Nor am I interested in selling one. So … good thing then!
When I notice level-headed, informed, and considerate responses that bring good knowledge to the discussion, I tend to be supportive of those posts and posters. I hope to continue doing that yet more, Lord willing.
From basic physics class, a spandrel has the very practical function of making sure that the stones in the arch stay where they are so they do their job of supporting weight. The strength of materials needed for this function is negligible compared to that needed for the arch to do its function, so that a spandrel for a stone arch can be made of light wood.
Yes. Its particular function is to make the “beam” above the arch rest its weight not on the apex of the arch but all across it, so it ony needs to be strong enough to bear the weight of the beam.
No, it’s just a spandrel. 
I got into an argument with a YEC online who insisted that an ancient universe made no sense because “Why would God waste all that time?” I answered a question with a question and asked, “Who says it’s wasted? Were you there when God designed the universe?”
I find that to be a stronger argument than the moral one.
Amen to that.
The problem, of course, being that we are not all that good at identifying just what it is we are longing for.
I think this confuses desire in the sense Lewis meant it with wish. It isn’t fairies that someone desires, it’s something more than the natural, and fairies seem to satisfy that desire, so fairies are what they wish for.
How do we know they are innate rather than, say, learned or memetic?
If they are innate, does that imply they are universal?
If they are not universal, then why not?
I’m not asking you, Vinnie, in particular, and not asking to be answered really. But I wonder what assumptions are behind the idea of “innate desire” that encourage us to think in a specific way that prevents us from employing different, good or better perspectives
I assume that feelings and desires rises from something innate, like a need or a trauma within us. If we desire a fast sport car, a political office, or superpowers, there is something inside us that hopes to fulfill a conscious or unconscious need with the thing we want. External input, like commercials, may modify the targets of our internal desires (‘this is what makes you wanted, loved,…’) but there is an innate need, possibly twisted, behind the desire.
In this sense, a desire is necessarily connected to something real, within us. Yet, the desire may be misdirected or twisted in the sense that we seek satisfaction from something that does not fulfill our real innate need.
Lewis noted something correct in his writing but missed the possibility that the target of our need (what we think we desire) is misdirected. The generality of a belief in God or gods around the globe hints there is a real innate need and a reality behind the desire. However, it is not a proof of God or gods because there is a (theoretical) possibility that the belief and yearning towards God is a somehow misdirected desire, rising from a general need to something else than a relationship with God.
My desire to live long without experiencing the many horrific affects of aging does not indicate that that is a possibility.
All things are not possible even if we hope but the desire itself tells something about the reality you face. Your desire is not random or rising from nowhere, it is rooted to something within you, your conscious or unconscious needs and expectations. At a superficial level, your desire seems to tell that you have zest for life and a hope to avoid some unwanted effects of aging. We could try to analyse these in more detail to get deeper understanding but the point is that even unrealistic hopes are connected to something real, the reality you have experienced and are experiencing now.
By the way, after the resurrection, your desire should be possible, at least if you die as a believer, ‘in Christ’.
At least as identified here.
Because our imaginations are limited.
There is no way to demonstrate that our desires indicate the existence of something.
You’re welcome to try to make an argument based on this idea, but it’s an unprovable statement that carries no more weight than any fantasy.
It is not the reason for my hope in Jesus.
Not sound.
There is no reason to accept the principle premise/claim and it is fairly easy to demonstrate that this is wrong.
People have had the desire to see unicorns, dragons, and the place where the water flows down off the edge of the earth. But such things do not exist…
well mostly… I mean you can see all of these in fantasy films now or find things similar enough they might have inspired these things. Ever been to the Island in the Sky in Canyon Lands, Utah? And… you can say some of these about God too – that the version of God many imagine doesn’t exist any more than how they envision unicorns and dragons. LOL
Which is why I have always suggested that the real question isn’t whether God exists but what is God?
This is also the problem with a lot of these see called proofs because it is rather questionable whether even what they claim to argue the existence of is a good match to the real thing.
I get the feeling that we are talking past each other. It seems my communication failed - English is a foreign language for me and it is not always easy to translate my thinking to another language.
I did not mean that our desires or hopes are a proof that the things we hope exist. I like to use the word ‘hope’ instead of ‘desire’ because my understanding is that ‘desire’ is a much stronger feeling than ‘hope’ and much of what we want remains at the level of a weaker feeling than desire. Anyhow, our hopes or desires do not necessarily reveal what exists in the external world. Instead, they do tell about our innate world. If we think that our innate world - personality, needs, beliefs, experiences, etc. - is real, then our desires tell about that, our innate world.
I do think that a globally common desire or belief reveals something important about humans and the reality. The majority of humans desire food, which tells to me that food and eating are important for humans. As I wrote, the generality of a belief in gods or God hints there is a real innate need behind that belief or hope. What that need is, is a matter of interpretation. As a believer, I might interpret that we are made to be in a relationship with God and that makes us to search a fulfillment to the invisible itch and emptiness within us. An atheist would have another kind of interpretation of the same phenomenon. As a biologist, I might accept the interpretation of the atheist if (s)he has convincing arguments supporting the hypothesis.
I find the argument from desire to be subtle, like an argument that consciousness is really a remarkable phenomenon. I liked how C.S. Lewis stated it when I first read it, although it has been awhile since I revisted.
The thing though, and this is something John Piper layed out rather well, everyone does what they do for the happiness or joy, they think that action will bring them. It is as it were, a natural law, like Aquinas might have described.
I am not sure if I agree. Many actions are done because they have to be done, without an expectation of happiness or joy. There is a sense of duty and responsibility, sometimes social pressure. Two examples: I may take trash out or do some other necessary tasks at home because these have to be done, without an expectation of happiness. I take daily our dog to a short walk although I feel that I am a slave of the dog when I am attached to the dog with a leash - the dog was taken because of our kids, not because I expected to get some happiness from the dog. Sorry dog owners, everybody does not love having a responsibility for a dog.
All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.
Blaise Pascal, as quoted by John Piper in Desiring God
I do not fully agree. There is a hope for happiness but happiness is not the best possible goal. Many feel unhappy simply because they are too focused on seeking happiness and feel disappointed or failure if they do not reach a feeling of happiness. Many marriages end prematurely because the marriage does not seem to give a feeling of happiness and there is a hope to get that happiness with someone else.
I suspect that this stressing of happiness and joy, especially as feelings, is a child of the individualistic culture in the west. The strongly individualistic culture does not match the cultural model given in the biblical scriptures. We are saved individually but not just for ourselves and our happiness. We should grow to become part of the ecclesia (church) of Christ, members in a body formed by the followers of Christ. Our goal is to become more like Christ, giving ourselves for others.
Those who commit suicide do not normally do it because they hope happiness. There are exceptions as some have the belief that everybody will become happy after death. Normally suicide is a desperate attempt to end suffering or shame that feels too heavy to stand, in a situation where the person does not see any hope of something better in the future. A belief that there is nothing after death may even encourage suicide because nothing seems a better alternative than a never ending suffering. Only if ‘happiness’ is defined as the end of intolerable suffering and lack of hope we could say that a person who commits suicide is searching happiness.
Edit:
Although I think that strive for happiness is not the best possible option, I have to admit that it is evident in early Christian writings. Happiness was thought to be something that comes after death. This life was often anything but easy for Christians but standing firm to the end would give everlasting peace and happiness with our Lord. There was also a possibility to experience something of the coming peace during this life, despite the persecution.
This is much like the claim that all people are only/completely selfish – only made true by redefining words.
Some people do self-less things, but you can insist that these are somehow serving themselves in some way.
Some people seek misery, but you can insist that this makes them happy in some way.
Both are nonsense! …turning words into their opposites.
People are largely creatures of habit, doing things no matter how miserable those things make them. They can act without much awareness or reflection about happiness. Oh but won’t they jump for something if it promises some happiness? Not necessarily. The idea of happiness can be as strange and unreal to them as unicorns and dragons. And then there are religions and ways of life that reject the goal of happiness as an illusion or deception and thus they seek quite different things like detachment or obedience.
Moreover, those things don’t need to exist in order to satisfy the argument. A belief in a non-existent deity would satisfy the desire to believe in the existence of the divine. I think most would agree that given the many different gods that humans believe in not all of them can exist given their mutually exclusive claims about the divine. So there are groups of humans that believe in a non-existent deity, and they seem as satisfied in their beliefs as anyone else.
It’s a desire to end the suffering. Please don’t get hung up on the term ‘happiness’
They are seeking ‘happiness’ apart from God. As Piper so well explained, there is a reason we are to first love God with all our heart, soul, and mind.
This quote from Lewis, which Piper also quotes, is legendary
Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.
Something else, while I can’t rule out the exception, the near universal practice of suicide, is by way of the most efficient and painless means possible.
That is unless suicide is not the actual goal. Some people do do it as a way of crying out for help.
True, I assume that happens often.
Also the regret after the final step has been taken is a sign that the person did not really want to die. Unfortunately, the regret often comes too late, after the deadly step has been taken. One who survived told that immediately after a jump to death, he suddenly realized that all his problems were small compared to death.
As a caricature yes. I’d view the argument more in the sense that every car ever found on the planet, across every continent, and every society going back as far as humans have been on the planet is red. If the very last car on the planet had a cover over it, what color are you betting on if we could pull off the cover? I don’t see why logical necessity is being brought up. It’s certainly not a requirement for the thinking process that science depends upon. Edward Feser wrote the following:
After digging up so many innate desires that always correspond to something real, why should the pious pew warmer expect the religious one that billions of people have made use of across all cultures and societies to be fictitious? That is not how, pattern seeking, cause and effect, human beings operating under methodological naturalism think. I call atheism of the gaps or special pleading. Feser phrases it another way:
These are good questions and in some cases they are easy to answer and in some cases possibly more difficult. We can desire a unicorn, a magic lamp with a genie inside or that we possessed the powers of superman. I think we can generally all agree that magical unicorns, genies in lamps that grant three wishes and the strength of superman are not actual things in our physical world. I suppose through a miracle of God (e.g. Samson), some Christians might argue superhuman ability and strength is possible. But I am just trying to bring up known things that are fictitious for sake of steel manning the argument. Some cases are easy. I don’t think desiring a sports car is a universal, innate desire. It is learned. But I think wanting water or air to breathe are. I would say innate means they should be generally universal across humans. I think cross-culturally, humans have had a deep seated desire for something spiritual and more. I wouldn’t go further than that because how they phrase that “something more” will be cultural and learned to a significant degree. Also, in terms of our innate, universal desires, they are not always fulfilled but their potential for fulfillment is real. Some people desire to break while drowning or food or water but die of starvation and thirst. The point is that our innate desires all have something real that corresponds to them. That is how I would phrase the argument. The atheist is left with the alarming fact that all our innate desires clearly and unambiguously corresponds to something real in the world but a single, solitary one. Imagine if this was a YEC inserting God into a gap or making a “what if” statement. This forum would be all over that claim. It should likewise see this response for what it is. I believe the comments by Feser I quoted just above gets at the heart of it. And if you are interested, here is how Feser describes Aquinas version of this argument:
Now, I feel this much of this discussion has been largely disparaging towards Christian philosophers and very uncritical. For example,
Here is another example:
I’d assume every Christian philosopher who articulates this argument understands people can desire fairies to be real. Or some children want unicorns. Or for x, y or z. But this is not the argument they make. This is just a caricature. They talk about the innate, universal desires. The argument is pronounced to not be sound but neither commenter raises objections that correspond to what any Christian philosopher actually argues. This is not steel manning an argument or even spending a minute trying to understand what is being said. It is caricature plain and simple.
I find it better to follow the spirit envisioned by Edward Feser here (see the bold):
An obvious objection to any such argument would be that it is manifestly delusional to suppose that something is real simply because we want it to be. After all, the frustration of desire happens all the time – unrequited love, failed careers, empty stomachs, and so forth. Yet you might suspect that, precisely because this objection is so obvious, it must be missing something – that proponents of the argument from desire are not in fact reasoning in so crude and manifestly fallacious a way. And if so, you’d be right.
As I quoted Kreeft above and I reiterate here (that webpage is just a reprint of part of his famous Handbook of Christian Apologetics with Ron Tacelli):
Where is the benefit of the doubt? Where is actually trying to understand the argument? We are 80 posts in and there hasn’t been a serious objection to what is actually being argued…I guess many in here just think Christian philosophers are so dumb that they haven’t considered a fairy or dragon objection. I think CS Lewis was smart enough to make that distinction as well. Reading the actual arguments of modern proponents would help. I guess it’s just easier to hand wave away and dismiss arguments rather than steel man them. The truth is, if our religious propensity actually is deep and innate, then this atheism of the gaps is more akin to a learned and fanciful desire like belief in fairies, dragons or unicorns. Its contrary to our very nature and a denial of the self.
Vinnie
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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