I Design Websites, Therefore, God Is
October 8th, 2008 in Web Design Worldview
by: Matthew Griffin
The majority of the most exceptional men and women in the historical landscape of philosophy have acknowledged the absolute necessity of a supreme being. Those who did not and were honest with the implications of their conclusions were forced into absurdism. But today, in a culture that is increasingly shallow and intellectually lazy, you'd be hard pressed to find an individual (educated or not) who knows anything of Thomas Aquinas' five rational proofs for the existence of God or has any concept of Aristotle's "unmoved mover". The words of these great thinkers are most often used by quote miners looking for nuggets to rip out of context and paste together into warped shadows of what once was. And fortunately for them we're none the wiser. We gained a little bit of knowledge about how this universe works and became so obsessed with our discoveries that we stopped asking why. We are not unlike Haley's man who, after stumbling upon a pocket watch in the forest, declares himself to be the master watchmaker (or that there must be a blind watchmaker).
Reduced to Pragmatism
Thought has become pragmatic. We have no idea what we're actually trying to do as human beings. We just know that we should be doing something. And we know that we like this and don't like that—we prefer this and not that. There is no end, no purpose, no ultimate goal. We educate our children because we prefer that they are able to support themselves rather than not. We go to work because we prefer to eat rather than starve, to have air conditioning rather than not, to have cable rather than not. We think that the only purpose of our existence is to fall on the preferable side of as many situations as possible. And in the finite cycle of tiny victories over the things which we do not prefer, humanity seems to have been at least partially successful—drowning out the ever present hum of approaching death.
Thomas Aquinas' Necessary Purposer
The pragmatic cycle is escapism at its core and it doesn't appeal to me in the slightest. In response, I'd like to take a little stab at waning thought in western civilization by resurrecting one of Aquinas' proofs for the existence of God and showing how it relates to the vocations of design. Rene Descartes, himself a Christian and a brilliant mathematician, was most famous for his reductive maxim cognito ergo sum (I think, therefore I am). Thomas Aquinas probably would have said, "I create, therefore God is." In Aquinas' fifth rational proof for the existence of God he proposed that if any facet of any system in the universe has a purpose or order, a purposer must exist. The popular modern response to this proof is to deny that real purpose or order exists at all. What we see that looks like purpose is really just randomness and chaos. We must continually close our eyes and turn our heads from the overwhelming sense of order, design, and purpose, and tell ourselves, "It just looks like purpose. Don't let it get to you. It's all just an illusion." Much like Dorthy closing her eyes and clicking her heals together hoping that Oz will just go away, we click our heals and wish away purpose.
But that's just the beginning of the problem with the refutation of Aquinas' fifth proof. The real problem is that we ourselves are supposedly products of this blind purposeless chaos. And we can't stop short at our physical bodies. Our very thoughts and ideas—our reasoning—is a product of blind purposeless chaos as well. The obvious conclusion being that anything and everything in the physical world (man-made) or otherwise cannot be labeled "design". To do so would be completely irrational. And yet, the most hardcore atheist out there would probably agree that I design websites. In doing so, however, he or she is admitting that design exists. And if design exists, according to Aquinas, a designer must exist. In order to be a consistent atheist, you would have to say that my website design is an aberration—a mere appearance of design. And even then you are left with the problem of very idea of design. The proposition that pure chaos can become aware of its antithesis is absolutely laughable.
The Resulting Situation
The situation is pretty grim for the honest atheist. Friedrich Nietzsche understood this position as he worked out Darwin's theory of evolution in his philosophy. He liked Darwin's concept of natural selection but he disagreed on one important point. Darwin saw natural selection as a force propelling life in a continuously expanding upward spiral—destined to produce ever more sophisticated forms of life. Nietzsche saw this idea as a gross violation of the laws of entropy. The idea of a purposeless purpose was ridiculous to him. On this point I agree with him. He went on to assert that true purposelessness would be forced into a cyclical pattern in which rise and fall would occur over and over again in a never ending cycle. The only force left was the will to power. On this point I must take my leave. I would rather stand with Aquinas saying, "I design websites, therefore God is."
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Comments
Posted By: Tommy M on 10/08/08
Aquinas was smart as hell.
Posted By: md on 10/08/08
You are so far off base, its really quite funny. unIntelligent Design.
Posted By: Matthew Grffin on 10/08/08
Thanks for taking the time to comment, md. But I was hoping for some kind of rebuttal.
Posted By: Edgar on 10/08/08
Nicely written - Matt. Unfortunately (here it comes), philosophically speaking, proving the fact that you design, will be almost impossible. According to some, 'ahem' scholars - proving one's existence is a useless endeavor. Thus, since you can't prove you exist, you can't prove you design... Silly Logic Circles, right? lol. That aside, The chaos perspective you described is beautiful indeed.
Posted By: Brandon Cox on 10/08/08
Matthew, I'm with you. No disrespect to others leaving comments, but it seems baffling to me just how much evidence some require. No matter how much evidence there is for the existence of a Creator, some will always demand more. I think this rejection stems not from intellectual strength, but from a kind of selfish unwillingness to be ruled. If there is a Creator, I must be accountable to Him. Jesus Himself knew that most would reject Him. "broad is the way..." Keep up the good work. I appreciate your willingness to dive deep knowing there will be rebuttal, or condescending response without a rebuttal.
Posted By: Matthew Grffin on 10/08/08
Edgar, I agree completely. The only two real options are theism and absurdism.
Posted By: Matthew Grffin on 10/08/08
Thanks, Brandon. Well put. I must remind myself often that, although the Christian position is perfectly reasonable and rational, mankind's problem is not primarily a perversion of reason. It's a depravity rising from the very core of our existence. We are utterly lost without Christ.
Posted By: Christopher Monahan on 10/15/08
I see no fault in the progression of your argument, however it is wrong to assume that what you have outlined is the only logical conclusion. My key point of contention lies in your response to the argument that for purpose to exist there must be a purposer, and that it therefore must be God. Here you have essentially errected a 'straw man' argument to represent the other side. I would not go with your 'popular modern response' which is to flatly deny the existence of purpose. This sounds like a relatively knee jerk reaction one would get out of another who hadn't given the original argument much thought, or one or who was constructing a straw man argument... I would propose the following response to Aequinas' 'proof'. One must remember that we arrive at our conclusions on 'sense of order' and 'purpose' because we find that what we observe follows some deeper pattern or higher purpose. From this perspective it becomes obvious that sense of purpose is a subjective and personal response, using this observation the logical answer to Aeguinas' 'proof' is that we, mere humans such as me and you are what attributes purpose to things. In this sense there is design in your websites, since you yourself have given it meaning and form throughout the entire process; from when you create a layout mockup, through writing the underlying HTML and finally adding all the CSS to create a usable and aesthetic experience (usability and aestheticity being subjective human judgements). You do all this with a purpose you have yourself created. This, personally, makes more sense than your previously outlined (and thinly veiled) cosmological argument. Since if your stance were correct it seems like it would amount to saying that the universe is so wonderfully aligned towards us because the sun rises when we get up in the morning. Which is of course absurd; we rise because the sun rises, not the other way round. We see purpose and order because we have developed in this universe, and so we fit it's mold, not the other way round. However I understand that ,likewise, my stance probably won't be satisfactory to yourself since it appears to fall back into the problem of what you quite rightly observe as a form of 'existence through preference', without any real meaning behind it all. I also understand that there could be objection on theological terms: By assuming that God created mankind then it could be argued that we are not producing our own subjective reason and purpose, but instead we are merely reflecting an appreciation for God's order and purpose that He has instilled within us. I won't labour on with my replies to these objections. Rather I'm content in leaving this comment here for now, to demonstrate that the argument as presented here is by no means the full story. And if you would like to discuss this further, pose any counter-objections etc, feel free to email me. I wouldn't mind... Believe me, I could do with some intellectual challenges around here!
Posted By: Christopher Monahan on 10/15/08
Akh. Sorry for the humongous text blob, I wasn't aware that my carefully placed linebreaks would be destroyed. Everything still stands, just you'll have to read it without lineation :(
Posted By: Matthew Grffin on 10/16/08
Christopher, thanks for the comment. Your well-thought-out position is quite a relief. Believe it or not, I actually agree with your line of thinking. Unfortunately, if in fact we alone are the creators of purpose, we are essentially still left with absurdism. Without a fixed reference point, finite beings like ourselves have no real bearing on an objective reality and therefore what we infer as purpose is really just meaningless illusion. This is probably the closest you can come to a legitimate rival perspective to theism. The problem with this view, though, is that we see not only diversity in the purposes inferred by various human cultures, but we see unity as well. We can easily see that there is a kind of underlying universal human condition that bonds us together. This unique mixture of unity and diversity is the core issue that most philosophers have wrestled with. But when you see humanity proceeding out of a triune God (the Christian Trinity) this problem is solved in a way that no other explanation can match.
Posted By: Barney Carroll on 10/16/08
I'm not convinced by the necessities of vision and intent in chains of consequence you describe. Surely you've witnessed several chaotic acts, or dozens of calamities, work into something beautiful with possible perceived order? I'm not saying this to convince you of anything � I'm sure the thought isn't troubling to you in the least under such clauses as Mysterious Ways � but it might help you to see that for many people the pile of plates (all good plates, btw) doesn't necessarily stack up. I must say the only really intellectually off-putting part of the article is the highly dubious introduction: "The majority of the most exceptional men and women in the historical landscape of philosophy have acknowledged the absolute necessity of a supreme being. Those who did not and were honest with the implications of their conclusions were forced into absurdism." Yeah. We all remember all of the people you're talking about, and the rule really does hold ;) I think that kind of patronizing, unproveable, generalist agrandisement by association of your jist is bound to get the resentment of quite a few people [atheists and multitheists � us with no great minds to look back upon in our cultural history :(]. I think if you amended that to be slightly less ridiculously omniscient and pompous (not to mention titanically dismissive) you'd get a lot more people to read on into your main thrust, which is really rather good. PS: Very brave of you to bring this up in the first place (on the internet of all places!). Good luck with comment moderation! ;)
Posted By: Matthew Griffin on 10/16/08
Barney, thanks for the comment. I understand what you mean and I agree that the statement sounds a little grandiose. But the fact of the matter is that the most influential philosophers fall on one of two sides when it comes to theism. Granted, the ones who were theists weren't all Christians. But they were theists none the less. A relatively small handful have fallen on the atheist side and most of those have made their appearance only in the last few centuries. To listen to modern academia, you'd think the complete opposite was true. I guess that's why I started so strong.