God's abilities versus Man's abilities
It seems to me now that a lot of the things that were viewed by skeptics as impossible for gods are now attributes of man.
In this case how can we argue that a god could not have these characteristic?
I don't think the arguments against gods from implausibility works well any more.
Below is a list of things that humans do that therefore exist as a possibility for some other entity.
1. Cognitions, desires, motives, intelligence, intentions
2. Intelligent design. purposive creation, computers, internet new modes of fast communication.
3. Concepts, including new concepts about reality in physics, quantum effects, fiction/storytelling.
4. Sentience and questions arising from consciousness studies about the nature of matter and mind.
In short:
If a human can be sentient have desires, intelligently design and use internet technologies for implausibly fast communication of huge distance why could not a deity?
I am not advocating god or debating religion but challenging a purely mechanical soulless view of reality. It seems like the mechanical view is based on completely ignoring major human attributes which simply can't be denied.
In this case how can we argue that a god could not have these characteristic?
I don't think the arguments against gods from implausibility works well any more.
Below is a list of things that humans do that therefore exist as a possibility for some other entity.
1. Cognitions, desires, motives, intelligence, intentions
2. Intelligent design. purposive creation, computers, internet new modes of fast communication.
3. Concepts, including new concepts about reality in physics, quantum effects, fiction/storytelling.
4. Sentience and questions arising from consciousness studies about the nature of matter and mind.
In short:
If a human can be sentient have desires, intelligently design and use internet technologies for implausibly fast communication of huge distance why could not a deity?
I am not advocating god or debating religion but challenging a purely mechanical soulless view of reality. It seems like the mechanical view is based on completely ignoring major human attributes which simply can't be denied.
Comments (7)
It's not that human attributes are ignored, rather they are all squished into the brain somewhere and magically emerge. The classic phrase is "the selfish gene". It's called anthropomorphism, and that is what science does full-time.
I think if something is produced by the brain that is not deflationary.
Yes it is odd to say that if something is in the brain then it has a marginal existence. The idea of "in the brain-ness" is fatal for materialism because it has led to us being perceived as having no direct access to an external reality which doesn't support materialism.
Clearly we can impact the "external world" with our minds because we create things and communicate within the world, So our desires and imaginings don't stay in the brain.
Also there are things like creating life and affecting the weather that have been mocked as attributes of gods yet now humans can prevent it from raining and intervene heavily with nature and clone animals and alter genes.
If God was a human of superior intelligence or some other superior species then his or her potential abilities are wide. I used to think gods communicating with everyone at once was highly implausible but now we have the internet there are paradigms of implausible mass communication over great distances.
It seems strange that popular science is being reductive and deflationary when science has actually exposed us to more possibilities.
Apparently we are said to be made in the image of God by some religions. That is a controversial statement because of what these godly attributes are supposed to be. I once toyed with the idea that we are all gods.
I am not seeing God here as a religious figure for worship but as an example of extraordinary abilities.
It depends what a person sees as the limitations of the human mind. I think our ability to easily reflect on infinities is extraordinary. I don't see the mind or our language and ensuing concepts as being in anyway a trivial attribute.
The definition of a God is controversial but we are said to be made in his image in the Bible.
And as I am saying now through science and thought, we have more and more of the attributes attributed to God.
We could be eternal either if consciousness is like that or by keeping consciousness going via some kind of computational realisation etc.
But here I am interested in the supposed clash between science and the supernatural which seems not as true as it may have been especially considering discoveries in the quantum world such as a particle being in two different places at the same time.