Immanuel Can wrote:
greylorn wrote:
It may be that the single-thing-at-the-beginning belief was adopted in accordance with the Occam's razor principle, but IMO it was foisted upon us by a brilliant crackpot, Hermes Trismegistus, who was kicked out of Greece several thousand years ago in a small boat that made it to Egypt, where he set himself up as a guru and convinced Pharaoh Akenhaten of his monotheistic God theory. His theory was soon rejected by Egyptians, but picked up by Hebrews and transported elsewhere. It is so popular that it now resides in the halls of "science" as Big Bang theory.
This may be. But two things we need to bear in mind are as follows: 1.) Correspondence doesn't prove causality -- the fact that two similar things happen, or even that one happens then the other, does not conclusively show one is the cause of the other.
It's like the old joke about the blonde who goes to her doctor and says, "Doctor, every time I drink tea my eye hurts." And the doctor replies, "Take the spoon out of the cup."
She pegs the cause as tea, because the two things happen successively...but tea is not the cause: a third thing is. So the existence of HT doesn't prove his causality (or invention) of monotheism. He may, in fact, have
discovered it.
I.C.
I'll deal with your comments one at a time.
This one reminds me of an experience many years back where I needed to avoid a fight with someone who was upset that I'd made a mildly disparaging comment about some female-- a female whom he had previously described as ornery, not too bright, and not actually looking as sexy as she thinks she is. Why the squabble? It turned out that the female in question was his ex-girlfriend.
I'm in complete agreement about the correspondence-causality relationship, yet I cannot help but notice how well it works as a determinant of human behavior, and how effective it has been throughout the history of science. Had this relationship been ignored, for example, you'd not know of Louis Pasteur.
If a particular cause-effect sequence occurs once, it is likely to be coincidence. However, if the same sequence occurs repetitively, it is conveying useful information, e.g. your tea-drinking example.
When the scientific method is employed,
repetitive correspondence does indeed prove causality and is a core component of the scientific method. Experiments must be capable of being duplicated before they are regarded as valid.
There are gradualist exceptions to this principle. For example, Big Al's prediction that starlight passing near to the sun would be bent by the sun's gravitational field. That was an absurd prediction, contrary to all conventional physics theory at the time. It was tested only because Al's math was awesome, and as we know, verified by experiment. That single experiment established the validity of General Relativity, but only because it had been suggested by the theory.
Suppose that the experiment had preceded the theory, that for the fun of it a crew of astronomers had set up a temporary observation post to measure the apparent position of stars whose light was passing close to the sun during a solar eclipse, and found that the stars appeared to be out of place. Would that experiment, by itself, have been hearlded as a scientific discovery? Of course not. It would have been ignored. Had its perpetrators been convinced of its validity and gone on to make similar observations as solar eclipses appeared around the planet, they'd have been ignored, dismissed as persistent crackpots.
There is no way to go from such an observation to the remarkable theory that predicts and explains it.
Evidence for that assertion? Before Einstein's time, astronomers had observed that the orbit of Mercury did not fit Newtonian mechanics. This observation did not lead them to relativity theory, which easily explained the orbit.
Now back to point. As a philosopher I don't give a shit about proving anything. That's not my job, and I do not have the requisite laboratory facilities. IMO philosophers who dip into science to make an argument are being ever so slightly phony, given what little science any of them have actually practiced. However, as someone with physics/engineering creds, I've engineered my philosophical ideas to fit observed reality, and assure that they are verifiable.
Scientists often get their ideas by examining cause-effect relationships, but most of them are dullards who ignore relationships they cannot explain. Roentgen's discovery of x-rays provides a fine example. He got onto the phenomenon by paying attention, wondering why images appeared on photographic plates that should not have been exposed. After the research and publication of Roentgen's discoveries, third-rate scientists crawled out of academia's woodwork, like cockroaches, claiming they'd been the first to discover x-rays because they'd observed spurious plate images long before Roentgen.
The discovery of X-rays offers an excellent example of the potential validity of cause-effect relationships. Dismiss such relationships at the risk of becoming one of the lurking cockroaches. Does that role really suit you? I'm hoping otherwise.
Finally, you wrote, "
So the existence of HT doesn't prove his causality (or invention) of monotheism. He may, in fact, have discovered it."
I have several quibbles with this, and should precede them by noting that there is no evidence for HT's existence, just like there is no evidence for the existence of Jesus Christ. Neither of them wrote down anything that they supposedly taught. There is only lore, third-hand or derivative information about either of them. Yet, cults have formed around their alleged teachings.
I base my assertion that HT invented monotheism upon the writings of his surviving cult members, exactly in the same manner that Christians follow the writings of Christ's followers.
I do not "know" about the validity of this, but I appreciate a good story with a credible plot. I know that monotheism is attributed by modern scholars to Akhenaten, but I don't buy that. Kings don't have the time or energy to devise metaphysical concepts, but are noted for their susceptibility to cleverly presented influence. I'm going with HT, but it really does not matter. I really don't care about the origins of monotheism, for the same reason that I do not care about the origins of phlogiston theory, except as the origins of incorrect beliefs teach me about the peculiar processes going on within easily deluded human minds, mine included.
HT cannot have "discovered" monotheism, no more than LeMaitre "discovered" Big Bang theory or Darwin discovered how life evolved. The only things that can be discovered are those which actually exist. The rest is invention.
I prefer invention, because it requires imagination, for which the inventor must take responsibility. "Discovery" can be as accidental and as bogus as finding a rock from Mars perched atop the Antarctic snowpack, conveniently placed in the path of wandering geologists, or glancing into the mirror on the way out of a men's room and discovering an errant booger lodged in one's mustache. No imagination required.
Greylorn
