Nathaniel Brandens Case Contradiction and Miracles; the Fatalist Fallacy; Natural Law by James Kiefer Unpublished dot-matrix printout dated |
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Introduction
I promised at the beginning of this paper [Objectivism and Theism] that, after presenting the positive case for theism on Objectivist grounds, I would examine Dr. [Nathaniel] Brandens arguments and state where, in my judgement, he goes astray. To this task I now turn.
Objection: Reply: Now, even on Professor Peikoffs own terms, we can make mistakes in deciding whether a given fact is man-made or metaphysical. In 1825, most chemists would have thought it a metaphysical fact that organic compounds cannot be synthesized outside a living organism, and that chemical elements cannot be changed into other chemical elements. On the other hand, they would not have thought, as do most physicists today, that there are absolute limits to the speed with which a material object, or even a message, can travel, or to the accuracy with which the position and velocity of a particle can be measured. Thus our classification of facts into metaphysical and man-made (and of imagined alternatives into possible and impossible) must be contextual, subject to revision in the light of further discovery. All this when we consider only two categories: man-made facts (plus facts made by other free creatures, if any) and metaphysical facts. But there is no reason why Professor Peikoffs analysis, just as it stands, should not accommodate God-made facts as well. We say: It is a man-fact that there are fifty states in the United States. Men have so chosen, but they could have chosen otherwise, and they are still free to change the number. Just so, we may say: It is a God-made fact that there are nine planets in the solar system. God has so chosen, but he could have chosen otherwise, and he is still free to change the number. [Reminder: James is writing more than 25 years before Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet.] Let us examine the contention that the miraculous is the contradictory, so that a God who cannot perform contradictions cannot perform miracles either. Let us consider a favorite miracle of atheists, that of turning a woman into a pillar of salt. (Please note that to assert Gods omnipotence is to assert only that he could do this if he chose. Whether he has ever so chosen is another question altogether and will not be considered here.) The critic says that if God were to turn a woman into a pillar of salt, that would be a contradiction. I do not see why. A contradiction involves the same propositions being true and false at the same time in the same sense. A and not-A. Where is the contradiction here? Is it that God is saying both, This is a woman and This is a pillar of salt (and therefore not a woman)? But it is not a woman and a pillar of salt at the same time, and there is no contradiction in saying that something is one thing at one time, and another thing later. To call that a contradiction would be to commit the error of Parmenides, who concluded on this ground that all motion and change are impossible. Miss Rand is not a disciple of Parmenides. I suppose that the contradiction complained of is rather between No woman ever becomes a pillar of salt, and This woman has become a pillar of salt. Admittedly, the two assertions contradict each other. But that does not prove that the second assertion cannot be true; it proves only that the two assertions cannot both be true simultaneously. We have here an example of what is sometimes called the Fatalist Fallacy that which is, must be. People say that if a man is sitting he cannot be standing and if he is standing he cannot be sitting, and either way his posture is a matter of logical necessity and not of choice. But the cannot here does not express an impossibility of sitting, but rather an impossibility of sitting-when-he-is-standing, which is not the same thing at all, and leaves him perfectly free to sit or stand as he pleases. When someone says, If it is true that Jones is sitting, then Jones must be sitting, he is offering a special case of the statement, Some students of Objectivism have ignored this distinction, and have supposed themselves to be following Professor Peikoff in so doing. Let us consider what he has to say on the subject.
Truth is the identification of a fact of reality. Whether the fact in question is metaphysical or man-made, the fact determines the truth: if the fact exists, there is no alternative in regard to what is true. For instance, the fact that the If one wishes to use the term tautology in this context, then all truths are tautological. (And by the same reasoning, all falsehoods are In Professor Peikoffs terminology, given the fact that there are fifty states, the statement that there are fifty-one is a contradiction, in that it contradicts existing reality. In this sense, it looks as if we ought to say not only that God is capable of bringing about contradictions, but that so is man, or indeed any agent of change. Of course, Professor Peikoff is not so naive. He would reply that the statement that there are fifty-one states is false (and so a contradiction i.e., contrary to reality) only as long as men choose that there shall be fewer than fifty-one states. If they choose to make the number of states fifty-one, they simultaneously make the statement in question true, and alter reality so that the statement no longer contradiction reality.
A source of much confusion about miracles is the practice of saying that a miracle is an event that violates the laws of nature, or that for God to perform a miracle is for him to suspend the laws of nature. It would be better to say that for God to perform a miracle is for him to act directly upon a natural object. For example, suppose that on a particular occasion, God causes water to flow uphill. Someone says: God has suspended the law of nature that water always flows downhill, or God has altered the nature of water. But in fact it is not the nature of water always to flow downhill. Ask anyone who has ever designed, or used, a pump! Rather, it is the nature of water to move (to accelerate) in the direction of the sum of the forces acting on it, and it is the nature of the Earth to exert a force downhill. Thus, water will flow downhill, unless prevented by an equal or greater force, such as the resistant pressure of a barrier, or the force exerted by a pump, or the direct action of God. It is idle to complain that the physical interaction between God and the physical world cannot be analyzed entirely in terms of the laws of the physical world. Interaction between two systems can never be analyzed totally in terms internal to one of the systems.
Once again, I point out that the omnipotence of God means only that he can perform miracles if he chooses, not that he has done so. All theists, as far as I know, reject most alleged miracles. Some theists reject all of them.
Since this is not an essay on miracles, I say no more of them, but refer the interested reader to the books Miracles, by C.S. Lewis, and The Mind of the Maker, by * The title refers to Nathaniel Brandens lecture The Concept of God, from his lecture series The Basic Principles of Objectivism. That lecture is fully transcribed in his book The Vision of Ayn Rand, chapter 4. Partial and perhaps complete audios seem to be available throughout the Internet. See also [01] [02] [03] [04] |
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