers do.

Do you remember the TV show Star Trek? I know there have been several different shows of the same type. In each one, there is a starship. In nearly every episode some group of the crew meets at the transporter room and is “beamed” to the surface of a planet. They stand in the right place in this huge machine and the engineer flips the switch. Usually a tinkling noise follows along with some special effects. Then the crew disappears. The camera cuts to the surface of the planet while the same noise and effects occur and the crew materializes on the planet. They have been transported from the ship to the planet. It is quite a helpful device to have for interplanetary travel.

Well, if you take an engineer and a philosopher aboard the starship Enterprise and show each of them the transporter, they will ask the same question: “How does it work?” They will want to know different things, however. The engineer will want to know all about the mechanics of the machine, that is, the technology. The philosopher will want to know why we think the person who appeared on the planet and the person who was transported from the ship are one and the same.

The engineer will want to know what it is about the machine doing the transporting that makes the transportation possible. The philosopher will want to know what it is about the person being transported that allows him or her to be transported successfully. In other words, what are the conditions that must be satisfied in order to be sure that the person we call “Captain Kirk” who appears on the planet is really Captain Kirk? We all agree that it is Kirk on the planet. The philosopher wants to know what makes it Kirk. You see, if the transporter works, then how it works will give us some clues about what it means to be a person. Let us think together about a few possibilities.

Suppose the transporter works this way. First, it carefully takes Kirk apart while recording in great detail every step of the process. Next, the transporter takes these biological parts (let us say they are molecules) and ships them to the planet. Once they arrive on the surface, the pieces are put back together according to the strict information that was recorded. So every piece is placed in the exact position and in the exact state of motion it was in before Kirk was dissolved. In this system, the transporter beams both information and material. We can call this the “information-and-guts method.” If this is how the transporter works, we might be tempted to think that the particular molecules that make up Kirk when he is on the ship are crucial to who he is. In order to be Kirk on the planet, he needs these molecules.

Another possible method is that the transporter dissolves Kirk but sends only the information to the planet. The transporter then assembles Kirk out of whatever materials are available. Presumably there is an ample supply of just the right organic compounds nearby. In this case, only the information is beamed down, and so we call it the “information-only method.” If this method is the correct one, then it is not too much of a stretch to say that Kirk is e-mailed or faxed to the planet.

Now, knowing what you know about the transporter, how do you think it works? Let us look again at the information-only method. If the transporter operates in this way, what do we learn about human beings? We learn that the specific molecules that make up a person (such as Kirk) are not necessary to that person. All that is necessary to get a person is that there is enough of some material that can be put together in the right way. Let us pursue this further.

Suppose there is a malfunction in the transporter room, as usual. As the transporter gathers the material on the planet in order to reconstruct Kirk, it gathers the wrong elements. Rather than building a Kirk out of carbon-based organic molecules, the transporter puts together a silicon-based complex living person. The person looks like Kirk. He talks like Kirk, and he acts poorly like Kirk. Is he still Kirk?

Stop for a minute here and come up with an answer. What do you think about the silicon captain? Is it our beloved Kirk? If you think so, why do you think so? If you do not, why don’t you? If your answer is correct, what is it that we learn about human beings?

Now what happens when Kirk is beamed back to the Enterprise? Does the transporter then bring together the original molecules and reassemble Kirk by using the information? In this case, Kirk again has his original body. Of course, if the information-only method is correct, we do not need to use Kirk’s original molecules. We can use anything we have lying around, as long as the material is adequate for organizing a person according to the complex information that makes up our illustrious captain.

If we do not need the original molecules, what do we do with them? Suppose Kirk is beamed to the planet and the ship’s doctor, Dr. McCoy (“Darn it, Jim. I’m a doctor, not an actor”), decides to put Kirk’s original molecules back together while Kirk is on the planet smooching some alien disco queen half his age. McCoy retrieves the information from the transporter and constructs Kirk in his lab. So now it seems that we have Kirk on the planet, torn between love and the prime directive, and Kirk in McCoy’s office, filling our federation requisition forms. Only one of these survivors can be the very same person as the original. Which is the real Kirk?

Until McCoy got ambitious, it seemed obvious that Kirk was on the planet. Does the real Kirk suddenly appear on the ship even though there is a Kirk-like person on the planet? It does not seem possible that it is Kirk on the planet until the point in time at which McCoy finishes his little project. Suddenly the alien-smoocher is no longer Kirk. Kirk is back on board the ship.

What if McCoy takes the information and uses other materials (not the original Kirk molecules) and makes three or four Kirks, each of whom gives impassioned speeches about love and meaning and about how it is intrinsically valuable to be human? Well, the show’s ratings would take a nosedive since we can all take only so much of that sort of dribble. But besides that, would there be three or four Kirks?

Maybe information is not enough. Let us think about the information-and-guts method instead. Let us suppose that the transporter sends Kirk’s actual molecules in addition to all of the pertinent information. Then the machine reconstructs Kirk on the surface of the planet out of his original molecules. Since all of Kirk’s molecules are back together in all of the right ways, not many people are going to think that it is not Kirk on the planet. After all, who else could it be?

Of course, we might get a different kind of malfunction. What if the transporter sends 100 percent of the information but only 80 percent of the molecules make it to the planet? (The rest are lost with Kirk’s luggage.) So the transporter puts together a whole person, but only 80 percent of the molecules are Kirk’s originals. Would the person on the planet be Kirk? Would he be 80 percent Kirk? If he is only 80 percent Kirk, who is the other 20 percent? If you think, rather, that the person would be Kirk, what percentage of the original molecules is necessary in order to get the same person? Is it 51 percent?

Now we thicken the plot a little. (Can’t you hear the music building in the background?) Suppose all of Kirk’s body gets reassembled but all of the information in his brain is that of Mr. Spock. So he looks like Kirk but has all of Spock’s memories and mental states. Is the person Kirk or Spock? Is it Kirk with a brain transplant or Spock with a body transplant?

Let us leave Kirk on the planet with his identity questions and reflect for a minute. Philosophy, I propose, is the rational investigation of the most basic questions. Now in true philosophical fashion, we must ask what I mean by “rational investigation” and by “the most basic questions.” First, let us think about basic questions. I must admit right off that a lot of the questions with which philosophers are concerned are not basic at all. Some are quite technical. Even these technical questions, I think, are raised in the context of basic questions. The most basic questions are the ones for which most people have no patience. So philosophy begins for some when most people say, “That’s a stupid question.”

You see none of the questions that we raised about the transporter were about the mechanics of the machine. They were all about what it means to be the same person after undergoing some change. Another way to phrase it is to ask what the identity conditions are for being the same person. Questions about the identity conditions for people are not raised only in science fiction. Sometimes they are closer to home.

I have three children. My oldest child is David, who turned seventeen in July 2004. I am convinced that he is the same person who turned two in 1989. But...