The universe or existence is not contingent, since there is nothing on which it could be contingent. Existence is all there is.
If there is a God, whose existence is necessary, then it follows that the rest of existence, i.e. that which He creates, is contingent, so long as God does not create out of necessity. If you would like me to use the term 'universe' to refer to both God and that which He creates, that is fine, but it makes more sense to make a distinction between the two by calling only the latter the 'universe', since this follows from their modal difference.
I wrote: "We do not determine necessary and contingent truths via imagination in general. Necessary truths have this distinguishing characteristic: if they are thought or understood, they are self-evidently true. Understanding that 2 plus 2 equals 4 is all one needs to do to realize its necessity. By contrast, my understanding that when people tan, they turn brown (not blue) does not suffice to prove it necessarily true."
William responded:
There is no essential difference between these two examples. In order to know that when people tan they turn brown rather than blue, you have to identify a certain relationship in reality. Once having made the relevant observation, you can know that the proposition that people (with a certain melanin content to their skin) turn brown rather than blue when exposed to the sun is necessarily true.
No, you know it is true for all the cases with which you're familiar, but not necessarily true. There could, after all, be persons of which we do not know whose skin turns blue, instead of brown, upon solar exposure. The proposition itself, "All people who tan turn brown", does not become recognizably true upon understanding it. By contrast, the proposition,"Two plus two equals four" becomes self-evidently true upon understanding what it expresses.
Similarly, in order to know that 2+2=4, you have to identify a relationship between certain quantitative aspects of reality – that two units of something added to two other units of it equal four units.
This does not follow, because the numerical relationship does not require empirical information in order to be seen as self-evidently true. The concepts themselves, which are innate, allow them to be seen as such, because only concepts can be universal.
Once having made the identification and learned the relationship, one can know that the proposition that 2+2=4 (that 2 units plus 2 units equals 4 units) is necessarily true.
One cannot know that the expression is necessary via empiricism, but only true. For empiricism only delivers particular instances of truth to us.
I wrote: "I do not wish to challenge the law of identity. But the dividing line between essential and accidental properties is very fuzzy, and what we commonly take to be the laws of nature are not ineluctable. To illustrate the former, all we need to do is wonder whether an alligator with Socrates' brain transplanted and connected to it would in fact still be Socrates."
William responded:
If, by "Socrates," you simply mean his soul (i.e., his mind and its contents), then yes; however, if by "Socrates," you mean the entire person including the rest of his physical body, then no. An alligator with Socrates' brain transplanted and connected to it would be a strange creature, half-man, half-alligator, but it would not be Socrates in the conventional sense of the person to whom that name has traditionally been applied.
I asked this question as a sort of litmus test. For it seems to me that you are willing to accept the distinction between accidental and essential characteristics only with regard to abstracted concepts, referred to by names, and not to that which actually exists 'out there'. This poses a problem, though, because you are committed to the idea that things only act according to their nature(s). However, if natures just are the things they are (i.e. if existence is identity) then how can you possibly say anything meaningful about reality? It appears you are trapped into a sort of undifferentiated pantheism, because being able to differentiate things requires that these things, in themselves, have both essential and accidental properties.
The laws of nature don't break down. These laws pertain to a specific context involving entities of a specific nature. What breaks down is the physical context in which the laws are manifested.
Right, so if the context changes, so do the laws.
I wrote: "All of [a thing's] characteristics aren't derivable from its identity alone, for surely how it acts on other bodies has largely to do with the laws of material interaction.
William responded:
How it acts on other bodies is one of its characteristics.
This is Leibniz's idea, but only his version works, because he believes that all concepts are a priori contained in the Mind of God. You, on the other hand, believe that the concept is only a derivative of the thing. But this is problematic, because you have no way of knowing (or determining) which latent properties belong to what. Some explanation is in order. Think about this: on your view, it could be that it is a property of the boat moving downstream to push the water, not a property of the water to push the boat. According to your theory, we have no way of knowing which it is, because anything that happens is ascribed willy-nilly to some sort of latent "power" within the thing. And you have no way of showing where the power is, since you only see the power, and not its source.
I wrote: "Careful, you are very near to giving up human free will. For, if one can only act in a manner conditioned by one's antecedent characteristics (brain states, physical location, causal relations), one is not free (in any real sense of the term). In short, one has no power over determining his personal characteristics, since one only can "discover" them."
William responded:
Not true. Even if one's actions are ultimately determined by antecedent causes, such as one's heredity and environment, one can still be said to determine one's personal characteristics. For example, one can attend university and become a better educated person. One's action of attending university will then be the proximate cause of one's becoming better educated, even if heredity and environment are the remote causes.
How does one determine one's personal characteristics, if one has no control over them either? On your view, everything that happens from the moment of a person's conception is determined by antecedent causes, thereby making the person himself responsible for nothing, and thereby depriving the person of free will. Proximate causes won't help you, because they can be traced back to causes outside of your personal history.
There is no rejection of free will here, as the capacity for choosing among alternatives can itself be regarded as one of man’s characteristics that determines how he acts (viz., by consciously choosing his behavior), even if that choice it itself determined by his previous values.
But since the person does not choose (at all) his previous values, how is he free (if his actions are determined by his previous values)?
Aristotle to the contrary notwithstanding, essence is epistemological, not metaphysical.
Though this makes your system collapse into a picture of the 'real world' as undifferentiated flux, as I've shown.
And modern philosophy to the contrary notwithstanding, causal necessity is based on logic, because the law of causality is a corollary of the law of identity.
The law of causality is not a corollary of the law of identity. Indeed, there is no way of deriving the former from the latter in any reliable manner (as I've shown with the boat/stream example above).
If one thing the same in nature at different times, or two things the same in nature, are to act in situations the same in their nature, they must act on both occasions in the same way[...]
...given that they in fact have the same nature. But since their inner composition, or nature, is unknown to us, we have no way of determing which natures are responsible for certain actions. We see correlations, not causes.
In short, everything must act according to its nature, because existence is identity.
Identity is self-evident; causation is not. Thus, saying that "everything must act according to its nature" is a statement of dogmatism. We have no way of infallibly determining from where the action comes.
If you have the same entities, then you must have the same laws, because a law of nature is simply an expression of how entities behave under various conditions. It is simply an expression of their identities.
This is a repetition of the above dogma.
A “reason for existing” is an explanation for why something exists; it presupposes an antecedent cause.
There is nothing that causes two plus two to equal four. It just is. Because it's necessary.
All truths, not simply mathematical ones, become self-evident through analysis, once a person grasps their empirical foundations – their basis in the real world
It assumes too much. Only necessary truths become self-evident through analysis. There is no way that empirical foundations can demonstrate necessity. I challenge you: give me an account of how they do, since you think they can.
What I am saying is that whatever a thing is at any point in time, it is what it is, which is all of its characteristics at that particular time, including its action and its capacity for change.
How do you differentiate what it is?
The Socratic alligator that you referred to above is what it is -- it has an identity, just as the conventional Socrates did, even if it is no longer the person whom we would normally identify as "Socrates".
How can you say that the pond in which the alligator floats is not part of the alligator? In a certain sense, on your view, the whole universe must be 'contained' in the alligator.
William wrote:
You don’t perceive your perceptions; you perceive the object of your perceptions, and are aware of the world directly, not via a representation of it. If you were aware only of a representation of it, then you couldn’t know that what you are aware of is a true representation, since you’d have no independent verification that that what you are aware of corresponds to the external world.
I responded: "This is dogmatism."
To which William quipped:
But, of course, divine pre-established harmony is not dogmatism!
No, it isn't. Brain/mind parallelism is explanatory. By contrast, we do not need to postulate an external world which "matches up" with our mental perceptions, as you say. Thus, what you say is dogmatism, because it does no explanatory work.
Just as you don’t perceive your perceptions, you don’t sense your sensations.
A dispute over words, this. You seem to be trying to show that 'perception' is a word which implies a thing there to be perceived. Very well, then. Let us call what is normally described as 'perception', 'tryception', and let it be immediate mental phenomena. Having done this, notice that this statement...
What you are aware of is the external world through your means of perception
...becomes dogmatism, since it is superfluous. What I'm 'trycepting' is what I'm trycepting. Because existence is identity. ;)
I wrote:
"Yes, if you were only aware of a representation of it, you couldn't know directly that what you are aware of is a true representation. But you could believe in the truth of these representations."
William responded:
On what grounds?
Because it appears that there is a real world.
By the law of identity, all truths are necessary, i.e., could not have been otherwise, because existence is identity, and a thing must act according to its nature. Is this fact incompatible with choice? No, because a person’s choices are necessitated by his value judgments.
And his value judgments are necessitated. And so are his birth parents and his environmental placement, which entirely determine what he will be. What place is there for free will, on this view?
Take the proposition, “All swans are white.” If the referent of this proposition is all the swans in existence, whether observed or not, then one cannot know that the proposition is true, because there might exist a black swan. (And black swans were in fact discovered.) But the proposition “Some swans are white” can be known to be true (and is, in the language of modern philosophy, a “necessary truth”), despite the fact that its truth is grasped only through experience and is therefore not “a priori.”
I would put it differently: If all swans are white, then it follows necessarily that the proposition 'All swans are white is true'. But it is not necessarily true that all swans are white in the first place.
We think in terms of concepts, but our concepts are formed by first observing and then by classifying the things out there.
How are we classifying anything, without the use of concepts?
How can you organize sensory information before receiving it?
The information (innate ideas) awoken by the senses is already there, in a latent form.
We experience the world in a certain way – three dimensionally – given the nature of our senses, but that does not mean that three-dimensionality is an innate idea. The idea of three dimensions had to be formed via a process of abstraction from observation.
Geometrical truths (e.g. those having to do with three dimensionalism) are innate, but fuzzy or confused before they are brought to full consciousness.
I wrote: "Furthermore, if all concepts are formed by abstracting from sense-impression, from where does the concept of a concept come?"
William responded:
By abstracting from abstractions, which are themselves formed by abstracting from concretes. For example, the concept ‘furniture’ is an abstraction from abstractions, which is formed by identifying what chairs, tables, desks, etc. have in common as against other features of human habitation, such as doors, windows, pictures, etc.
I'm not sure if this works. Certainly abstraction, as you put it, could be taken a long way, but the concept of a concept leaps, as it were, away from the object of abstraction. The gap it jumps places it on a side unsullied by sense-impression.
One forms the concept of ‘concept’ in a similar way, by observing that different (implicitly held) concepts have something in common as against other aspects of conscious awareness, such as percepts, sensations, feelings, etc., from which they are being differentiated.
I'll ask the same question I asked before: How do we abstract without concepts?
No concepts are a priori. " . . . The same principle applies in forming the concept of a particular number (say, two). One observes that a group of two oranges and a group of two apples, say, bear a greater numerical similarity to each other than either does to a group of three oranges or to a group of four apples. In so doing, one isolates what the groups of two have in common as against the other groups, and thereby forms the abstraction ‘two’, which one then designates by the visual-auditory symbol 'two' or '2.' The same principle of concept formation pertains to numerical concepts as to any other concept."
How can you give an account of how the 'concept of a particular number' is formed by noticing a 'numerical similarity'? This is terribly circular.
Initially, you observe a quantity of two oranges perceptually -- O O -- without identifying the quantity conceptually or giving it a name. Only after you recognize their quantitative similarity to another group of two objects -- | | -- are you then able to form the concept of 'two'.
This doesn't work, either. There is no way to "recognize" the "quantitative similarity" between the two quantities of things without recourse to the concept of the quantity in the first place. There is no way to make judgments about two disparate perceptions other than via concepts.
What you want to say is that the being of things conforms itself to a necessity of thought. But once you put it that way, the fallacy becomes obvious. Reality doesn’t conform itself to our thoughts; our thoughts, if they are to be accurate and true, must conform to the being of things.
This isn't how I see it. If God exists, his thoughts are that to which the created order conforms. And His being, n.b., is coeternal with his thought, which means that the being and the thought are given equal status as determining what is true.
One can also prove one’s own existence extrospectively, by observing one’s physical body.
That doesn't prove it's there. Remember the brain-in-a-vat scenario.
In any case, one’s existence does not depend on one’s recognition of it; one’s recognition of it depends on one’s existence.
True enough, but our existence depends on a thought of God.
We have to distinguish between perceptual awareness and conceptual understanding or propositional knowledge. Of course, propositional knowledge depends on the identification and integration of that which one experiences, but without the initial experience itself, no such identification and integration is possible.
Experiences are necessary to 'call out', as it were, our innate ideas.
Experiences in the womb, such as they are, are experiences of the external world. But a fetus does not think in the normally understood sense of that word, let alone introspect. Of course, there is a mental world, -- an “in here,” so to speak -- which is identified by introspection, but before a consciousness can have any kind of mental content, it must be aware of something external to itself.
It makes more sense to think that the ideas exist in the subconsciousness, and then are called up to the consciousness once the self interacts with perceptions.
Mental contents refer ultimately to information obtained extrospectively. Hume’s example of a golden mountain is relevant here. Even though there is no such thing as a golden mountain, one acquires the ideas of “golden” and “mountain” from observing reality.
"Golden" and "mountain" possess properties which go beyond the mathematical, logical, and geometrical. Hence, I do not propose they are innate. Therefore, you strike at a straw man.
Well, you may not be able to experience what another conscious organism experiences, but you can observe that the organism is conscious.
How?
You’re not denying that other people and other animals are conscious, are you?
No, I don't deny it. But I do doubt that it can be "known" per your theory of knowledge.
And even if you had not observed other people or animals, you are certainly aware of the fact that your own consciousness is a faculty of a living organism and is dependent on a brain and physical senses.
True, which is why I can be sure that I am conscious.
First of all, you're not suggesting, are you, that I could have pure two in my pocket, or pure two on the dining room table!
Of course not, because that would imply that numbers have spatio-temporal characteristics, which they obviously do not.
You don’t have to have the concept “two” in order to perceive a group of two entities, any more than you have to have the concept chair in order to perceive a chair. A 'chair' is a name given to what appears to us to have the qualities of a chair. The concept two is not derived from perception in this way-- for the simple reason that there is no tenable account of how it could be.
A concept is formed from observing that certain objects are similar enough to be grouped together (as against other objects that are different enough to be excluded). So one observes that different groups of objects exhibit the same quantity, as against other groups that exhibit a different quantity. One then assigns a name to the quantity, e.g., “two” for | |, or “three” for | | |.
Recognizing the quantities presupposes access to numerical concepts.
You can certainly call “God” a pure consciousness and “attribute all positive reality” to him, but that’s not an adequate grounding for your assertion. The point I am making is that the concept of a pure consciousness doesn’t make any sense, any more than the concept of pure two makes sense. Just as there is no such thing as pure two in reality (“two” is simply an abstraction from observed particulars), so there is no such thing as a pure consciousness in reality. Just as there must be two something (e.g., two pencils, two oranges, two lines on a piece of paper) -- so there must be something that is conscious (e.g., an insect, a bird, a dog, a human being). You cannot have a pure consciousness as an actual existent, any more than you can have pure two as an actual existent.
Immaterial things exist. This is what you must accept. The only thing preventing you from doing so is an unsupportable commitment to unflinching materialism.
No, that’s not my position; the senses are not like “windows” to the external world; I am not a naïve realist. But the senses are required in order to observe reality. To be aware, one must be aware by some particular means and in some particular form. Since a pure consciousness has no particular means or form of awareness, it cannot exist; it cannot be conscious.
Please refer to the other thread, where I discuss how the Trinitarian conception of God solves this (perceived) difficulty.
I wrote: "Of course it presupposes the concept of reality. But the point is that reality may not be something to which we have direct access. It may be that our perceptions (which we believe to correspond with something 'out there' that is perceived) are in fact illusory, e.g. created through an artificial brain stimulation."
William wrote:
How then did you get the concept of ‘reality’? And what does that concept in fact mean? Doesn’t it mean the object of your awareness.[sic] If the object of your awareness isn’t reality, then what is reality?
In order: 1) From that which we perceive 2)That which we perceive (and what we believe to be actual) 3) Yes. 4) Something other than that of which you are aware.
I wrote: “This isn't about evidentialism, it's about knowledge. And, since you want to push out the notion of belief from your epistemology, you are committed to the idea that knowledge is infallible, which means that you can't settle for merely weighing the evidence, because then belief would have to step in to settle the choice.”
William responded:
What do you mean, “belief would have to step in and settle the choice”? This isn’t about an arbitrary choice to believe; it’s about drawing the appropriate conclusion, one which is warranted by the evidence. Belief doesn’t have to be arbitrary. Belief is intellectual assent. Thus, it can be justified, so long as it is “warranted by the evidence”. Justified belief, however, according to your infallibilist theory of knowledge, does not equate with knowledge.
What do you consider proof? If all the evidence supports and none contradicts, that’s proof.
Your theory of knowledge (which claims that we can have certain knowledge about empirical facts) requires a stronger kind of proof, i.e. a mathematical kind, not just evidence, no matter how much evidence there is.
If all the evidence supports the charge that Scott Peterson murdered his wife, Lacy, and none contradicts it, then Scott Peterson has been proved guilty of murder.
Legally we use the word ‘proof’ differently than we do in epistemology.
You are missing the point of the analogy. If we can infer that we will die, because we are directly aware of others dying, then we can infer that other people are conscious, because we are directly aware of our own consciousness. Like causes beget like effects.
“Like causes beget like effects”—usually that is the case, but you need it to work the other way, i.e. “Like effects bespeak like causes”, and it doesn’t work this way. In any case, since you see other bodies die, you can infer that yours will as well. This does not, however, find similarity in the idea that we can infer other minds from ours. Why? Because, in the case of bodies, we perceive ours in the same sense that we perceive others, whereas, in the case of minds, we apperceive our own directly, but have no access to others’.
Similarly, you certainly don’t know that you will be alive tomorrow, but you can say that you believe that you will be alive tomorrow, meaning that, from your perspective, there is a very high probability that you will.
As I pointed out above, even though knowledge contains belief, belief and knowledge are, strictly speaking, very different concepts.
I wrote: “And to the question of whether, there are only three possible answers: 'yes', 'no', and 'undecided'. The 'undecided' option is really quite impractical, and could in fact endanger marriages and friendships. For instance, consider if my future wife (that is, if I don't become a priest) were to ask: "Do you love me?" [I think you meant for her to say, “Do you believe I love you?”, right?] And I responded, "Judging from your behavior, there is a high probability that you love me." And she pressed, "What if you had to choose whether or not I really do love you." And I responded, "I can't choose, because based on inconclusive evidence I must withhold judgment." I would be sleeping in the garage for a few weeks, I assure you, as punishment for pedantry. The point: Life presents us with situations in which we ought to form committed beliefs about objective uncertainties.”
William responded:
Again, it’s not just an arbitrary belief. If all of the evidence supports and none contradicts, then you can conclude without a doubt that she loves you. If, however, you had evidence of lies and infidelity on her part, then you would have some basis for doubting that she loved you.
This isn’t strong enough. A belief does not become a certainty merely through absence of evidence to the contrary, because perhaps evidence to the contrary is something of which we simply are not aware. And I do not know why you continue to identify belief with arbitrariness. Beliefs can be justified. Thus, my point—that we ought to accept as true (i.e. believe) some things which are objectively uncertain—remains unchallenged.
I wrote: So it's necessary that the universe exist, is what you're saying. And I'm asking, "Why?" It's certainly not demonstrably necessary, as mathematical truths are.
William responded:
Yes, it is, because the concept of possible non-existence doesn’t apply to the universe. There is a sense in which it is possible for me not to have existed – e.g., if my parents choose not to conceive a child.
No, according to your view, it is necessary that you exist, and that everything exists, for that matter. Because your metaphysics entails that the ‘nature’ of any entity fully determines what it will do.
But what would it mean to say that it’s possible for the universe not to have existed. [sic]
It would mean to say that it’s possible that there be nothing at all.
There is nothing on which the non-existence of the universe could depend, since the universe is all there is; existence is everything.
It wouldn’t have to depend on anything, because it wouldn’t exist. Nothing would exist. Or, to put it more aptly, there would be non-existence.
I called William’s statement—“Possibility refers only to the actions of already existing entities”— an unsupportable assertion.
William responded:
How is it unsupportable? Because it assumes that the universe is necessary, and you have not yet supported this assumption with any justification.
If P, then necessarily Q. But it’s also true that something is necessary if it could not have been otherwise. And I don’t see how the universe could have been otherwise – could not have existed. Again, it could not have existed only if some condition had not been fulfilled? What condition could that be? There isn’t any.
Why would a condition need to be fulfilled? To ask for a condition is to presuppose existence, viz. the existing condition. Forget the condition. It is possible that the universe just straight up not exist.
Well, as you know by now, it is my position that divine intervention is not logically possible, because a pure, omnipotent spirit is not logically possible.
What do you mean by ‘pure’? God is not ‘pure’ in the sense that he lacks something which other things have. As I’ve said time and time again, God possesses all positive properties, though without limitation and without those that imply limitation.
With respect to Socrates, William wrote:
Well, I think he made a big mistake; he should not have staked his life on the “if” of immortality.
From your perspective, why would it matter? Also, per your necessitarianism, Socrates, because of his nature and antecedent states, had to stake his life on the ‘if’ of immortality. He had no ability to choose otherwise. And you have no room to criticize the unavoidable.
With respect to Socrates, I wrote: “But what if he just decomposed? Well...what if he did? What if we all do? In that case, I don't think it really matters how we live, because all our lives, without exception, end in decomposition.”
William responded:
This is a non-sequitur. It matters to us while we are still alive how we live our lives; if we live poorly, we suffer the consequences; if we live well, we reap the benefits.
On the contrary, many who live poorly reap benefits, and many who live well suffer hardships. Once dead, there is no distinction between the good and evil man. Their lives are rendered equally worthless.
In fact, you just said as much, when you stated “the virtuous and faithful life is ultimately the most fulfilling, even if what incites it to action – a love of God – is shown to have no actual object.” Fulfilling in what respect? Evidently, with respect to the life that one experiences while one is still alive -- even though, of course, I don't agree that adhering to religious doctrine is as fulfilling as you claim it is.
Life would have been fulfilling in placing its sights on the Highest. It would have been lived out of love and reverence for the Idea instead of out of desire for life-extension. But I think you have a point, insofar as one could only argue that such a life (lived in service of the Idea) is at least as fulfilling (not necessarily more fulfilling) as the other kind (in service of survival). For, in both cases, what one loves, i.e. God or self, is (or will be) non-existent.
I wrote: “Surely, it might be desirable to live, to move, to learn, to have children, etc., but in the end we must believe that everything we do here comes to naught.”
William responded:
But it comes to naught only if we get no enjoyment, no fulfillment, out of the lives we are actually living – only if we think that a fantasy life beyond the grave is the only thing worth striving for. No, it comes to naught whether or not you get fulfillment out of it. We will eventually cease to exist. This happens whether or not one yearns for a ‘fantasy life’, as you put it. Death destroys all.
I wrote: “And I do not want to build my life around that belief. I'd rather not live thinking that behind every human face there is inevitably a skeleton buried in dirt, that every new insight into our universe is to be just another discovery that we'll inevitably have to surrender to nothingness, that every single action I do here is destined to be counted as nothing once humanity dies out, and our sun, and our universe.”
William responded:
You are assuming that unless happiness and enjoyment are never ending, they have no value, which is a false assumption. As Rand would say, check your premises. They have value in the same sense that Sisyphus’ life has value, if he goes up the mountain once and dies. Similar to his case, the stone you roll up the mountain (representing what you've accomplished in life) will roll back down (to render it meaningless).
Lives have no ultimate value (on your view).
William wrote:
“And since there isn't any God or life after death, following Christian dogma and obeying God’s commandments is against your self-interest. And that, in the final analysis, IS suicidal.” I responded: On your view, it's all suicidal in the final analysis.
William replied:
The fact that we will eventually die does not mean that our deaths are, therefore, suicidal! Suicide is the deliberate ending of one’s life. I was using the word in the same broad sense you were using it in your first statement.
I said, “If nothing we do ultimately matters…”
William wrote:
Matters to whom and for what? What you do while you are alive certainly matters to you for the sake of your happiness and wellbeing. I am too intelligent to be satisfied with living like a goldfish—smiling, being fed, reproducing, swimming around, and then dying.
William wrote that we ought to live in order to...
“gain the values that life has to offer.” But everything life has to offer us is "on loan", as it were. We have about 80 years before everything is taken away, and we are sent into nothingness (on your view, of course).
William wrote:
You find the real world that offers actual values and achievements uninspiring, but a mystical fairy tale of disembodied spirits inspiring?? This is a loaded question, since you assume the truth of your own belief about the world, and the falsity of mine. Anyway, I find the universe inspiring and wonderful, because I see God as its creator and Wisdom in his creation. I believe that when we unite in friendship with people we touch immortal souls. I believe that justice is ultimate, and that all evils will be rectified through the beneficence of God. I have faith that Wisdom will overcome ignorance, that Love will overcome hate. And I am impelled to seek out the good because I know that God wills that we embrace the Good in our freedom. Indeed, the reason for the Saints' love and esteem for that which is good in the world, and the motivation behind their working for its good and salvation, was nothing less than an undying love for God.
William wrote against the concept of heat-death, saying:
[T]here is no reason to believe that the universe itself is subject to entropy, which pertains only to a closed system, one that does not permit the escape or transfer of energy. For such closed systems, the notion of a heat-death is applicable, but the same result cannot be predicted for the entire universe. According to L.D. Landau and E.M. Lifshitz, authors of Statistical Physics: “[I]n the general theory of relativity the universe as a whole must be regarded not as a closed system, but as one which is in a variable gravitational field. In this case the application of the law of increase of entropy does not imply the necessity of statistical equilibrium.” (p. 29) (Quoted in George H. Smith’s Atheism: The Case Against God, p. 256).
If we assume the second law of thermodynamics, it’s pretty much clear that the universe will ‘die out’ in a heat-death. Now, there are some who deny the 2nd law, but they are still faced with the problem that all viable cosmological models of the universe assume either a spreading or leveling into homogeneous matter at large scales or a destruction via the Big Crunch. (A fact which George H. Smith ignored very well.) In other words, at least for humanity, that we are doomed is as good as certain. Even so, some rather imaginative scientists, still clinging to hope, have tried to argue that we could build some sort of galactic supercomputer with stored human knowledge--one that could survive the future conditions of the universe owing to a photonic composition. Most think this is a pipe dream. Of course, if you wish to grant human lives some kind of ultimate meaning by citing the fact that they might construct such a hypothetical computer by using their (at that time) expanded knowledge, this is your prerogative. In the final analysis, though, I find it is an insufficient foundation upon which to build a rational worldview, and that it does not do justice to human freedom and the beauty and goodness of the universe.
To finish, then, I'd like to quote one of my favorite passages from Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics), since I believe it wonderfully expresses the beauty of the Christian worldview, and what excellent affect this worldview has on our attitude toward the universe and our place within it:
Jesus Christ has revealed to men the mystery and the admirable laws of the kingdom of heaven, and the greatness of the supreme happiness which God has prepared for those who love him. The ancient philosophers knew very little of these important truths. Jesus Christ alone has expressed them divinely well, and in a way so clear and simple that the dullest minds have understood them. His gospel has entirely changed the face of human affairs. It has brought us to know the kingdom of heaven, or that perfect republic of spirits which deserves to be called the city of God. He it is who has discovered to us its wonderful laws. He alone has made us see how much God loves us and with what care everything that concerns us has been provided for; how God, inasmuch as he cares for the sparrows, will not neglect reasoning beings, who are infinitely more dear to him; how all the hairs of our heads are numbered; how heaven and earth may pass away but the word of God and that which belongs to the means of our salvation will not pass away; how God has more regard for the least one among intelligent souls than for the whole machinery of the world; how we ought not to fear those who are able to destroy the body but are unable to destroy the soul, since God alone can render the soul happy or unhappy; and how the souls of the righteous are protected by his hand against all the upheavals of the universe, since God alone is able to act upon them; how none of our acts are forgotten; how everything is to be accounted for; even careless words and even a spoonful of water which is well used; in fact how everything must result in the greatest welfare of the good, for then shall the righteous become like suns and neither our sense nor our minds have ever tasted of anything approaching the joys which God has laid up for those that love him.
(Edited by Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz on 3/08, 8:43pm)
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