Comments (5)

• ada

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rs9sinZJ_4

• Published: July 8, 2007 1:44 AM

• RogerM

• "But action can only be imputed to a discontented being, and repeated action only to a being who lacks the power to remove his uneasiness once and for all at one stroke. An acting being is discontented and therefore not almighty. If he were contented, he would not act... "

  Both Mises and Hayek (and many others) accuse theology of anthropomorphism, that is, of projecting human qualities onto a supreme being, but I think that is actually what Mises is doing here. Humans act because they are discontent, but that truth doesn't necessarily traslate to a description of God, who is not human. The God of Biblical theology acts because his nature is to create things. There is no reason to attribute to God human weaknesses. God may have many reasons for acting, none of which necessarily implies discontent. Also, we may never understand why God acts. A fundamental truth about God is that we may know some things about him that are true, but we can never know him exhaustively. He will always be a mystery.

  "...and if he were almighty, he would have long since radically removed his discontent."

  Repeated action requires time and in Mises description the acting being is trapped in time. But the God of the Bible exists outside of time, for time is one of his creations. He can intervene in time, and does occasionally, but like a man observing fish in an aquarium, God observes mankind swimming in time from creation to the end of time at the same time. So from God's perspective, he has removed his "dicontent" immediately at creation; Mises's problem is viewing God's work from within time and from man's perspective instead of from God's perspective, and placing God within time.

  "He is above all human comprehension, concepts, and understanding. For the almighty being every "means" renders unlimited services, he can apply every "means" for the attainment of any ends, he can achieve every end without the employment of any means. It is beyond the faculties of the human mind to think the concept of almightiness consistently to its ultimate logical consequences. The paradoxes are insoluble."

  The fact that we can't know God exhaustively doesn't mean we can't know something about him that is true, and we do. Christian theology has always argued that revelation and creation tell us true things about God, but can never tell us everything.

  "Has the almighty being the power to achieve something which is immune to his later interference? If he has this power, then there are limits to his might and he is no longer almighty; if he lacks this power, he is by virtue of this fact alone not almighty."

  This is like the question that children continually ask, "Can God create something so heavy that even he can't lift it?" In Biblical theology, God can't act contrary to his own nature or purpose, so if that implies a limitation, then so be it, but it's a very small one. Still, compared to human ability, his power is as though it would without limitations, and that is usually what people mean by omnipotence.

  "Are omnipotence and omniscience compatible? Omniscience presupposes that all future happenings are already unalterably determined. If there is omniscience, omnipotence is inconceivable. Impotence to change anything in the predetermined course of events would restrict the power of any agent."

  In other words, how can man have a free will if God is all-knowing? The question arises because of a confusion about how omniscience is achieved. People assume incorrectly that God can know the future only if he has determined it, but that's not the case. For example, by studying human action, we can predict with a degree of certainty that people will buy more of a product if the price falls. Parents can often predict the behavior of their pets or their children simply because of a very slightly higher intelligence. God would have to be just only slightly smarter than humans to be able to predict our every move without determining beforehand that we should make those moves. Also, God exists outside of time. He can see every move we chose to make long before we make it. Again, Mises is guilty of anthropomorphism, the very thing he despises.

  "The very idea of absolute perfection is in every way self-contradictory. The state of absolute perfection must be conceived as complete, final, and not exposed to any change. Change could only impair its perfection and transform it into a less perfect state; the mere possibility that a change can occur is incompatible with the concept of absolute perfection."

  Of course God doesn't change; he changes things. It's possible that Mises is guilty of pantheism here. God and the universe are separate entities. The universe can change without God changing.

  "Life and perfection are incompatible, but so are death and perfection.
  The living is not perfect because it is liable to change; the dead is not perfect because it does not live."

  From the limited, fallible, and corrupt perspective of mankind, neither life nor death can be perfect, but life, death and change are concepts tied to time and God exists outside of time. Human perfection may be incompatible with life and death, but God isn't human. He is not part of the physical universe, either. That Mises can't conceive of perfection and God at the same time only exhibits the limits of the human mind.

  It's very important to remember that if mankind could grasp and understand everything about God, then God would be just another slob on the bus looking for a way home. If we're to escape the error of anthropomorphism, we have to accept that there are some things about God that we can't understand because God is not human and our understanding is limited.

  For mankind, life and perfection may be incompatible, but if we're to avoid making God nothing but a super-man, then we have to allow for the possibility that for God those aren't incompatible.

  We can achieve a glimpse into the relationship between the Biblical God and mankind/creation by imagining a two-dimensional creation with God existing in three dimensions. In reality, we exist in a four-dimensional universe with God existing in possibly hundreds of dimensions. That's why he is difficult for us to grasp. But then, if we could understand everything about God, he woulnd't be God.

  
  

• Published: July 9, 2007 5:25 PM

• gene berman

• RogerM:

  It's somewhat a curiosity that my comment here regarding your comment is so strikingly similar to that of a few days ago (in re Shostak's piece on marginal utility, etc.). The similarity lies, in my view, in that you've got things exactly backwards. You haven't, actually, put up a criticism of Mises but a thundering approbation of his message--by committing all (or maybe only most) of the very errors of which he warns.

  You entirely miss the point regarding anthropomorphism. Mises does not accuse others of committing an offense but rather points out that the pronouncements of many, including theologians, are loaded with opportunity for errors introduced by that "viewpoint" (for lack of a better word). The suspect attitude is not mere anthropmorphism per se, to which all of us, as men, including Mises, are irrevocably chained but rather the very naive forms which hardly take notice of the chasm of inadequacy surrounding the inability of language to convey meaning (its job, of course) of the "transcendent" or "ineffable."

  The ability of humans to vocalize and use words stretches beyond that for which such process makes any sense (and that statement is, necessarily anthropomorphic), even including confusion and deliberate obfuscation among the "legitimate" purposes of language. The plain fact is that anyone can (and not infrequently does) make sounds recognizable as words but which have no meaning whatever in relationship to the other words with which thay are used or, as the case often is, have meanings at odds with what are accepted as fact. This may produce problems of certain kinds but is inescapable--otherwise, we could attain all the truth needed just by listening to ourselves (or others) talk.

  Mises is entirely correct in focusing attention on the often-ascribed (by theologians) attributes
  of omniscience, omnipotence, and omniprescence; these show most clearly the inadequacy of human comprehension to "fit" a deity into any common or entitled-to-widespread-acceptance interpretation of reality. Wags put it other ways, with questions such as "Is there a Dog?" or allusions to "spahetti monsters." The long and the short of it is that belief is a matter of faith (some would say wishful thinking) not related in any concrete way to arguments of theologians (which are more akin to hegemonic position-seeking within particular circles of such specialists).

  It's entirely within your ability (and your right) to imagine (and to say or write) that a deity could be both all-powerful and limited in ability at the same time, however contrary to the sense of mortals that might be: all that might be said is that, to most, you'd make no sense. And further, to the (numerically, very many) who believed that you did make sense (or pretended so), you'd have merely shifted the discussion forward a notch--to one fraught with far more ominous portents--of the available omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent deities roaming the transcendentosphere, which shall be the "One?"

  Your last comment on us living in a "four-dimensional" universe is, I believe, not well-founded.

  We are all familiar with the three dimensions
  characteristic of matter and of the spaces between matter. No known "fourth dimension" exists, to the best of our knowledge. The frequent reference to such is an outgrowth first, of attempts in the first part of last century, to provide a metaphorical explanation to the role of time in the then-novel theory of relativity. Later, certain science-fiction writers seized on the concept because of the novel activities and occurrences they could introduce into their imaginative fiction on that account. The essence is summed up in Gamov's 1955 book, "One, Two, Three...Infinity." Therein, he posits the basis essence of the fascination: you can draw a circle to represent a man's body and a dot within to indicate his bad appendix. In the dimensions of the plane of the paper, the only way to remove the appendix is to break throught the boundary of the body. But, in a third dimension, that of height, both entry and withdrawal may be made in that dimension without breach or damage. So, by extension, an approach from another dimension might enable "bloodless surgery" and other marvels in our own mundane existence.

  You cannot prove (or even know) if such a thing as "time" exists independently of human existence. For us, "time" and its significance lie entirely in the fact that those entities we perceive as "cause" and "effect" are not identical--not coterminous. What separates the two (and even renders them distinguishable from one another), we give the name "time." (and it, likewise, separates "want" and "satisfaction," "action" and "result," etc. Of course, we are mostly persuaded that time is actually something real, particularly by the fact that observation reveals that similar amounts of cause produce similar amounts of effect, very usually, after similar amounts of what we call time; we are led to conclude that the time (and its amount) are somewhat similar and regular parts of other effect-producing causes.

• Published: July 10, 2007 10:08 AM

• RogerM

• Gene Berman: "...you've got things exactly backwards."

  I think I understood Mises properly. He wrote "The naive anthropomorphism of primitive religions is unpalatable to the philosophic mind. However, the endeavors of philosophers to define, by the use of praxeological concepts, the attributes of an absolute being, free from all the limitations and frailties of human existence, are no less questionable.

  "Scholastic philosophers and theologians and likewise Theists and Deists of the Age of Reason conceived an absolute and perfect being, unchangeable, omnipotent, and omniscient, and yet planning and acting, aiming at ends and employing means for the attainment of these ends."

  In other words, Mises wrote that theists defined God as human without human frailties, which would be a type of anthropomorphism. I can't speak for all philosophers/deists/theologians, but Christian theologians did not try to imagine a perfect human being as God. That much is clear from their writings. They struggled with what they knew about God from revelation and science to sort of reverse engineer a concept of the nature of God. Much of it doesn't make any sense to us.

  For example the trinity is impossible math: 1 + 1 + 1 = 1; nothing exists in the material universe that remotely compares. Or God existing outside of time; there is no way for us to comprehend that. In the literal sense, God transcends our ability to grasp him totally.

  My argument was that Mises's attempt to force the incrompehensible to make sense to a human being pushes Mises into the ancient form of anthropomorphism, that is, making God no more than a super man.

  God can be only one of two things: 1) He is a being whom mankind can understand completely, in which case he is little more than a man and powerless. Much of modern, non-traditional theology has taken this path. In modern theology, God began with the universe and is evolving, but he is too small and weak to actually do any good or harm. He needs us to complete himself. Modern theology is as close to being atheistic as possible without actually killing God.

  Or 2) Some things about God are transcendent, or beyond the ability of humans to understand, and therefore paradoxical or plain unreasonable, such as the Trinity. Other aspects of God's nature are similar enough to our own experiences that we can understand them and know that they are true. This is the path taken by traditional Christian theology.

• Published: July 10, 2007 4:22 PM

• Ike Hall

• Or 3) A completely fabricated fairy-tale, told to induce fear and keep the masses in line. What was the line from Seneca? "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful."

• Published: April 15, 2008 11:16 PM