Dear Max,

Very interesting article by Mario Zoccoli. I would like to make the following observation about his parting note:

"An ancillary question raised by these issues has been: Can a nontemporal being interact with a temporal world? My answer is yes. It appears to me that a non-temporal being (who does not experience time) can interact with a temporal universe (which does experience time) in a way similar to the following loose analogy: If I imagine time to be flowing by as water in a stream and I as a non-temporal being stand on the banks of that stream, not directly experiencing the stream (as, for example, I would if I were standing in the stream) I can still observe the stream and indeed I could even perturbate the water in the stream by occasionally throwing in a rock. That is, you do not have to experience the stream "directly" to interact with the stream."

From a Christian perspective, I appreciate that the non-temporal, immaterial God so loved me and all humankind created in His image that He became material and temporal. He stepped into that stream, offering to pull me, and anyone else willing to trust in Him, out to be with Him in the non-temporal. Since He experienced the stream "directly", we have assurance that He felt and understands what we feel in the material, temporal world. When we come to Him with our proper needs and desires, we know He has felt the same needs and desires and has promised to fulfill them.

Thanks again for sharing the article.

Sincerely,

Dan Krudop

Max,

I just finished reading Mario Zoccoli's essay on God. Although I remain unconvinced by the latter part of his argument, the part establishing the existence of a non-temporal God has left me reeling. The very foundations of a grim and long-held agnosticism have been shaken. What a marvelously insightful and lucid man is Mr. Zoccoli. Thanks so much for printing his piece.

Frank Morris

Thanks, Max, for the excellent and insightful article by Mario Zoccoli. His discussion of time and God reminded me of St. Augustine's comments on the topic in book X of Augustine's Confessions.

I was wondering if Dr. Adler has ever commented on what some recent philosophers (including Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, Nicholas Woltersdorff, and others) have called "Reformed Epistemology." They have argued that belief in God is a "properly basic" belief, that is, a belief that may be accepted immediately, without evidence, as with "2 + 2 = 4" "the world has existed for longer than five minutes" "I had breakfast this morning" "belief in other minds" and "it is wrong to torture babies for fun." Belief in God would fit in the same category. Beliefs such as these are foundational to our existence although they are a little hard to prove. One is rational in accepting them without proof because they are necessary to a properly functioning noetic structure.

This of course does not mean that belief in God can be arbitrary or unjustified anymore than any other properly basic belief and this is where reformed epistemology comes in. The philosophers I've mentioned find in the sixteenth century Protestant reformer, John Calvin (thus the term reformed epistemology), an account of a possible and appropriate ground for the properly basic belief in God:

"There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. . . . God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty. . . . men one and all perceive that there is a God and that he is their maker"[Institutes of The Christian Religion, tr. Ford Lewis Battles, I, 43-44.]

Belief in God may be embraced apart from "rational" evidence, and at the same time be justified as a natural disposition implanted in the soul by God himself.

Thanks for all your great work!

Dave Seng

Max,

I read Mario Zoccoli's article with interest, and I think that the conclusions are defensible, but believe that in some places the argument would benefit from clarification or elaboration.

1. TWO KINDS OF CAUSATION

In his Section 2, "The Temporal Relationship of Cause and Effect", Mario Zoccoli writes: "Cause and effect relationships carry with themselves temporal sequences. Indeed, there are no true cause and effect relationships in our universe in which the cause does not pre-exist (if even only for an infinitesimally small amount of time) its effect."

In How to Think About God, Dr. Adler intentionally avoids basing his argument on the notion of temporal causation owing to the logical possibility that the universe has always existed.

"We observed at the very beginning of this inquiry that two assumptions about the cosmos are equally tenable. Reason is unable to show that we must adopt one rather than the other. However, in an inquiry concerning God's existence, we found it necessary to assume that the cosmos has always existed. To assume that it initially came into existence out of nothing would require us to posit God's existence as the cause of its creation.

"We would then, in effect, beg the very question under investigation. The conclusion to be established is implicitly contained in that assumption, for if the cosmos was created, there had to be a cause of its creation. We, therefore had to make the opposite assumption -- that the cosmos was uncreated or, in other words, that the cosmos never came into existence out of nothing." (p. 145)

Dr. Adler bases his argument rather on the notion of existential causation -- that is, the cause not of the cosmos' becoming but of its being.

"A merely possible cosmos cannot be an uncaused cosmos. A cosmos that is radically contingent in its existence, and needs a cause of that existence, needs a supernatural cause -- one that exists and acts to exnihilate this merely possible cosmos, thus preventing the realization of what is always possible for a merely possible cosmos; namely, its absolute non-existence or reduction to nothingness.

"The cosmological argument, carried out in this way, appears to establish the existence of the supreme being that acts as the exnihilating cause of this merely possible cosmos, and so explains why it continues to exist. The reasoning conforms to Ockham's rule. We have found it necessary to posit the existence of God, the supreme being, in order to explain what needs to be explained -- the actual existence here and now of a merely possible cosmos." (Mortimer Adler, How to Think About God, pp. 144-145)

2. COPIES AND CONCEPTS

In his Section 5, "Individuality", Mario Zoccoli writes, "Your duplicate may even speak and act like you and, of course, would look identical to you in every way because as we said we have made it an exact physical duplicate of you....You are you and the duplicate is someone else. We have seen from this example that individuality has a necessary component which is non-physical."

The argument here seems to be that since presumably no human being would want to be killed even if a perfect copy of his or her body were made, his or her constitution must include an immaterial, personal element that would not be included in a material copy -- but this seems to beg the question. The argument might be persuasive if it were known that such a copy would not similarly object to being killed, but that is a scientific question which seems likely to remain far beyond the capacity of scientific investigation within the foreseeable future.

Dr. Adler's argument for the immateriality of the intellect is based rather on the demonstrable ability of human beings to use language, specifically common nouns and particularly abstract nouns.

"The argument hinges on two propositions. The first asserts that the concepts whereby we understand what different kinds or classes of things are like consist of meanings that are universal. The second proposition asserts that nothing that exists physically is ever actually universal. Anything that is embodied in matter exists as an individual, a singular thing that may also be a particular instance of this class or that.

"From these two propositions, the conclusion follows that our concepts, having universality, cannot be embodied in matter. If they were acts of a bodily organ such as the brain, they would exist in matter, and so could not have the requisite universality to function as concepts that enable us to think of universal objects, such as kinds or classes, quite different from the individual things that are objects of sense perception, imagination, and memory. The power of conceptual thought, by which we form and use concepts, must, therefore, be an immaterial power, one the acts of which are not acts of a bodily organ." (Mortimer Adler, Intellect: Mind Over Matter, p. 49)

3. MIND AND INTELLECT

In his Section 6, "Facts and Knowledge", Mario Zoccoli writes, "Human beings through their acquisition of knowledge and perception of facts have a personal, demonstrable connection to the realm of God", and in his Section 7, "The Mind Alone", he writes, "...suffice it to say that it is acceptable to believe that minds can exist without bodies."

The acquisition of knowledge, the power of perception and the possession of mind are in the broad, ordinary sense of those words possible for beings whose constitution is entirely material. If the basic meanings of "knowledge", "perception" and "mind" are information, discrimination and the capacity to learn respectively, then it is not an extraordinary use of these words to say that some animals and machines can acquire knowledge, can perceive objects, and have minds.

Dr. Adler is careful to distinguish between (a) mind in general, and the purely mental powers of perception, memory and imagination concerning for he argues that brain or machine activity is both necessary and sufficient; and (b) intellect in particular, and the intellectual powers of conception, judgement and volition for which he argues that brain or machine activity is necessary but not sufficient. The human intellect can be understood as a part of the human mind, and intellectual activity as a kind of mental activity, but it is the intellectual powers of the human mind, not the mental powers, that constitute the spirituality -- that is, immateriality -- that differentiates human nature from machines and non-human animals.

"As the eye or ear, together with the brain, are sense-organs, the brain itself is not a mind-organ; or, more precisely, the brain is not an intellect-organ. The most that can be said of the brain in relation to the human mind is that it is an intellect-support organ upon which the intellect depends, without which it cannot think, but with which it does not think."

"Only if the brain is not the sufficient condition for intellectual activity and conceptual thought (only if the intellect that is part of the human mind and is not found in other animals is the immaterial factor that must be added to the brain in order to provide conditions both necessary and sufficient) are we justified in concluding that the manifest difference in kind between human and animal minds, and between human and animal behavior, is radical, not superficial. It cannot be explained away by any difference in the physical constitution of human beings and other animals that is a difference in degree." (Mortimer Adler, Intellect: Mind Over Matter, p. 48)

Paul Harrison

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