The Existence of God
The holidays are rolling around, and for many, this means a heightened religious life. In light of this, I would like to start a general discussion about the existence of god. I will start.
I think I would consider myself an agnostic with regards to the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, creator of the cosmos. I used to see myself as an atheist but have thrown that away because I feel it relies on a kind of faith that it criticizes theism for holding. If you were to ask me in public, though, what my "theological tendencies" are, I would say I am an atheist just because it's easier and also because I don't really live my life in perpetual anxiety regarding the existence of a deity. In this sense, I suppose I am an agnostic atheist.
Why I hold this position:
The Cosmological Argument does not lead me to accept the existence of a deity, merely the plausibility of a First Cause.
I can't take the Ontological Argument seriously. Furthermore, to connect the C and O Arguments, I don't really think it's possible to prove the existence of something by reason alone. I am especially interested in hearing your thoughts on this because I feel like it would be a contentious topic.
The Teleological Argument makes god seem weaker than he should be. By saying "look at how fine-tuned the universe is!", you are implying that god had to follow a rule book in creating a universe. If you are arguing for a programmer of a simulationist universe, then this makes sense. But for an omnipotent being, having rules to abide by doesn't make any sense. Additionally, the "fine-tuning" is awfully poor in various areas of the universe.
Outside of these three objections against the arguments for the existence of god, I also have some arguments that I personally think cast light against the existence of god:
1.) The Problem of Evil: There are so many refutation attempts at this, I haven't even looked at all of them. Some of them claim evil doesn't exist. Others claim evil exists because we have free will. All of them cast doubt on the wisdom of god. I still haven't gotten a good explanation of natural disasters or why god decided to make life so cruel. Why did god make suffering even a thing? Why make our bodies temporal; why not completely spiritual?
2.) A perfect deity does not need to make anything. Why did god make the universe?
3.) An omnibenevolent, personal deity such as the Western, Abrahamic god, is incoherent with evolution. At what point did he become active in the process? And why did he make it such a conflict-ridden, destructive scheme? Why are our bodies imperfect?
4.) The history of man is filled with myths and legends to explain the unexplainable. We had to satisfy our curiosity and anxiety (a leftover from evolution; false positives). We see patterns in nature where there aren't any. We see causality and meaning behind things that have none. God is merely a placeholder for what we do not know. The world is filled with a diverse set of religions, all claiming to have the truth. Different question here, at what point does philosophy become religion?
5.) Religious acts, such as rituals and ceremonies, are superstitious and cast major doubt on the character of god. What kind of god not only allows, but wants and most often than not demands that people worship it in an irrational manner?
Those are my thoughts that have come to mind thus far. I would like to hear your input and your own views on the existence of a deity.
I think I would consider myself an agnostic with regards to the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, omnibenevolent, creator of the cosmos. I used to see myself as an atheist but have thrown that away because I feel it relies on a kind of faith that it criticizes theism for holding. If you were to ask me in public, though, what my "theological tendencies" are, I would say I am an atheist just because it's easier and also because I don't really live my life in perpetual anxiety regarding the existence of a deity. In this sense, I suppose I am an agnostic atheist.
Why I hold this position:
The Cosmological Argument does not lead me to accept the existence of a deity, merely the plausibility of a First Cause.
I can't take the Ontological Argument seriously. Furthermore, to connect the C and O Arguments, I don't really think it's possible to prove the existence of something by reason alone. I am especially interested in hearing your thoughts on this because I feel like it would be a contentious topic.
The Teleological Argument makes god seem weaker than he should be. By saying "look at how fine-tuned the universe is!", you are implying that god had to follow a rule book in creating a universe. If you are arguing for a programmer of a simulationist universe, then this makes sense. But for an omnipotent being, having rules to abide by doesn't make any sense. Additionally, the "fine-tuning" is awfully poor in various areas of the universe.
Outside of these three objections against the arguments for the existence of god, I also have some arguments that I personally think cast light against the existence of god:
1.) The Problem of Evil: There are so many refutation attempts at this, I haven't even looked at all of them. Some of them claim evil doesn't exist. Others claim evil exists because we have free will. All of them cast doubt on the wisdom of god. I still haven't gotten a good explanation of natural disasters or why god decided to make life so cruel. Why did god make suffering even a thing? Why make our bodies temporal; why not completely spiritual?
2.) A perfect deity does not need to make anything. Why did god make the universe?
3.) An omnibenevolent, personal deity such as the Western, Abrahamic god, is incoherent with evolution. At what point did he become active in the process? And why did he make it such a conflict-ridden, destructive scheme? Why are our bodies imperfect?
4.) The history of man is filled with myths and legends to explain the unexplainable. We had to satisfy our curiosity and anxiety (a leftover from evolution; false positives). We see patterns in nature where there aren't any. We see causality and meaning behind things that have none. God is merely a placeholder for what we do not know. The world is filled with a diverse set of religions, all claiming to have the truth. Different question here, at what point does philosophy become religion?
5.) Religious acts, such as rituals and ceremonies, are superstitious and cast major doubt on the character of god. What kind of god not only allows, but wants and most often than not demands that people worship it in an irrational manner?
Those are my thoughts that have come to mind thus far. I would like to hear your input and your own views on the existence of a deity.
Comments (178)
For all the alleged inconsistencies and incoherence of a deity, if said deity compels belief then I presume I would have no choice but to believe. I am not compelled to believe, so I don't.
Well, there is always Pascal's Wager.
I don't think there has ever been a civilization or society with no religious practice. There must be something about being human that inspires us to seek out reasons,ways of living, beyond our apparent situation. Even after we have reached the conclusion that god cannot rationally exist., we still argue his existence. All the rational proofs of god's existence are labored, none satisfy.
Maybe god exists in the same way the self exists, not in actuality, but in virtual reality.
I don't like Pascal's wager either, but it a rational alternative, and rationality does not have to be sincere, just reasonable.
How do I use Pascal's Wager to choose between Yahweh, Allah and some possible unrevealed God, for example?
Not sure how your statement follows from mine.
The wager neither proves the existence of (a) God nor provides a good reason to believe in the existence of (a) God.
The decision to believe or not to believe in god, is no guarantee of eternal salvation. The concepts of heaven and hell, each support the concept of the possibility of life after death, which I think can be the only basis for accepting the wager.
You would still be a weak atheist, though. What you seem to be objecting to is strong atheism.
I don't know about that. A God that allows the Holocaust might be that type of God.
This class of arguments (prime/unmoved mover, first cause, kalam, cosmological, ...) seems the most commonly used for justifying such belief out there. Don't have any numbers though. Maybe it's part of a curriculum or something.
Quoting darthbarracuda
In my experience, some simply dismiss these with some hand-waving, and leave it at that. :)
The "free will" defense is brought up for the problem of evil, and the "greater good" defense for the problem of suffering. I'll go as far as to call it predictable; perhaps such defenses are listed in a Catechism.
As for the "greater good", you could equally defend omni-malevolence, and life as we know it is just foot work towards the "greater bad". >:) Or you could defend omni-indifference, towards whatever, nothing in particular. Or... In that sense it's arbitrary, though, admittedly, it does show that the problem of suffering is not a purely deductive argument.
Let me just quote Arkady and Marchesky from elsewhere, regarding the "free will" defense:
In general, these defenses don't seem believable to me either. The larger array of problems makes the traditional God of theism implausible.
Regardless, happy holidays y'all.
Intellectually I am agnostic - I can't claim to say that I know that there is God. But I also believe that the word 'exists' is the wrong word to use for God. Whatever exists, is by definition temporal (begins and ends in time) and compound (composed of parts). So whatever Deity is, is of a completely different order to anything in the phenomenal realm. And it's important to understand that, as a lot of the debate about God, so-called, is really a debate about a kind of sky father figure. Dawkins, for example, plainly thinks of God as being like a vastly powerful cosmic engineer-director, infinitely larger and more complex than the whole Universe - which is why, for him, the idea of God is so laughably ridiculous.
But it's hard not to be anthropomorphic about God, especially for those who have never been trained to think about it. And religious practice is, in some sense, being trained to think about it the right way. That might not even consist of a complicated doctrinal formulation; it might simply consist of singing, serving, praying, listening. But in the absence of that kind of performative understanding, beliefs often do become mythological ideas that have become now disconnected from their cultural milieux that they do appear ridiculous.
It is - being trained to think in some specific way. And, in absence of other training, it can engender narrow-mindedness, which emphasizes the gain from broadening one's horizons. The number of people (e.g. from the US and the Philippines) that outright deny biological evolution, in spite of the overwhelming evidence, is a testament to this sort of thing.
As far as the evolution issue is concerned, the Dawkins of this world do no favours for science education. This is because he and others of that ilk draw inferences from the science which are well beyond its actual domain of application. All of their pseudo philosophising on what evolutionary biology means in terms of life's purpose, or the absence of same, is like a mirror image of the kind of fundamentalism that is the only thing that he understands religion to mean. As esteened physicist Peter Higgs said
Atoms are obviously capable of consciousness, so how does the conclusion follow?
All sorts of things are emergent, constrained, and complex. Are they all conscious?
I'm not too sold that the 'kind of faith' used in the rejection of Theism is the same as the faith employed by Theism. ***
I'd like to hear why it is you believe that these expressions of 'faith' are the same (if indeed they are expressions of faith).
Meow!
GREG
*** - I'm making a bit of a reference to Paul Tillich's distinction between what is and is not faith as found in his book Dynamics of Faith... as in faith as found in Theism is itself NOT an act of knowledge, whereas 'faith' found within science or theoretical inquiry as being an act of knowledge.
I sort of couple this with a notion of different world views, put forth by 'psychotick' (in the old PF days) in a much simpler manner where the two worldviews differ in that the Theistic model is a 'top down' approach to viewing reality (as in starting with the answer first, then finding the questions; thus tuning the variables to fit those questions born of the central answer assumed from the git go) and the non-Theistic model is a 'bottom up' approach to viewing reality (as in starting with the variables leading to questions searching for an answer or refinements of understanding leading toward increased clarity).
That's a different question. Now you aren't asking how your consciousness came about, but rather whether there are any other conscious states emerging from atom and void. Each proposed instance of that would have to be judged units own merits. You can't simply take that because you have conscious states that are emergent out of a complex system, that the presence of something complex and emergent also means the emergence of consciousness.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Indeed. (In American, it's "no shit") :)
A mystery is exactly what we do not have.
Quoting Mongrel
It is pointless to ask a question whose answer and explication necessitates and presupposes that which you put into question. "Why am I conscious?" is a proxy for "why do I exist?" - but the question puts into question your very existence - but it is precisely this very existence which the supposed answer demands. So you are bound to cause an antinomy in asking the question - you come to the limits of language.
It is if you define it that way, but why would you do so? What are numbers composed of? What is red composed of? What are quarks composed of? Or don't you think that they exist? Why not just say that God exists, but doesn't begin or end in time, and is not composed of parts? If there is something which [I]is[/I], but which doesn't meet those conditions, then I say that it exists nonetheless.
About as convincing as the argument that Elvis is still alive.
Agnosticism is a perfectly logical and honest approach to religion. It is precisely what would be expected from a university professor or a lab technician or any other "scientist".
Christianity, both anciently and modern versions, condemn it however under the cloak of lack of faith.
If you are godless it is easy to be viewed as being without ethics as well, although many philosophers do not require any religion for themselves to be ethical. However others such as Machiavelli and Nietzsche and their followers and admirers would have a hard time with any objective ethics.
While I am not offended by agnostics, anyone professing to be atheist is offensive in that this is an untenable philosophical position. To be valid it requires proving a negative, and with such a very large universe as the one before us, filled with billions of galaxies, one would need to search every square inch of it to prove there is no god, or that god is dead. That position is simply not logical.
Falling off the other side of the horse and becoming fanatical like a Muslim extremist or an Evangelical Protestant is just as bad in my opinion. In fact in that case I would rather hang out with the atheist.
As for the existence or not of the Philosophy God, I think Aquinas has already said it all.
First Cause, Prime Mover, Purposeful Designer, Artistic Artificer -- these all speak volumes and require serious philosophical consideration.
I go to Catholic mass at Xmas and Easter every year. The rest of the year I try to keep all of Christ's commandments and Immanuel Kant's exhortations. If there is no god then the world is therefore no worse off because of me.
And those questions are central to this question. Why? Because a hallmark moment in Western philosophy was the declaration by John Duns Scotus of the 'univocity of being'. Prior to Scotus, the Scholastics believed that the nature of God was different in kind to that of human beings (not to mention minerals and so on.) So according to Aquinas, when it was said of God that 'He is good', this is simply an analogy to express the idea in terms understandable to the human mind. But Scotus denied this, and said that God's attributes were no different to those of other things that existed.
This, along with the rise of nominalism, really marked the beginning of the end of the 'sacramental Universe' by depicting God as, basically, another kind of being or object in the domain of objects (that being the only domain that exists). Since this time, you will notice, it is almost impossible to imagine that there are 'degrees of being' or 'degrees of reality' - to our mind, things either exist, or not, or are real, or not - and whatever exists, is what is real, and vice versa; if it exists, it must be 'out there somewhere', as people say nowadays. The idea that there are levels, gradations, or an hierarchy of Being-as-such is nowadays a taboo; there is no vertical dimension.
As regards whether quarks exist or not - I suggest 'quarks' are referred to here because now they are said to be the fundamental unit of matter, the indivisible, the uncuttable - the atom, to all intents and purposes. And the philosophical significance of the atom was precisely that it was something that didn't pass into or out of existence - it was eternal. So it provided a means to locate the 'imperishable' at the very basis of transient matter. That is the original vision of atomism; but it is no longer tenable, according to physics.
The reason all this is important, is that it reveals that the God that is denied by many forms of atheism, is not the God that theology posited in the first place. Any argument, for instance, which claims that 'science shows that a God could not exist', is based on the premise that God is somehow detectable by empirical means, or could be inferred on the basis of empirical evidence (atheists and fundamentalists make the opposite version of the same error in this regard).
(I'm studying this subject through history rather than philosophy as such. Some excellent sources on it are Taylor's A Secular Age, Gillespie's The Theological Origins of Modernity, and Brad Gregory's The Unintended Reformation (currently reading). Also David Bentley Hart's The Experience of God for a contemporary re-statement of the view of classical theology.)
What do you mean by "numbers"? Obviously numerals representing amounts exist, but wouldn't an actual amount, like 4, be a descriptive term, like an adjective? If I have 4 round marbles, it makes no more sense to ask where the 4 is as it does to ask where the round is. It's not like I can have a sack full of 4s or rounds.
Wayfarer still treats God as an existing being, like the fundamentalist theist or atheist he admonishes, only free of the feature of existing in our realm. For him, God is still treated like an existing force, only present in some higher plane, rather than a feature of our one.
The characteristic of the eternal, of God, of the universal, is that it doesn't exist. It's not in the empirical realm. The "eternal atom," as Wayfarer talks about, cannot pass out of existence because it was never there in the first place. That which is "imperishable" is not found within existence, but in meaning and significance. It's not a basis of transient matter, but an expression of it (meaning of a state of transient matter) and outside it (eternal).
If you don't believe that an entity like God can exist because he defies our understanding of reality, that would not make God like the number 4, but would make him more like Pegasus, something that we imagine but that doesn't really exist.
No, I am not saying 'God exists'. Here is an essay on the topic - reading the title one might think it's by an atheist, but actually it's by a Bishop.
But God is certainly not 'an entity', nor anything else to which a pronoun ('a', or 'the') could be affixed.
[quote=Walhon]On the other hand, taken as a whole, the universe does seem to point beyond itself. Whatever could possibly undergird the existence of the universe, including your existence, Gentle Reader, is one aspect of what “god” refers to. Second, that Whatever cannot itself need the universe in order to exist itself. Third, if the Whatever is, then the universe and all that is part of it is a creation.[/quote]
Walhon is treating God as an existing being, just not of our universe. In the "beyond" (whatever there might be), there is God and the presence of this God is supposedly the force which creates our universe. Here God is a super-being zipping about, building our universe out of its nothing. All Walhon has done is placed the super being prior to our universe rather than within it. For him God exists-- just not in our universe.
The result is Walhon is all too meek about God.
[quote=Walhon]Fourth, the universe has its own existence, created (if it be so) with its own terms and relations, its own reality and ways of being. It unfolds in a certain “direction” we call time, and there is some predictability to that unfolding, though we only understand it very partially.
Call this the logic of divine being. Now, this is no proof for God. But it does set up the terms within which conversation about God should take place. One of the issues raised by recent popular atheist and deist books by, among others, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchins is that they all seem content to disprove the existence of a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Whether or not there are super-beings zipping about, and there might be, none could ever be considered divine.[/quote]
He doesn't realise it, but here Walhon has stated "proof" of God. All the aspects of the forth point are necessary logical truths. We can't have existence without its own terms. We can't have time without direction and change. We can't have knowledge of everything because each instance of knowledge is only one small part. Divine logic is undoubtable. No "faith" in God is required. The divine logic remains true no matter how much it is denied. It cannot be subject to the question "might/or might not" for it is eternal and necessary. Anyone who understands that God is not of the empirical realm (whether of our universe or the "beyond" ) knows God is true.
Whether or not one believes in God, it is not a discussion about 'something'.
And 'meekness' goes with the territory.
For sure, that's my problem with your argument. You still treat God as "something," as a force of the "beyond."
You say: "We don't know. We can't know. It's a mystery. We don't if God is so or not." as if God were something that might or might not be, as if God were an entity given in terms of itself.
We should know better than to make that mistake.
[quote=Whalon']On the other hand, taken as a whole, the universe does seem to point beyond itself. Whatever could possibly undergird the existence of the universe, including your existence, Gentle Reader, is one aspect of what “god” refers to. Second, that Whatever cannot itself need the universe in order to exist itself. Third, if the Whatever is, then the universe and all that is part of it is a creation.[/quote]
God is supposedly the thing which undergirds existence.
[quote=Whalon']Those who say they do not believe in God often give lack of evidence for their unbelief. This is a confusion of knowledge and faith . It is also an error of logic — absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. There cannot be any empirical evidence of the existence of God, for God does not exist.[/quote]
Here he's still treating like the presence of absence of evidence has something to do with God. Supposedly, the atheists are wrong for citing the absence of evidence for God as a reason to say God doesn't exist. Whalon is still thinking of God as an existing state here because otherwise the atheist arguments wouldn't have any bearing on the case.
Logically, the atheist's would be correct (the absence of evidence for an evidential claim - the existing God) and Whalon would agree, for they were talking about, the super being zipping around the universe is shown absent by evidence (for the world we've encountered at least). Then Whalon would go on to (correctly) point out these correctly given atheist arguments had no impact on the God he was talking about.
[quote=Whalon]What we take for granted as “real” is a construct of our brain, senses and nervous system. Beyond the discoveries of gestalt psychology that show clearly that our “picture” of reality is easily distorted, there are the longer-term observations of philosophers of knowledge, the epistemologists. Perhaps the most interesting ability of our mind is to grasp that it is generated by the brain, like a magnetic field results from an electric current passing through a piece of iron. The mind is no more the brain than the field is the iron, though the one depends upon the other. Yet we can, with some effort, also fold again on our selves to catch our minds in the act of thinking. Perceiving the illusion of time passing is one example. Believing that absence of evidence is evidence of absence, or that because something happens regularly, it will always happen that way, are other patterns that we can catch our minds doing.[/quote]
This is also about empirical states. Here he talks about when we get fooled about the existing world by our brains and desires. In God, we are not talking about whether we have missed information about existing states. God is outside of such changes, illusions and surprises.
[quote=Whalon]What we call god (all human languages have a word for it) is something we infer from the fact of existence. [/quote]
This is true. The problem is we tend to literalise it. We infer meaning with respect to existing states around us constantly, but we have a tendency to equivocate those infinite with states themselves.
Life is perhaps the biggest one. Power is another one. We infer the infinite meaning of are action (death, life, domination, rescue, creation) and assume it must mean an infinite existing state, particularly in the context of what we desire. Super beings who give us are lives and are immortal in one sense or another. Most often we begin by suggesting these infinite as existing because that's how we encounter the meanings-- in how we act and are acted upon by the world. Pantheons. Spirits. Magic rituals. Miracles.
Then, when someone starts paying attention to the logic of God, we tend to wind this back to a presence which is not of this world. The hidden realm which never manifests to us but nevertheless causes us and allows our existence. We get the "invisible God" who acts without acting because we still think of God in terms a presence in the world, even though we've begun to realise this doesn't make sense. We detach God from our world, but not from existence.
Eventually, we get to a point where we realise God is not of our world but, more importantly, that any world is not of God. We may infer the infinite from existence, but the infinite is never of existence, even as an "undergrid." Indeed, the infinite has nothing do to the presence of existing-- states are define solely in themselves rather than by some outside force.
Whalon is caught in between the last two understandings of God. On the one hand he realises God cannot be part of existence, but on the other he is still stuck thinking of God in terms of existence, for else "faith" (in the "God is true sense" ) would be irrelevant.
If Whalon were to fully commit to the argument God did not exist, he would be making an atheistic one. His belief would be reduced to nothing more than a tradition which gave him understanding of the infinite. While I suspect he might not be too bothered the general idea of tradition rather than existing state (the whole more than one path to the "infinite" ), it gets a bit prickly in the context of individual belief because people usually take up or hold a belief (not just theistic ones either; science promises knowledge and control of the world, atheism promises a world with out many of those abhorrent supermen running around in the sky, etc.,etc.) because of something they've been promised.
To assert all those promises were not really true (existing) takes a lot, particularly when undoes the attractiveness of the tradition-- "God will rescue you from Hell" or "God will cure your illness" is a certain type of compelling argument one cannot make by saying: "This is my tradition and my way of grasping the eternal." It basically secular in fact: "Well, this is my way but there are others you may find." "Faith" is reduced to nothing more than a finite tradition, something great, fun, soothing, exciting or wise for the individual, but nothing more profound and grandiose.
And if I were to ask you those questions, then you must either answer that they do not exist, or you must affirm that they are compositional, or you must abandon your definition of existence. So, which is it? Do you believe that there is a God, but you don't believe that there are numbers or red? That would be odd to say the least. The latter two are as clear as day, but the former is far from it. I experience red and activities involving numbers all the time, yet this purported God is nowhere to be found. It's almost as if [i]there is no God[/I] beyond our imagination, or as anything other than a three letter word which is sometimes used as a synonym for other uncontroversial things. So, why should I believe otherwise?
You say that you're agnostic, so I understand that you don't claim to [I]know[/I] that there is a God, but I'm talking about belief. And, despite the complex philosophical discussions, there are compelling grounds to simply accept that there are numbers and red and blue and yellow. These things exist, and, as we can agree, God does not.
Since God is conceived as an absolutely uniquely necessary and infinite being, even the words 'being', 'infinite', 'unique' and 'necessary', whose senses come from our limited human experience, are misapplied.
So we are always going to get into trouble when attempting to talk about God in any propositional terms whatever.
God cannot be known in any ordinary sense. God must be experienced, deeply felt, and that is why mysticism is at the heart of religion, and its genuinely transformative power. The feeling and experiencing of God cannot be used to support any political position, or any particular moral imperative whatsoever, instead one's own ethics grow naturally out of it; that is why it is always a mistake to attempt to force one's own ethics on others, or to universalize moral imperatives in the way Kant tried to.
Your argument is misapplying the propositional to God in this instance: supposedly God is a "mystery" and "beyond" all knowledge because there must "be" something, an ethic, a face, a voice, a thought, a meaning to God which we never pin down, so it may always be there to help us out. In the approach you are taking, God is meant to "be" something, outside out world, yet still of the realm which has profound impact upon the world. It's "magical thinking"-- Oh, how wonderful it would be if the infinite impacted upon are world: the things we loved could live forever. Our wondrous fictions (i.e. the infinite meaning of an idea) would be literal. The sea could be parted even when it was impossible. In the face of horrors of the finite world, there would always be something to fix it. Power we cannot understand always sitting by us, rescuing us from any loss and death of a finite world.
But there's a problem. There's a reason it cannot be understood in terms of our lives: it does nothing in our world, rescues no-one, does not exist in any form. The promises of the infinite is nothing but our wishful thinking. In our minds, we can mix the infinite and the finite together, to posit the latter as the former: life which never ends and, has no possibility of ending. The ultimate comfort, life even when death is obvious.
We stare down the face of Death-- "You are just impossible because life is infinite."-- and consider the end to be logically impossible.
"Do not worry, for we will see our loved ones again. It's necessary."
Transformative? No doubt. If you believe it, it removes death. Whether we are being literal or metaphorical, one has a belief which removes fear, grief and pain over the losses of the finite world. Such emotions become unnecessary because their is no problem. Death is just a illusion. We really live infinitely in God. No-one ever really dies.
It's a mirage though. In our efforts to escape our fears and pains, we've tricked ourselves into thinking we are of the infinite. Death is not an illusion. And God cannot save us for, being infinite, God has no power to define the finite.
It's not so simple. Do red and numbers exist for those who are blind and inummerate, respectively? I am inclined to say 'no'. Now I know the objection to that: trees falling in forest, etc. I have argued those threads up hill and down dale, and I have come to a view which most would deem idealist. This is: that the designation of 'existing' to some object is a mental act. In other words, existence is mind-dependent.
So what, you will say, do you believe the Moon stops existing when nobody is looking at it? (Einstein asked that very question, sardonically.) No, I say, that is its 'imagined non-existence'. By saying that it ceases to exist when not observed, you're conjecturing about the 'mind-independent' nature of the Moon (or whatever object of experience). You're imagining it not being there, or disappearing; but that is also an imaginative act. In that sense, existence and non-existences are both constituted by judgements.
But all experienced objects are just that: experienced. The mind constitutes them in the sense of providing a perspective, location, and attributes, which collectively constitute the existence of an object. For an object to be an object, it needs to be recognised as such by a subject (which is basically orthodox Kant.)
So in our case, as we're linguistically and numerically aware beings, our minds constitute the world according to our rational and discursive abilities - we see the world in terms of implied meanings, scientific theories, judgements, and so on. On the one hand, there are sensory objects - things which belong to the domain of name and form. Then also there are mental judgements about those objects, which are also inextricably a part of whatever it is that we say exists. The mind itself organises sensory data into categories via judgements etc; otherwise you wouldn't be able to speak or conceive of anything whatever (as per Oliver Sachs research on men mistaking their wives for hats, etc).
So in my philosophy, there are definitely wives, numbers, hats, red, and moons. But none of those things are simply or purely self-existent, i.e. existing in their own terms independently of the act of cognition (or rather the manner of their existence independent of our cognition of them is perfectly unknowable to us, which is also orthodox Kant).
Due to the influence of empiricism in popular culture, we are trained to designate the objects of sense-perception as being foundational or constitutive of reality, which is what naturalism consists of. But I am calling that into question, because, I am saying, that is also mind-dependent, in the sense that it is something which is generally a matter of conventional or inter-subjective designation, i.e. we are educated about what to think of as real, with science obviously acting as the umpire or arbiter of judgement in respect of those questions (and also obviously providing many great tools and techniques for navigating that domain.) But, it is a fact that the physical sciences themselves are unable to locate a 'terminus of explanation', an unconditional ground of being, or any kind of absolute or non-contigent reality behind it (which is why we are obliged to entertain such ideas as the many worlds, multiverse, and so on.)
I remain agnostic but in light of the above, I am sensitive to the fact that a lot of what we take for granted about the nature of things is conjectural or deeply uncertain. So I am drawn to the kind of 'way of unknowing' which you find in various schools, including Tao. God or not? Not really sure, but I am certainly mindful of the way that physicalism and naturalism tend to condition us to exclude areas of our own nature and the 'human situation' by thinking about them in that habitually empiricist kind of way.
Things "independent of cognition" aren't posed to be outside of the meaning of experience though. The direct realist takes orthodox Kant and extends it out into the world: all those independent things are (partly) as we experience them. Rather than arguing things live without what the are to us, the suggestion is that things which are to us live independent of our existence. Instead of wiping out the relevance of subjectivity to the world, it's extending it, saying the things we encounter may and are frequently without us. For an object to be, it needs to be an thing which may be recognised by a subject. What it needs is a meaning in experiential terms, whether or not someone actually exists experiencing it at any time. Independence from existence of experiences, but not the meaning of experiences.
In this respect, the Kantians are all to focused on the empirical world. Supposedly, if it doesn't presently appear in experience (i.e. someone is observing asset of existence), then it doesn't have experiential meaning. The Kantian misses that experiential meaning extends beyond the mere existence of states.
The problem here, Willow, is that what I said doesn't hinge on whether these words "point out existing states" ( whatever that might be taken to mean), but that they get their sense from existing states (if that is taken to mean finite human perceptions) even if it is only that the sense consists only in denying or negating existing states.
Again, you are putting words in my mouth: I haven't said anything about God, "helping us out", being "outside the world", or even " having impact on the world". I haven't said God is "something" to "fix the horrors of the world", or "sitting by us" or "rescuing us from any loss and death of a finite world". Now God might be all those things in the experience of some, but then that that might be the case would only be a claim about their experience, not about any publically confirmable empirical reality.
But, the assertion that the "promises of the infinite (whatever they might be taken to be) are " nothing but our wishful thinking" seems to be nothing but your personal opinion. Do you have a decent argument to back up that opinion?
So, you think that if someone believes strongly enough it transforms them by "taking away death". Would this improve their life, make them happier and less fearful, do you think? If you think so, then what exactly do you think could be wrong with that?
And again, your belief that "God cannot save us" is no more and no less merely an opinion than the belief that God can save us. It is simply not a proposition that can be either empirically confirmed or disconfirmed or logically proven or disproven. Really, I think it is just the articulation of a feeling of redemption that some people live with. Is it better (in the sense of which would be the more positive life influence) to feel ( at least the possibility of being) redeemed or (the inevitability of being) forsaken?
'There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated. If there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated, there would not be the case that escape from the born, become, made, fabricated would be discerned. But precisely because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unfabricated - escape from the born, become, made, fabricated is discerned.'.
The Buddha Ud 8.3
Does 'the unborn' have the same meaning as 'God'? Buddhists will say not. But there are nevertheless convergences between this and the apophatic philosophy (the 'negative way') of early Christian monasticism which has been preserved in at some modern theology. Hereunder a comment on Paul Tillich's conception of the 'negative way':
(Newport Paul Tillich p.67f)).
There are again convergences between this and the Buddhist conception of Nirv??a which is 'blowing out' or extinction. That has often (and understandably) been interpreted as nihilism, however I think a better way of conceiving it is as the 'extinction of the ego', or 'dying to the known' (for example, in Suzuki's commentary on the Lankavatara Sutra, this is described as 'paravritti' which is the 'turning around of consciousness' 1).
The problem in current cultural discourse is that nearly all of this discussion has migrated to the domain of symbolic thought. In other words, we take such terms as God, Nirv??a, and so on, to 'stand for something' - and then, of course, there is nothing 'out there' to which they can be shown to correspond. But, strictly speaking, the whole discourse needs to be understood in terms of an alternative mode of cognition; which is why there is such an emphasis on contemplation in the spiritual traditions.
It means whatever you want, brother... and nothing else. A person didn't make the universe, sorry.
What kind of thing is God? God is a character in a book. That's what kind of thing God is.
The question doesn't even make sense, unless interpreted differently. They either exist or they do not, regardless of the fact that there are some people unable to experience them, either at all or at least in the same way that other people do.
Quoting Wayfarer
No, not "in other words". Those two statements mean two completely different things, so you can't rightly pass the latter statement off as a reiteration. Nor does the latter statement follow from the former, so if that was your intention, then that's a non sequitur. If you want to attempt to justify the above, you'll have to at least string together a valid argument, and please do try to make sense, rather than conflating one thing with a completely different thing or jumping to a conclusion.
Quoting Wayfarer
It's orthodox nonsense. That's what it is. You can't just invent necessities where there are none.
You'll have to prove that there exists no object which hasn't been recognised as such by a subject, which you can't do in any non-superficial way. (It is superficial to redefine terms so as to make this exclusion). Whereas all I have to do is appeal to ordinary language-use and logic to demonstrate that it is indeed possible, contrary to the logical consequences of your assertion.
And, furthermore, by appealing to facts and statistics, I can demonstrate that not only is it possible, but probable. There is a whole universe full of innumerable things, and we've already discovered a whole load of things. The most plausible explanation, given what we know about the world, is obviously that these things were there, unrecognised as such, prior to being discovered, rather than bizarrely popping into existence at the moment of discovery. And we can infer from this that there are likely other yet-to-be-discovered or "recognised as such" things out there.
I had hoped to do that by way of philosophical argument, although I have obviously failed in this instance. But, thanks for your reply.
Or perhaps you really think that I'm overlooking some important part of your lengthy reply in which you've succeeded, but if so, you might have to bring it to my attention.
But, in any case, we've clearly digressed from the topic of discussion, which is about whether or not God exists.
I do note, however, that you accept that numbers and colours like red exist, but you still haven't answered the question of what they're composed of. And remember, you claimed that whatever exists is composed of parts.
Just consider one example, a natural number. Does the number 7 exist? Of course, you will say, you just wrote it. But what I have written is a symbol which could also be written as seven, VII, and so on. So the symbolic form is arbitrary - it could be anything. But whatever the symbol is, it always must signify the same number. So the number is not the symbol. What is the number, then?
Now I'm not going to propose an answer to that question, because the nature of number is really a very difficult question - even though it seems intuitively obvious, something that everyone would know. Suffice to say here that the Wikipedia entry on Philosophy of Mathematics lists more than ten major schools of thought about questions including the nature of numbers.
For the purposes of my argument, notice that amongst these many schools, are those of mathematical realists:
But even mathematical realists aren't inclined to say that numbers are material objects. So, therefore, if realists are correct, numbers are real, but they're not material; they are in some sense 'intelligible objects', that is, things that only exist in and for a mind, but are not simply the product of a mind.
So my argument is that they are mind-dependent, not in the sense that their existence depends on a mind, but that they can only be perceived by a mind. Therefore their existence is of a different order to that of material objects.
Now the point about that is, that it indicates there are different modes or kinds of existence. If numbers are real but mental, then they're real in a different way to tables, chairs, and rocks. But I don't think that modern philosophy recognises different modes or kinds of existence; as far as it is concerned, things either exist, or they don't; so tables exist but unicorns don't; the number 7 exists but the square root of 2 does not. Imaginary things are in the mind, real things are 'out there somewhere', or are discoverable or infereable on the basis of what is out there (which goes for such ideas as fields and the like).
But for mathematical realism, the 'domain of number' is actually a realm or domain (see for example Tyler Burge Frege on Knowing the Third Realm).
Quite right! Think of something that isn't. There is no material object that is not composed of parts.
(You might refer to the objects of physics, such as fields and sub-atomic particles - so-called - but then the question becomes, to what extent are they actually material objects? But do note that the reason 'the atom' was held to be foundational in the first place, was precisely because it too was not composed of parts - atom means 'indivisible' - and it did not go in and out of existence, being of eternal duration.)
The point that I would make is that the natural numbers are the same for all observers, and they don't come into and go out of existence in the way that material objects do; 7=7 all over the universe. Because they represent formal relationships and objects, they are in some sense 'above' or detached from the merely material. Or that, at any rate, is the intuition of the Platonist tradition, which said that, therefore, numbers and geometrical objects belong to a different order than do material objects (see The Analogy of the Divided Line. Much of this kind of thinking was abandoned in the medieval period, due to the debates between the Realists and the Nominalists, not that it was ever fully worked out or articulated).
Anyway I know this is all getting into some very difficult and murky territory, so let me try and come to some kind of point. I think the 'mode of the existence of numbers' is an indicator of the nature of reality. This is not because 'nature is mathematical', but because our experience and knowledge of the world is structured according to mathematical, logical and rational thought.
We have an intuitive belief that the real world is 'out there', and our thinking mind is 'in here'. Whereas in fact, reality is that discursive process of analysis, rationalising, speaking, thinking, measuring, and making sense of the world. Numbers (and the like) are fundamental to how we make sense of reality - but it's not really as if they're either 'in here' or 'out there'. The bifurcation of the world into 'in here' and 'out there' is part of that process itself. So that is the sense in which reality is constructed by the mind - not that the world comes into and goes out of existence, but the kind of existence it has, outside of its construction by the mind, is something we will never know (see Our Mental Universe by Richard Conn Henry.)
So that is the sense in which the world is 'mind-dependent' - not that it goes out of existence if you're not looking at it, but that there's no 'it' outside this cognitive/mental process which is categorising experience according to its various abilities (which is the philosophy of mind-only Buddhism).
So - God does not exist; he's not 'out there' in the phenomenal realm. But according to the mystical tradition, God was never 'out there' in the first place (although, I guess, the medievals thought that the Heavens were literally that, and God was indeed 'up there'.) But I think the God depicted as That Guy in the Sky, a cosmic film director, certainly is a projection of the imagination. In that sense, I'm quite in agreement with Richard Dawkins, except for the fact that I have never believed in what he believes doesn't exist, but I don't think that it makes me an atheist.
Hope that clears it up.
I would like to point out that the God of man(and woman) is a conceptual construct, albeit a concept which is regarded as the subject of a serous consideration about the reality we find ourselves in. However if one does think about it seriously, whether God does exist or not, one ought to consider our, or your, or humanity's limitations in having knowledge or understanding of existence and what is encountered. Namely that we have no idea what is going on, where and how it is going on and that logic, and therefore philosophy cannot be used to address it, other than in what can be deduced from what we do know. Also that what we do know, or experience may only be an appearance of what we know of and may be something else etc.
This leaves us with only one other course of enquiry, that of an internal, or experiential inquiry, what is generally known as mysticism. What his adds to the mix is that of the self and it's being. From the position of the self one can consider what may have existence by having equivalence to that self, also that if one's self is itself a construct, or effect, what has existence of which one's self is a reflection, or construct.
Thus one can address the issue seriously, i.e. If an actual God(one which is not a conceptual construct, but is actually in existence) or its equivalent, exists and what form it takes, and what relation it has to one's self. This results in a realisation that the mystic is in the position of being face to face(or not, i.e. mistakenly) with God and all else in one's existence is consequential.
Unfortunately if that mystic discovers the existence of God, it remains impossible for that existence to be communicated between people, other than by one person trusting another to be correct in their affirmation. This suggests that the only way to answer the question of the existence of God requires one to go beyond reason on a quest of discovery.
But what about communities of faith, discourse and practice? For example monastic and ecclesiastical movements and organisations. These provide the means to validate individual experiences, which is fundamental to the teacher-student relationship in a religious order.
If you're acquainted with the subject of mysticism in the Christian tradition, there is a long tradition of interpretation going back millenia. The writings of the Syrian monastic now known as 'pseudo-Dionysius' (called 'pseudo' as a consequence of his mis-idenfication by many generations of scholars) are foundational to Christian mysticism and familiar to generations of practitioners.
Of course you're correct in saying that such experiences (for that matter, any experience!) is strictly speaking incommunicable, but given a cultural and spiritual milieu with shared understandings, beliefs, and praxis, a degree of communal validation is possible.
Quoting Wayfarer
I see no conflict between these two statements. In other words I agree with them both except that I see no need for the 'But' at the beginning of the second one. The members of a spiritual community validate one another's experience because they trust each other's affirmations to be correct, which was the 'out' offered by Punshhh. I would imagine that that atmosphere of trust is one of the great attractions of living in a spiritual community.
Personally, I like the mystical approach and the idea of a quest of discovery. But there is another alternative which is to just believe the affirmations of those around you, provided one feels comfortable with that. Not everybody wants to be a mystic or a philosopher, or to go on a quest. It's OK to just believe simple scriptural stories if that is enough to satisfy the individual. It only causes problems when those stories and communities generate anti-social effects, like inquisitions, persecution of non-conformers, or anti-infidel jihads.
"But what about communities of faith, discourse and practice? "
I agree with you about this, however a degree of faith and acceptance is required in theses communities. Which is all well and good and enables people to experience divinity, spirituality etc. However in my response to the OP I was thinking of proofs for the existence of God, philosophical proofs. These communities don't provide proof in the philosophical sense and neither should they, it is not their business. I was pointing out the reality of the inability to apply philosophy to the question of the existence of God.
Now a practitioner may achieve a mystical union with God through being a member of such a community, in much the same way as the lone mystic I refer to. This is largely the purpose of these communities, but for some people this doesn't supply sufficient proofs for them and relies more on faith and trust. This was the case for me when I explored such communities, although finding God was not actually that important for me, or whether he/she exists. For me finding an intellectual route to an understanding of existence was what I seeked and still do seek and who I am and what is going on. In this quest I have left behind these communities and found a study of literature(including mystical literature), art, communion with nature and treading a personal mystical path to be the most appropriate.
I found the communities I entered to be lacking in the intellectual philosophical attitude and understanding necessary for my requirements. Something which I realised they are not in the business of disseminating, as their business is bringing people to God and the benefits of a spiritual and religious life, in good faith, rather than with philosophical rigour.
Right! Now I get you. I was responding more to your point about the 'impossibility of communication to other people'. But I do see what you mean.
There are I suspect issues with tying down transcendent experience into communicable means. Although I have had some success in close interaction with a fellow traveller, but even here, I was aware of a gulf between us in conception, which left us world's apart in personal understanding.
And yet I have had understandings with gurus I have encountered across a crowded room, for the briefest of moments, which were at the heart of my deepest ponderings and which I am at a loss to communicate verbally. Although I suspect that if I turned to that guru and referred to that interaction, he/she would know exactly what I meant and not much verbiage would be required. There is a deep significance with respect to face to face verbal traditions here I sense.
I think it might make more sense to try and figure out what the universe is like, and if this particular universe is such that behaving in certain ways has desirable benefits.
Stoicism is attractive to me. Their views of the deity are difficult to summarize. Suffice it to say that they believe there is a benevolent Creator who created the universe such that living a life of virtue will lead to the best life possible (Eudaimonia).
How can language use and logic be used to show that there can exist objects which haven't been recognised as such by a subject?
It seems to me that the very premise of realism is that the existence of objects is independent of semantics, which makes using the latter to prove the former a contradiction. Indeed the realist would say that independent objects exist even if ordinary language use implied idealism.
Or are you just saying that you can use logic to derive the realist's conclusion from some self-evident or otherwise justified premises? Then what are those premises?
By our very inability to detail or describe objects we don't know.
With logic we can tell there may be things we don't know about-- the presence of something we have not experienced or been told. What are these things we lack knowledge of? We cannot say for we don't even have the idea to distinguish them until we have knowledge. One of those objects we do not know might be right in front of our noses this very moment and we would be oblivious. That's what it means for an object not to be recognised by a subject.
So unless we necessarily recognise every object, there may be objects which haven't been recognised by a subject .
You're just repeating the claim that objects might exist that we don't know about. You haven't explained how ordinary language use or logic have shown this to be the case.
You're assuming your conclusion.
Logic shows that it being otherwise is a contradiction-- it would require all objects to be necessarily be known by a subject. That's the only way it would be impossible for an unknown object to exist.
This is impossible because the presence of a knowing subject is defined by existence. The presence of knowledge cannot be necessary. It takes a state of the world, something which may or may not be.
You are just ignoring the argument here. You are applying empirical reasoning in a context where it makes no sense.
I'm stating the premise that we can't describe or detail the objects we don't know, yes. There's certainly no outside evidence or "deriving" from another outside presence. But then I don't need one. Pay attention to the content of the argument.
How exactly would we describe or detail objects we don't know? It's impossible. To avoid a contradiction, one would have to place the supposedly unknown object within knowledge-- in which case it would be a known object.
Rather than assuming a conclusion, I'm pointing out being unable to detail or describe an object is lack knowledge of it. Unless, subject necessary recognise every object, unrecognised objects may exist.
I'm saying that unrecognised objects can exist, unless subjects having perfect knowledge of all objects is necessary. You are hoisted on your own petard of doubt. Unless subjects necessarily recognise everything, unrecognised objects can exist-- subjects must have infallible knowledge of objects for your claim to obtain.
And the claim is that objects just are things which are recognised as such. Therefore every object is necessarily recognised.
Sapientia's counter to this is that ordinary language use and logic can show that objects aren't just things which are recognised as such.
So your response is a non sequitur.
So Sapientia's counter is right. If we are using our ordinary language of knowledge, which admits that subjects don't necessarily know everything, then it is shown that all objects aren't necessarily recognised.
We can, of course, reject this ordinary language. But, if we do, it amounts to saying that subjects must necessarily know everything-- that unknown objects are impossible.
This is what I'm questioning. How can the realist use ordinary claims to justify their metaphysics? Their very premise is that the fact-of-the-matter – the existence and nature of objects – is independent of whatever we might say or believe. Their very premise is that the things we say and the things we believe might be false. We might say that there is a cup in the cupboard and we might believe that there is a cup in the cupboard but it might nonetheless be the case that there isn't a cup in the cupboard. And so, by the same logic, we might say that unknown objects exist and we might believe that unknown objects exist but it might nonetheless be the case that unknown objects don't exist.
Hence this ordinary language use "justification" of realism is a contradiction. The realist, if he is to be consistent, can't use the fact that most people assert and believe realism as a defence of his position.
So what is this something else? If we think there is a cup and a cupboard, then we won't have a bar of any other idea. We will reject there is any other object-- it will be unknown and we are unable to detail it. The absence of the the cup and the cupboard is the object(s) we cannot admit.
Indeed, but this is only to say that unknown objects might not exist, which does not preclude (as you were arguing) that they can. All you've done is shown it's possible that subjects know everything-- something I've (and Sapientia) never denied.
But that's not what the realist is asserting his position on. "Ordinary language" is not a popularity argument, but a logic one. It's to say: "If we are using this language, this meaning, then X is true."
The case is not made on the number of people who use it, but rather than what we are saying if we do not-- in this case, failing to use the "ordinary language" amounts to denying there can be unknown objects.
I've addressed this. The claim is that objects just are things which are recognised as such. Therefore there cannot be unknown objects. Sapientia claimed that ordinary language use and logic can show that this isn't the case; that there can be unknown objects. But given that the realist's claim is that the existence of objects is independent of what we say and believe it is inconsistent to use what we say and belief to justify the claim that there can be unknown objects.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
This is false. You don't need for things to exist for the claim "things exist" to be false. In fact, you need for things to not exist for the claim "things exist" to be false. That's straightforward logic.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
This makes no sense. According to the realist the existence of the object in the cupboard has nothing to do with the sounds I speak, the symbols I write, or the ideas I have. Therefore he can't use these latter things to prove (or justify) the former.
The realist isn't making a claim about an object there. They are making a claim about logic. Stating that "objects are independent" is not an argument that any object exists. It doesn't make any claim about what exists in the world. No inconsistency. You just aren't paying attention to what they are talking about.
Not true. If the cupboard is empty, then there must be the object of the empty cupboard. If someone is to be wrong about the cup, the absence of the cup needs to exist. Your problem is you don't think beyond the immediate claim and whether someone has presented you evidence for it.
If I think the cup is in the cupboard, then I do not know the object of the empty cupboard. I will be unable to detail the cupboard is empty-- if the thought or suggestion arises, I will dismiss it as false for I know there is a cup in the cupboard. I will not recognise the object of an empty cupboard. It is unknown to me.
This is just nonsense. Treating the non-existence of a thing as a thing that exists? If this is the sort of thing that you're resorting to then there's not much point in continuing.
Furthermore, the type of existence that unrecognised objects are said to have is not of this "absence" kind. So what you need to show is that an unrecognised non-absence thing has to exist for the claim "there is a cup in the cupboard" to be false. And that's simply not the case.
You don't know that. Unrecognised objects are not said to be anything because they are unknown. There may, indeed, be unknown cup-absent cupboard. All it takes is for one to exist and for people not to realise.
Thinking of the cupboard, I can imagine a pin on the shelf in the cupboard, with ethereal beings dancing on its head. I can only imagine and therefore believe, that ethereal beings conceptually derived from the empirical record are dancing there. I can't believe that any other kind are as they would be inconceivable to me, but I can't rule them out either, even though I don't know what I would be ruling out. So I can't say that unknown objects do, or don't exist. I can only comment on objects that could possibly be conceived of and derived from the empirical record.
Indeed I can't claim that empirically derived objects exist, or not, because I don't know what it means to exist, or that I can conceive, or have knowledge of anything that exists.
Because it is evident from the way in which we ordinarily use the word "object" that the meaning of the word doesn't imply a contradiction when used to talk about an object which hasn't been recognised as such by a subject. The contradiction only occurs when the meaning of the word has been superficially altered, redefined, as part of an anti-realist agenda. It is a man-made, self-imposed problem, and one which is best resolved by rejecting the premise.
Quoting Michael
Yes, the existence of objects is independent of semantics. But surely in order to have a sensible discussion, we must know what we're talking about, and I'm appealing to ordinary language use as an alternative and superior means of best defining key terms such as "object", rather than starting with the hidden premise that an object, by virtue of being an object, must be recognised as such by a subject - which is suspect to say the least.
Quoting Michael
I am rejecting the implication in the claim that I was originally responding to, namely that it would be a contradiction for there to exist an object which has not been recognised as such by a subject. Of course, by implication, that also means that I'm saying that it is possible.
I am doing so on the basis that there is nothing present in the meaning of the word "object", as ordinarily understood, which renders the aforementioned an impossibility. Therefore, the claimant must be relying upon some special, extraordinary, and, it seems, convenient definition, which I see no good reason to similarly adopt.
So God is beyond words? Makes for a short thread.
If we are to go the Scholastic route, then God is beyond all human propositions. The most we can manage with are analogies and metaphors, as well as certain metaphysical properties (infinite, omnipotent, omniscient, etc). We can know the existence of God through metaphysics - the essence of God comes from revelation.
How we know something exists without knowing anything about it makes for a puzzle. Perhaps we can get away with saying that God exists, and we all know what this means intuitively but cannot express it in exact words. God is transcendent, radically Other, and the ground and source of Being. That's about as much as we can say.
It is kind of ironic that many theist use the argument that "God" is beyond words/human comprehension in defense of their position when it does more to damage it then support it. If it is true that "God" is beyond words, then it also means that it is a given that even if theists spends their entire life devoted to knowing and understanding God/God's will they don't know anything more about God then the rest of us, and reading the bible won't tell you anything more about God then reading comic books.
While it isn't well documented in discussions with people from societies that have (or had) beliefs in polytheistic gods, it was discovered that they too had an understanding or dealings with monotheistic beliefs instead of it being completely alien to them as it is often believed. However for them monotheistic beliefs can only believed by bat sh*t crazy people since it contains so many obvious problems that only a lunatic (or perhaps someone who comes from a society run by lunatics) could ever allow themselves to believe in such things. Because of this issue, many polytheistic/pagan based societies tend to try to ... purge .. themselves of monotheistic beliefs (whether such beliefs come from an individual or group) out of fear of what might happen if they allow such madness to spread. And ironically enough they often felt that they were doing those that they got rid of (either through death or exile) a 'favor' because they themselves felt that they would rather be put out of their misery then have to live with such madness as well as endangering their community and the one's they love.
David Bentley Hart: 'one infinite source of all that is: eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, uncreated, uncaused, perfectly transcendent of all things and for that very reason absolutely immanent to all things.' From The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss
Whatever is truly ‘transcendent’ is also ‘beyond existence’ - that’s what ‘transcendent’ means. So strictly speaking God doesn't exist - even if God is real, he/she/it is of a different order to whatever it is that exists. See God does not Exist, Bishop (!) Pierre Whalon.
Quoting dclements
According to the theistic religions, God chose to reveal him/her/itself - which is what the 'sacred writings' (i.e. The Bible, which really just means 'book') convey. It contains accounts and testimonies of what people are believed to have witnesses. Within those domains of discourse there are perfectly coherent accounts of 'the encounter with the Divine', even if it's not something that can be validated by so-called empirical methodology.
And everything you wrote about how theistic religions being about to support their beliefs through their own metrics can be said of any other religion/ideology/system of beliefs whether it is believe by the population at large or someone trying to chew through the straps on their straight jacket. However to use such 'evidence' as some kind of proof to anyone other then those that believe it already is an appeal to antiquity fallacy since it assumes the person hearing such arguments doesn't need to validate such beliefs because they are what defendant was brought up (or perhaps chose to at some point) to believe and they should also believe it as well without question.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appeal_to_tradition
It's already too much.
-Banno
I more or less agree, or at least I do anyways. :smile:
Your post reminds me of the following quote that I heard a very long time ago:
“Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.”
-Michel de Montaigne
This is what spirituality intend to achieve.
What is "truth" in this context?
It doesn't seem to be "a statement of fact", since if god is beyond words - Is truth beyond words?
I would have thought wisdom a worthy goal in itself. Why add truth?
Hence the Quaker podcast. That's how to talk about God.
Yes absolute truth is beyond words, and you have to get there to know it. Those who knew it could never explain it in words(I understand that language is inadequate in these matters). So, metaphorical statements have always been used.
You don't see a problem here?
Metaphors are not words?
Again, wisdom seems to me to be a worth goal in itself; why add "oneness or harmony of everything or reason behind life"?
[quote=Cavacava]It is pragmatic, not "disingenuous" unless you consider pragmatism disingenuous. What do you mean by the "wrong deity", how can there be a "wrong" in this discussion.
I don't like Pascal's wager either, but it a rational alternative, and rationality does not have to be sincere, just reasonable.[/quote]
Pascal's wager is disingenuous, not "pragmatic", if it's about belief - which it seems to be, or would have to be to be of relevance - because I can't believe in that of which I'm not convinced. So there's no other option [i]without[/I] disingenuousness.
A wager is voluntary, belief is not, so belief is not like a wager in an important respect. It's not about what's practical, it's about what's possible. And arguing for the impossible is not reasonable.
Metaphors are words, but not exact words to describe something.
In that case, the question is invalid?
That depends on what you believe to be possible. :wink:
-matt
As long as one understands that such talk is just a discussion/speculation then it isn't too bad, but unfortunately most talk involving 'God' isn't such. Also it isn't knowledge itself that would allow one to understand what 'God' is or might be but more like wisdom, which is more about the disciplined methods for processing information then the just information one knows. However since your post does show a mindset that seems ready for such issue (or at least from what little I can know about a person from just a post alone) I will share with you a concept called "duhkha" which roughly means pain/suffering but it is a little more than that. Its true meaning is more about how the imperfection of this world causes the human condition and other unease we all suffer from and is one of the major reasons why many if not most Buddhists do not believe in 'God'.
Dukkha:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dukkha
Knowing what 'God' is and if he/she/it exists is a non-trivial problem that is just as difficult as knowing what true objective 'good' is and because we are no where near solving either of these problems, it is pretty much a given that anyone think that either they have or we have solved it doesn't understand the problem well enough to talk properly about it, is crazier then a person who thinks they are a fried egg, or perhaps a little bit of both.
-Banno
I don't disagree that it may be the proper path for some and/or that it might be useful for some in a variety of ways. I guess my main beef against many forms of Abrahamic religions is that they are hierarchical in structure, have a 'believe this way or else' mentality, and/or are hostile in one way or another to ideas and beliefs that are different than their own.
Those who are something like Unitarian Universalist and/or are solitary practitioners who don't push their beliefs on others are not really the kind of people I'm arguing against. I may not be sure of it, but I'm guessing that these Quakers you are talking about are not the evangelical sort I'm unhappy about.
'Existence' may have more than just one meaning. In any case the question is about the reality of God. There must be a valid distinction between a God that has no reality beyond the human imagination, that is merely a fictional God, and a God whose reality is independent of the human imagination, the creator of everything that exists.
-matt
(While your post may be meant for Banno, I thought I might as well put my two cents in.)
While quietness may lead to more peace of mind and better overall health for most of us, it doesn't sell the way noise can and in a capitalistic society actions and environments that make more money than others (whether it be a loud commercial, a busy mall, packed casino, etc, etc) usually trump others even if there are other pros and cons that should be considered then just the making money part.
I'm pretty sure some of our current health issues whether it be ADHD, chronic pain/chronic fatigue, depression, anxiety, etc can be attributed to some degree due to the amount of noise we are exposed to on a daily basis and the negative impact it has on us. However when corporations or other powers that be look at the spreadsheets they have that are supposed to tell them which of the many choices they should make, it is highly unlikely that in many of the reports they consider whether "low level" noise is taken into hardly any consideration.
I'd rather think that the greatest mystery is: what should we do?
WHat's that, then?
I'm thinking of starting a thread on submission. It seems to me to be morally indefensible.
I think, rather, that silence is the result of wisdom.
When taking the general approach, what i consider to be a god in general refers to the set of axioms a person holds to be true enough to act upon. Since all people have a set of axioms they act upon, everyone has a god they serve. Of course this set can change over time by adopting new axioms, or letting go of old axioms. So in that regard, I don't believe atheists exist, the ones that call themselve atheist merely refuse to call their belief in their set of axioms a god.
Another route leading to the same conclusion on the general approach I found by looking into the origin of the word "god". Though it's unclear what the actual source was, there are several logical options, of wich the following stroke me as most usefull:
ghut- "that which is invoked" (source also of Old Church Slavonic zovo "to call," Sanskrit huta- "invoked," an epithet of Indra), from root *gheu(e)- "to call, invoke."
If we define god as "that wich is called upon", then as long as even a single human being is calling upon something, that would constitute the existence of god.
So far the general approach, wich like pascals wager doesn't tell you wich god to believe in.
Seeing the start of the topic, especially:
Quoting darthbarracuda
It seems darthbarracuda is more interested in the existence of a more specific god. I'm not sure where he got the 'creator of the cosmos' part from. Since I don't think this was a main concern of people living over 2000 years ago.
In my opinion genisis 1 isn't referring to the the cosmos when it states "in the beginning". I prefer to read it like "in the beginning of human conciousness" rather than 'In the beginning of the cosmos". It makes alot more sense to me that way.
Interesting, I like this sentiment. The fervor that people can have defending their views can only be described as fanatical and zealous. Calling people's axioms "gods" is analogical, I think, and not appropriate as a literal interpretation, though.
Quoting Tomseltje
The Abrahamic god is the one in the back of the minds of philosophers of religion. But I want to focus on the philosophical God, and not a particular god of a pastoral community that commands his followers to cut their penises and sacrifice their children. Philosophical theism, subtracting personality and involvement with the world, is deism. Clockwork theism, the capstone that unifies and grounds the onto-theological reality.
I can think of various other descriptions, passionate, religiously or earnestly to name some.
Quoting darthbarracuda
I was talking about the sets of axioms people hold true enough to act upon. Why think it was analogical and not literal? Perhaps you were thinking of the strict mathematical interpretation of the word axiom? I was more referring to assumptions people hold to be true, even science is based upon such kind of assumptions. Why wouldn't it be appropriate as a literal interpretation?
Quoting darthbarracuda
I'd consider the Abrahamic god a specific god, I don't think we have much difference of opinion on that as long as it's clear we are not talking about that specific god. Not sure what you mean by the 'philosophical' God. Perhaps you could elaborate on that.
Though if the question is "does god exists" in the most general way, I didn't see anyone come up with a more compelling definition on (a) god(s) that people believe in than the one I used, but perhaps I just missed it. In my opinion, with any question formulated as "does X exist?" it's is essential to start with defining X as precisely as possible.
I agree that most philosophers of religion are conversing about the Abrahamic God. But I think the Judaeo-Christian tradition has also developed a conception of God that is often referred to as the "Philosopher's God," i.e., all-powerful, all good, omniscient, personal, etc. This is contrasted with Yahweh in the Old Testament who is portrayed as a very human sort of being with loves. jealousies, passions, intimate involvement with his chosen people, etc.
The Judaeo-Christian "Phiosopher's God" is similar to the Deistic God except that the latter is usually thought of as simply the creator who set everything in motion and then is not involved with human beings or their world.
I've thought a lot about a generic definition of a "god." The one I find most satisfying is that a god is a superhuman agent, an intentional, personal being but much more powerful than human beings and also superior in other ways. I'm thinking that even "animal" or "plant" gods could fit that definition in that they are usually conceived as having humanlike self-awareness and communication abilities. That seems to cover most of the ideas of beings that humans have referred to using the word.
I appreciate the discussion about the origin of the word "God." That shows how a god functions in our lives. But merely invoking a god does not mean that a "god" exists, simply that someone has the idea that the god exists. On the other hand, if one was able to show a a strongly-evidenced causal connection between invoking a god and successful results from those invocations, that would be evidence that the god exists.
Nevertheless, the existence of the Judaeo-Christian Philosopher's God seems to be what most westerners are concerned about. I can make a certain amount of sense out of the idea of a being who has humanlike qualities to perfection--though it's a separate question whether such a being exists. But I'm not able to imagine a purely spiritual being, one without a material existence. And even if I could, I don't know that I'd want to describe such a being as perfect. That being would seem to be lacking something needed for perfection.
So I have trouble even getting off the starting block regarding the existence of God. God simply seems to be an idea of non-material, humanlike perfection.
Or maybe God is an idea that has existence independent of the existence of that idea in anyone's mind?
How about a simple question: Do ideas exist?
Why assume belief is not voluntary. If someone tells me something, I can either choose to believe him/her, disbelief him/her or be agnostic about what that person said. Now unless you come for the predestination angle, rejecting all choises and thus even the existance of something to be voluntary, I don't see why you consider belief to be involuntary.
Why assume god made the universe?
the abrahamic god with the archetype father respresenting order is one half of the story, nature with the archetype mother representing chaos is the other half. God didn't make life so cruel, nature did, god is the answer on how to limit suffering caused by nature.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Why assume the abrahamic god is incorherent with evolution? I studied both and I don't see a discrepancy.
Quoting darthbarracuda
one could think of god as such, personally i rather think of god as the guide on exploring the unknown.
Quoting darthbarracuda
Nonsense, it's not god that wants such, it's (some) people that do. God allows you to make your own choice and face the consequences of your choice.
God(s) is made in man’s image, then ideal.
In my mind though it makes sense to search for things we desire. That could include God.
But wouldn't we have to have at least some minimal reason for thinking God existed for it to make sense to search for God?
What would be a good analogy? A cure for cancer? Another planet with humanlike beings? Medical technology that prevented death? A non-material soul for every human being?
I am not sure if you would or would not consider it a good explanation or not, but the one most used by theists like myself would be the concept of compensating goods. Dr. Hud Hudson has a very good lecture on it on youtube based on The Rabbit in the Garden Story if you have an hour to kill on a drive.
The evil, caused by human acts of free will, is kind of easy. The ability to act freely is a good thing, it has a consequence that it also allows people to act badly and cause suffering, but the value of free will compensates for the suffering.
Natural disasters are harder, and in general involve some type of no seeum defense. Something along the lines off what makes us think we would know the compensating good, even if we saw it.
This part is not a defense - but it is something I always wonder when someone brings up the problem from evil, is they never mention the good. Seems like we are happy to accept the good as a creation of man, but the bad - well that is God. Just an aside.
Quoting Michael Cunningham
This in general is Camus' absurdity. We have some innate desire to search for meaning, yet we lack the ability and the tools to actually find it, if it even exists. Camus' answer is an acceptance of this absurdity, while he feels others perform some type of philosophic suicide in finding meaning in false faiths. God being the most used.
My personal answer to this absurdity is a theistic belief, that does provide a meaningful reason to push the rock up the hill one more time. However, I fully acknowledge that most of these beliefs are based on faith and are outside reason. I see nothing wrong with that as long as the beliefs are not in conflict with fact or reason. And all opinions to the contrary - theism is still a reasonable believe
And my reasoned defense for my theistic believe is twofold, the first is easy, it works for me. It makes me happier, more joyful, and in many ways a better human being as I define that. The second is either due to some combination of nature or nurture I am always drawn back to my faith. I have tried to intellectualize myself out it on many occasions, but there is some part of me that is always drawn back.
More theology than philosophy in that last part.
I also want to ask something along the lines of how do we know that the good in this world doesn't simply make evil worse, e.g., by raising our expectations and hopes and then dashing them?
Firstly, as clarity, against an argument that God does not exist with the argument from evil, the theist need not prove that compensating goods do exist, the theist just needs to show that it is a possible explanation.
The compensating good for act of free will I think is pretty self evident.
The arguments on compensating goods for natural disasters are "no seeum" arguments.
Something along the lines of, if there was an abstract state of affairs that was a compensating good for some natural disaster would we be aware of it, and would we recognize it as such even if we were aware of it? Which leaves 3 possiblities:
We know the entire set of all possible abstract states of affairs - we would know a compensating good if we saw one, and there is none there - well since the set of abstract states of affairs are infinite this is clearly false.
We know a lot of possible abstract states of affairs, we would know a compensating good if we saw them, and we would recognize it as such - we don't see any, and we infer there are none - because we believe the sample size of the abstract we know of is large enough for us to know. Again - if the set is infinite - can you ever really feel confident you have enough data to form that inference?
Lastly - the infinite set of abstract states of affairs, could contain compensating goods, and even if we were aware of it, we may not recognize it as such.
So - the theist conclusion is there is at least a reasonable possibility that there are compensating goods that, if there, shows God could be operating in a moral way, could be all good, and allow for evil to exist.
Quoting Michael Cunningham
just keep turning the coin over - how do we know that a positive outcome of the bad is it does not make the good better ???
Firstly, as clarity, against an argument that God does not exist with the argument from evil, the
theist need not prove that compensating goods do exist, the theist just needs to show that it is a
possible explanation.
Rank Amateur
I think I would agree with you that the logical possibility that there are compensating goods for evil prevents a deductive proof that an all-powerful and perfectly good God doesn't exist. However, not all arguments are aimed at deductive proof. If an atheist presents a large number of examples of natural evil, shouldn't it be incumbent on the theist to at least make a prima facie case that it's plausible to think there are compensating goods for a substantial portion of those evils? Otherwise, what reasons do we have for thinking there actually are some. That it's possible there are? But you claim that it's a "reasonable" possibility. I don't see any reasons. Anything is possible except a logical contradiction.
That's the point of my example about good causing evil. It's possible that "God" is a completely malevolent being who causes some good because the overall balance of evil is thereby greater. We have just as much reason to believe that God is malevolent as we have that God is benevolent. Would you agree with that? it seems to me that both arguments are the same.
With regard to free will, I'm less concerned about whether there are compensating goods. It seems to me that the key point is that, arguably, God is not responsible for evil that's the result of free will. Humans are. But I want to raise a couple issues in this regard: (1) Although I think that ultimately humans have a significant degree of free will, it's a lot more limited--by genetics and environment--than is apparent on the surface. Thus the free will defense defends God against being the cause of evil to a much lesser degree than many would think. (2) I think many theists, at least Christians, expect that God could, should, and does sometimes intervene against some free will-caused evil, e.g., in response to prayer. So wouldn't the noseeum defense also have to be brought into play for many free will-caused evils, e.g., the Jewish holocaust?
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I think it's a good discussion.
The issue with free will is, that free will itself is the compensating good. That it is a good that we are beings of free will, as opposed to some type of slave or puppet. The ability to chose freely leads to some of humans' greatest virtues. It they are not free choices, than they are not virtues. The problem is that if humans are free to chose - it brings in all the possibility of bad choices.
You issue of genetics or environment are to some large degree just observations of some continuum of a series of free will choices. More on this in a sec.
Quoting Michael Cunningham
As above, well if you buy, as I do, that free will is a compensating good for evil acts of free will, that encompasses a great deal of them - For the others 2 points:
The first is are all evil due to natural disasters free of acts of free will? If you build your house on a cliff overlooking the ocean, is it an act of God or an act of free will if a storm knocks it into the ocean?
And this nature of causality can lead back to very small items that can have great impacts - the butterfly effect - my favorite example is suppose Winston Churchill's mother decided to sleep on a different side the night Churchill was conceived, maybe a different sperm would have fertilizes the egg, and an entire different human could have been born, and maybe Hitler would have won the war, and ....
The point is that we tend to look at individual acts, and use our limited cognitive abilities, and within our prejudices look for answers. So here are some questions along those lines.
The earthquake in Haiti kills thousands, some quite horrifically. How could God allow that to happen. Well if 10 years before that Bill Gates decided he didn't need all those billions of dollars he has and decided he wanted to return that side Hispaniola to its natural state and gave every body there $100,000 to move somewhere else. I understand that is crazy - but you get the point.
There are millions upon millions of human choices that if decided differently could have permeated into millions upon millions of different scenarios that could have changed the impacts or effects on much of the evil attributed to God. Awful storms kill thousands of people - the are awful storms on top of Mt. Everest almost every day - Is it the awful storm that kills or some chain of acts of free will that put the people in the way of the storm ?
Secondly - it is really not the main issue, or even needed by the theist - the main issue is cognitive difference between humans and God. And human hubris. In your point above you are just moving the issue of cognitive distance from - if there was a compensating good - would we be aware of it and recognize it, to, there is some right number of compensating goods that allow us to make a valid inference - and if there was such a right number we would be aware of it and recognize it as such. You are asking the same question in a different form.
Finally - again - the theist in these arguments has nothing to prove. The argument from evil is from the Atheist to the Theist - saying your theistic belief is not reasonable. The theist presents his case of compensating goods, based on cognitive distance as a reasonable explanation of how evil can exist, and God can be perfectly moral. And is not convinced his theistic belief is out side reason.
I'm inclined to proceed like this. The starting point is that an all-powerful and perfectly good God would not permit evil. However, we then realize evil results in part from human free will--which we consider good. We also see the good that comes from at least some of the natural challenges that we face. They can help us develop and grow.
But then I have two serious problems: (1) even if all evils are outweighed by the good they create, aren't the means God uses often immoral? I don't think many of us would say that we should murder an innocent person so that several other innocent people can harvest her organs and continue to live. We can't defend the use of immoral means in order to create a greater good. Yet the argument, even if it doesn't necessitate the use of immoral means, clearly permits God to use immoral means. The only consideration is whether the means create greater good. Natural evil results in all kinds of death and suffering that is neither deserved nor fairly distributed. It sounds like God is thought of as an act utilitarian--though maybe not just in reference to humans. Through natural evil, God does countless things that we would put people in jail for.
(2) While some degree of natural suffering might be good for an individual, it seems implausible that hideous amounts of pain are good for that individual. It's "pointless" at least so far as that individual goes. Either the good result could have been achieved with much less pain, or the treatment destroys the patient, or the pain is an immoral means of obtaining the good result.
Anyway, I'm inclined to say that, for natural evil, any non-trivial amount of evil that meets the criteria in (1) or (2) above falsifies the proposition that God is perfectly good unless and until the theist can show (or at least make a plausible case) both that the natural evil is not immoral and that it is not pointless. The burden of proof shifts to the theist. That's how science works. It's an empirical argument. The skeptic has not "proven" deductively that God is not perfectly good, but s/he's overcome whatever evidence the theist has for saying that God is perfectly good. The logical possibility that God is perfectly good is not evidence that God is perfectly good.
How would you argue against the claim that God is a completely malevolent being who uses good to increase the amount of evil? The atheist could say that it's logically possible and therefore s/he does not need to show that there are compensating evils for the good that exists.
I wonder if the main point of saying it's logically possible that God is perfectly good is to allow room for faith, ie, simply believing that God is perfectly good without any reasons--except perhaps revelation in the Bible. Many theists don't want to be irrational in the sense of believing things that are formal contradictions, like God creating a round square. Using a noseeum argument to show it's logically possible that God is perfectly good, despite widespread evil, keeps theists from having to believe a formal contradiction. Then faith/belief enters the scene.
Thanks, will take the general agreement on the free will defense.
The argument on evil due to natural disaster is less direct. It is based on the congnative distance between God and man. You argument above has an implied premise that if there was a compensating good, we would see it, and recognize it as such. That may not be true. There is much good in the world, do we know the cause for all of it?
If you were watching 2 chess masters playing, and one lost a bishop early in the match, you may interpret that as a bad thing, yet it may have been a well planned loss in a strategy.
Excellent point. I never heard anyone say they took the bad things in life for granted until they were gone. I have a roof over my head, I have food in my cupboard, I have gas in my car, and all I have to complain about is others may not be as fortunate and the weather was not so good today.
As true as that may be, there is no real issue with that. If you wanted to define your laptop as God and then prove God existed, I am confident many (if not most) would shy away from engaging with you on the issues.
I am inclined to shy away from believers who feel the need to share their definition (of arguably the indefinable) while I am inclined to engage with believers who feel no such need.
Why?
I am confident of the existence of entities (though I do not think of God as an entity) on Jupiter and you may rest assured I cannot define them.
A god with the 4 omnis is a logically incoherent concept. It is impossible for it to exist so it is silly to be "agnostic" about it. You can make the positive claim that it doesn't exist. I see atheists all the time retreating to calling themselves "agnostics" because they are afraid to defend their position.
Why?
1)Omnipotence alone is incoherent because of the omnipotence paradox. Can an omnipotent being create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it.
2) Omnipotence and omniscience together is impossible. If the god knows every true proposition about the future then he already knows everything he will do and cannot do otherwise. The omnipotent being cannot does not have the power to do anything different in the future then he already believes he will do.
If you think you have a refutation to either of these I will be happy to crush you. [/b]
:snicker:
The omnipotence paradox is a straw man, since it requires that God have a logically incoherent power. God could only be omnipotent if he lacked the power to do something that was logically possible. Demanding God do the logically impossible is like demanding he design a square circle.
The omniscience paradox is once again a straw man. For one, if God is omnipotent and omniscient, then the capacity for God to change his mind would be logically impossible. But for classical theists, God is eternal and outside of time, so it is inappropriate to speak of God "making choices".
Furthermore, if you insist that God have the ability to bring about logical incoherency, then you have done a major disservice to your own atheism, because God can now bring it about that he exists, despite your arguments that attempts to prove that he doesn't. If God can make contradictions true, then he can make it true that he exists regardless of whatever argument you have.
I don't think anyone demands anything here, do they? :)
All there is to go by is a definition, there isn't anything to point at which makes us go "omnipotent!".
Simply declaring that X can do exactly what is logically possible, does not really solve the conundrum, but just pushes it one out and leaves it hanging there.
You still have to decide whether X can create anything or X can lift anything, because X seemingly cannot do both, yet omnipotence means both.
(That's an exclusive or by the way.)
Recall, we only have these weird definitions to go by.
So, both (create and lift), one and not the other (create or lift), or neither; you have four options to deal with.
Where things get even more hairy is when defining that X is atemporal.
Right, atemporal renders decision-making impossible or incoherent.
Moreover, it seems that minds are strongly temporal altogether, meaning that an atemporal mind (and atemporal sentience) is equally impossible or incoherent.
(Poll: God is an incorporeal mind that's not spatiotemporal)
Something atemporal would inherently be inert and lifeless, maybe like abstract objects?
Supposing that X is temporal, on the other hand, does lead to something odd about "changing one's mind" while also being omniscient.
(Note, this is not about human "free will", but rather X's own "changing X's mind".)
I don't debate trolls, sorry.
I think an omnipotent being (if such existed) can create a very heavy rock and refuse to lift it. It does not affect the omnipotency.
Omnipotence, Omniscience, Omnipresence are absolutes. Therefore, they are all identical. That is omnipotence=omniscience=omnipresence=any other absolute. Usually those who profess religion just like to use many words to say simple things or maybe its an attraction to grand gestures, who knows?
If a person knew they would go to work the next day, does it stop them from going to work? It also, does not prevent the person from doing something different. There is a lot of intelligence, if not wisdom, in knowing and doing.
I'm not advocating for the truth behind the existence of a 'religious' GOD, but I think it's unfair to discount something you do not know. Where are the facts, either in support or against?
God can't do something that humans can do (i.e. humans can create things that they can't lift). i.e. God can't make himself non-omnipotent. No problem here either: Omnipotence is part of God's nature. He can't be both omnipotent and ~omnipotent - that would be a contradiction.
in my opinion that is the first issue with the concept of god , it is limited by nature ..... why don't we try to explain what love is in 3 words lets see how descriptive we can get ....... you cannot use a word and describe that which is does not occupy neither time nor space
i have heard the same concept called energy , universal energy , Being , the unmanifested .... whatever name you assign to it simply not only will it not properly describe it , it will open the door for arguing ...because how do you look at an event with infinite depth and think you have a clue on how to describe it without it coming into conflict with the other 7 billion people that think they have god on lock down as well ......
good and evil are human concepts ....these terms do not exist beyond our minds .... you will not find an evil animal nor a good one ..... things are as they are , our judgment of an event or situations is what assigns a value of good or evil ...and those concepts are open to interpretation depending on which side of the fence you are standing on .....
if you want to know that which we should not try to describe , it will not be found through concepts and science .... it cannot be rationalized nor quantified .... for one simple reason. The mind is limited by time and space ...it cannot grasp beyond those boundaries ...... but .... we can feel and that is the only access you have at experiencing "god" and when you do , it will require no answers because you won't have any questions .
these answers are in every single person on earth ..... once you strip your self and your experiences , you accept life as is and forgive every moment ... you will enter a new state ...whether you want to call it a shift in consciousness , finding god or whatever term suits you best does not matter .... there is no difference between god and you ... it is one and the same .... the mind is the one that needs to go back to the toolbox where it belongs.
the truth is one ..... how people try to describe it , that is the issue . :)