Beyond The God Debate
The God debate is built upon a number of assumptions which seem to require inspection. Let's tackle the issue of existence first.
The God debate typically asks, does a god exist, or not? We can observe that it's typically assumed without the least bit of questioning (for evidence see the infinite number of God debate threads on any philosophy forum) that the only possible answers to this question are yes or no.
Here's an interesting observation from science which may cause us to rethink this simplistic yes/no paradigm at the heart of the God debate.
According to this Nova documentary regarding the nature of space (at about minute 7:00)...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSqWfu8aupI
(also available on Amazon Prime and PBS)
That is, the Empire State building, like all matter, consists overwhelmingly of what we typically define as nothing.
Does the Empire State building exist? In our everyday experience at human scale the practical sensible answer is obviously yes. But if we look closer at what physics tells us a more accurate answer seems to be that 99.99% of Empire State building doesn't exist according to our definition of existence.
Does the space which makes up most of the Empire State building exist? This isn't a simple yes/no question because while science has assigned characteristics to space, space seems to have none of the properties we typically use to define existence, such as weight, mass, form, color and shape etc.
So what we can learn using only observation of reality led by scientific experts is that the question of existence is no where near as simple as almost all God debates assume it to be. Most of reality can not be neatly filed in to either an "exists" or "doesn't exist" box.
What's happening instead is that commentators on all sides of the God debate are taking an either/or assumption which is entirely sensible and useful in our everyday life at human scale, and crudely attempting to apply that simplistic paradigm to the God concept, a collection of theories regarding the most fundamental nature of everything everywhere, a profoundly different scale. This process might be compared to the long held belief that the Earth must be at the center of all reality because that's what it looks like from our human scale perspective.
What's particularly interesting is that this sloppy error of 1) assuming that gods can only exist or not exist and 2) ignoring very basic facts about the nature of reality which can be learned on Netflix, is not just performed by ego crazed cocky college sophomores on philosophy forums, but also by many of the most famous and influential thought leaders on all sides of the question. This suggests the problem is not merely a lack of education or maturity but rather some form of profound bias built in to the human condition.
Participants in the God debate are typically so eager to sell their preferred answer that they almost always rush blindly past the crucial issue of whether whether the question being asked is a useful question which can generate meaningful answers. What we should be asking is whether the simplistic nature of the "does God exist?" question has been made valid by by being built upon what has been learned from observation of reality by experts.
If space, the overwhelming vast majority of reality, can not be clearly said to either exist or not exist, what is the logical basis for the nearly universally shared assumption that a God would have to either exist or not exist, yes or no, one or the other?
There is no such logical basis, revealing that in the vast majority of cases the God debate is not a function of reason.
And so perhaps a few members of philosophy forums may wish to explore beyond the predictably unproductive patterns of the God debate.
To be continued...
The God debate typically asks, does a god exist, or not? We can observe that it's typically assumed without the least bit of questioning (for evidence see the infinite number of God debate threads on any philosophy forum) that the only possible answers to this question are yes or no.
Here's an interesting observation from science which may cause us to rethink this simplistic yes/no paradigm at the heart of the God debate.
According to this Nova documentary regarding the nature of space (at about minute 7:00)...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSqWfu8aupI
(also available on Amazon Prime and PBS)
...If you removed all the space inside the atoms that make up the Empire State building you'd be left with a very heavy lump about the size of a grain of rice.
That is, the Empire State building, like all matter, consists overwhelmingly of what we typically define as nothing.
Does the Empire State building exist? In our everyday experience at human scale the practical sensible answer is obviously yes. But if we look closer at what physics tells us a more accurate answer seems to be that 99.99% of Empire State building doesn't exist according to our definition of existence.
Does the space which makes up most of the Empire State building exist? This isn't a simple yes/no question because while science has assigned characteristics to space, space seems to have none of the properties we typically use to define existence, such as weight, mass, form, color and shape etc.
So what we can learn using only observation of reality led by scientific experts is that the question of existence is no where near as simple as almost all God debates assume it to be. Most of reality can not be neatly filed in to either an "exists" or "doesn't exist" box.
What's happening instead is that commentators on all sides of the God debate are taking an either/or assumption which is entirely sensible and useful in our everyday life at human scale, and crudely attempting to apply that simplistic paradigm to the God concept, a collection of theories regarding the most fundamental nature of everything everywhere, a profoundly different scale. This process might be compared to the long held belief that the Earth must be at the center of all reality because that's what it looks like from our human scale perspective.
What's particularly interesting is that this sloppy error of 1) assuming that gods can only exist or not exist and 2) ignoring very basic facts about the nature of reality which can be learned on Netflix, is not just performed by ego crazed cocky college sophomores on philosophy forums, but also by many of the most famous and influential thought leaders on all sides of the question. This suggests the problem is not merely a lack of education or maturity but rather some form of profound bias built in to the human condition.
Participants in the God debate are typically so eager to sell their preferred answer that they almost always rush blindly past the crucial issue of whether whether the question being asked is a useful question which can generate meaningful answers. What we should be asking is whether the simplistic nature of the "does God exist?" question has been made valid by by being built upon what has been learned from observation of reality by experts.
If space, the overwhelming vast majority of reality, can not be clearly said to either exist or not exist, what is the logical basis for the nearly universally shared assumption that a God would have to either exist or not exist, yes or no, one or the other?
There is no such logical basis, revealing that in the vast majority of cases the God debate is not a function of reason.
And so perhaps a few members of philosophy forums may wish to explore beyond the predictably unproductive patterns of the God debate.
To be continued...
Comments (166)
For some background let's refer to another science documentary from Nova, from the same Fabric Of The Cosmos series referenced in the opening post. This show is called the Illusion Of Time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qu9XaF2K10
This is a great documentary well worth watching in full, but for the purposes of this post I'll refer to only one of the concepts presented, the fact that time runs at different speeds in different situations. I chose variable time speed to focus on here because this seems to have been proven, whereas some of the other fascinating concepts about time presented in the documentary seem to be only interesting theories.
It's been proven that time runs at different rates depending on the observer's relationship to large masses such as planets, and the observer's movement through space. So for example time runs at a different rate at the top of a mountain than it does at sea level. In fact, this time speed difference has to be programmed in to GPS satellites in order for them to generate accurate location data.
At human scale variable time speed can typically be safely ignored because the time speed difference between the top of a mountain and sea level is measured in billionths of a second, a number of little practical value in our everyday lives. However, as the GPS satellite example illustrates as we move on to larger scales variable time speed becomes an ever larger factor.
At human scale we experience time as a reliable fixed measure, which is reasonable and practical because at human scale that's very close to the case. But what science is teaching us is that what seems an obvious given in our everyday human scale experience can not be automatically assumed to be binding on everything everywhere.
Variable time speed seems relevant to the God debate because it further illustrates a pattern of assumptions that often attempt to impose facts that are reasonable at human scale on to the immeasurably larger scale addressed by God theories.
Theists usually define God as being some kind of super intelligence, whereas atheists are more likely to perceive reality as being a function of the random collision of mechanical forces, that is, not intelligent. Is the heart of reality intelligent? Or not intelligent? While competing answers to this question battle each other for centuries, the quality of the question itself is most often ignored.
Our understanding of intelligence arises from our experience at human scale, and it is a useful concept within that realm. As example, if one is comparing humans and donkeys our concept of intelligence can be a relevant guide in such a comparison.
We should however keep in mind that everything we know about intelligence has been developed on one little planet in one of billions of galaxies, in one of what may be many universes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2Mgqyj0fa4
That is, our concept of intelligence arises from an indescribably small sample of reality. And yet, in the God debate this human scale concept of intelligence is so often casually assumed without questioning to be relevant to competing proposals about the fundamental nature of everything everywhere.
Asking whether reality is intelligent may be no more useful than asking whether reality wears sneakers, whether reality brushes it teeth, whether reality types on forums etc. That is, any attempt to impose human scale concepts upon all of reality may be so inherently flawed as to doom any further discussion from the start.
So what we can observe again is that an unwillingness to inspect and challenge the quality of the question being asked can so easily lead to enormous effort being invested in a centuries long competing answers contest which is reasonably labeled essentially meaningless.
I don't think we're made of space, it's more like we are made of matter that occupies space at a certain time. Regardless, I believe space exists.
It's not my purpose to debate physics, for I'm clearly not qualified to do so. My point is only that space can not be clearly said to exist or not exist. It's reasonable to say space exists, but then it's also reasonable to say that space has none of the properties we typically use to define existence.
What I'm attempting to point out is that while the God debate typically assumes existence is a simple yes/no question, the existence of the overwhelming majority of reality (space) does not appear to be at all a simple yes/no question.
The larger point is that if it's true that the yes/no question at the heart of the God debate is inherently flawed then all the competing answers being argued about may be essentially meaningless, that is, a complete waste of time.
Personally, I find this a very interesting possibility. Those on all sides of the issue who have married their personal identity to one of the competing answers may not feel the same way.
Hi Jake,
I understand that my remark is besides the point. I like your example about intelligence better than the one about space.
The problem I have with the god debate is that I believe that there are too many definitions of god, usually full of contradictions. If I had not been told by others about the concept of god, I would have never thought of it.
Quoting Jake
Couldn't that apply to a lot of other questions as well?
Western culture was for many centuries under the thumb of the powerful institution of the Church; in early Europe, the Church was practically the only institution apart from the various monarchies. And Western religion in particular put a premium on 'right belief' - ortho-doxa. It was imperative that you adhered to the orthodox understanding, and those who were deemed a threat to it, were dealt with very harshly; something which was also the cause of tremendous political and civil upheavals and wars. So in my view, that is one of the principle factors underlying the emergence of 'this secular age'. It was felt to be essential to define a philosophy which excluded reference to divinity, as a matter of principle. This was, for example written into the Articles of the Royal Society, which was the first scientific society.
That's where, in my opinion, the 'yes/no' question you're referring to originates. The general drift is, if you answer 'yes', then that is understood to entail many other beliefs, many of which seem deeply entangled with what are nowadays felt to be outmoded or superseded beliefs from an earlier period of culture. So it's felt to be easier to answer 'no' and then to proceed as if the natural domain, the empirical, observable universe, is real, and try to ascertain its governing principles by scientific method; to flesh out, or reverse-engineer, the foundations, purely on the basis of observation and mathematical reasoning:
[quote=Ethan Siegel]In science, our goal is to describe everything we observe or measure in the Universe through natural, physical explanations alone [sup][url =https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/04/05/fine-tuning-really-is-a-problem-in-physics/#121b1f9c2b80] 1[/url][/sup].[/quote]
But the problem is, as you accurately observe, that science itself has now cast considerable doubt on how cut-and-dried the naturalistic answer actually is. There are huge debates boiling in physics and cosmology about the nature of matter, of the 'standard model', the Big Bang (which is an inherently mystical idea to begin with!), parallel universes, and so on. So once you move past the formulaic, stereotyped 'god vs atheist' frame of reference, all kinds of possibilities become available, but they're a bit arcane for popular consumption; finding reference points and new frames of reference becomes the challenge. But an interesting challenge it is!
I didn't mean to imply that, and thank you for your contribution.
Quoting Vince
Yes, of course, agreed.
But we don't want excluding reference to divinity to become yet another dogma, right? We don't want yet another system of thought built upon unquestioning belief in unproven authorities, unexamined assumptions etc. We don't want to replicate some of the worst aspects of religion under a different colored flag and then delude ourselves in to thinking we've made a revolutionary change. At least this is my view.
Quoting Wayfarer
Simpler and easier for sure, but not especially useful if we willfully ignore inconvenient observations of reality, such as I'm attempting to point to above.
I hear what you're saying about the history, that seems a good explanation of how we got here. And prior to the discoveries of 20th century what you describe was an arguably reasonable process. But 100 years after Einstein it seems to no longer make sense to assume existence is a yes or no question. It is reasonable and practical to use that yes/no paradigm in our everyday lives, but God proposals address a far larger realm than that.
In any case, what I hope to accomplish is to invite members to shift some of their focus from the competing answers to the question being asked. If it is true that the question has the fatal flaw of bearing little resemblance to reality, then it's at least possible we may be able to sweep all the competing answers off the table in one efficient movement. To me, just one vote, exploring that possibility seems far more interesting than recycling the competing answers contest for the billionth time.
Yes to all of this, agreed.
What I liked about the documentaries linked to above is they seem to do a pretty good job of explaining some of these bizarre new insights in a manner that is pretty accessible to anyone with a sincere interest.
When one attempts to debate God, perspectively, one debates God relatively. - as one would debate an object.
Instead one should ponder the whole; when one does this, the answers become apparent.
When one substitutes 'God' for 'everything' - it is apparent that everything exists, is omnipotent, omnipresent and so forth. Yet, man wishes 'God' to be a man; to be a thing. And that is the issue.
God should be the whole, not a part.
I'm very sympathetic to this view, with the exception that at the moment one uses any noun such as God, one has created a "thing" presumed to be separate from all other things, for that is the function of nouns. Language almost forces us to create divisions which, in my view as well, are mostly illusory.
But that is what has happened, on a very deep level. Post-enlightenment philosophy constructed a meticulous model out of 'anything but God'. The French philosophes, the Scottish Enlightenment, Marxism, and many other cultural streams came together to try and define a coherent worldview without reference to the idea of anything holy or divine [sup] 1[/sup]. It's a deep issue, for that reason - it underlies a lot of debate, without being fully articulated, as it forms the basis for what we understand as normative judgement. So, a lot of the dynamics of the debate are in some ways unstated or assumed, because they're, in effect, an aspect of the collective psyche, not a matter of individual choice.
Quoting Jake
With the crucial caveat, that in a liturgical or soteriological setting, the invocation of the name of God is itself transformative ('the holy name'). But in another sense, I agree, in that names in profane usage are precisely 'objectifying', or reifying, 'making into a thing'. Whereas a proper sacramental relationship is defined in terms of 'I-thou' (pace Martin Buber) - again, a relationship with a real being or power, not simply an abstract philosophical concept.
Which leads to another underlying dynamic, which is that in the pre-modern world, the Universe was intuitively felt to be alive, as it was a creation or emanation of the God or Gods. So the human stance was intuitively different in that man was related to the Cosmos (hence, imago dei). This again was not something necessarily conscious or articulated, in that this too was kind of an underlying feeling, an 'arche' in some sense.
Whereas the overwhelming feeling of modernity is that of exile, otherness, separation, being cast out into a meaningless universe as a result of chance - a theme underlying a lot of 20th Century literature and drama. It is the plight of modernity.
Quoting Jake
Again, this is a consequence of the way in which the whole issue was posed by Christian orthodoxy: that God exists, and you either believe it (yes = saved) or don't (no = damned). So it's understandable to wish to side-step the entire dilemma!
It's also interesting to contrast this with the formulation of the Buddhist 'middle way' principle:
Wikipedia
Which is considerably more nuanced than monotheism.
Certainly, not merely nouns, but words and language as a whole is a distinction from what it is applied to; which is to say, describes.
Now, I will stray for a bit in saying that every monologue is a dialogue, for every monologue is one relating not to oneself, but a reflection. While it is to me, incomprehensible, when I attempt to think of it - I view monologue as mute; silent. To attempt to explain it, I would symbolise monologue through self-awareness; which whilst constantly active, is silent. Now that may be evidently contradictive, but I would view it thus: It is not contradictive, as everything has already been said and done; much like how a song and a movie are complete before they may be played.
The reason I brought that up, is to suggest that language is like the playing of the song and the movie and words are like any one frame of the song or the movie.
One cannot describe a song or a movie by a single frame; nor does a single frame constitute either, unless that single frame is all there is - the whole.
But as you know, God is viewed and referenced to as a frame but not as the frame that is all there is.
As if that was the view of God, calling it God would be pointless; literally pointless.
But like how a sentence, a word, a letter is a point somewhere - so the word God.
I think, should one preach, one should preach meaning - not words.
Not true. There are plenty who answer, "Don't know", or who at least consider that to be a third alternative.
Quoting Jake
This is where the distinction between science talk and ordinary language is useful. Ordinary language takes priority in my book, so, although I don't disagree with good science, I don't take that to be a justification for going around saying that the the Empire State building doesn't exist. That's rightly seen as a ridiculous thing to go around saying. It exists.
The question, "Does God exist?", is probably best met with another question, namely, "First, what are you talking about?".
This is a question I've always pondered, maybe you can help me. What is the best criterion for assessing what constitutes ordinary language?
I'm ignorant, just asking.
It's how people ordinarily talk. This can be observed, and most of us pick it up to the extent that by our age, it is easily identifiable. We know that we don't ordinarily talk of existence in a way which leads to seemingly absurd consequences, like that the Empire State building doesn't exist.
Yes, there are extreme examples that are obvious, but I'm talking about the more subtle examples that aren't so clearly weird. On the other hand, attributing ordinary language to a matter of common sense puts too much emphasis on subjectivity. I am asking what criterion we can use, which will account for the subtle examples that lie in the grey area between ordinary and weird, yet, while reigning in the arbitrary subjective determinations.
Some may, I don't. I make one assumption and it is that God exists. Then I follow it is its conclusion I haven't found any contradiction yet.
It's very clear. So, for instance, people prior to the enlightenment wouldn't talk of 'human rights' (clearly language on holiday) and so forth. A necessary, but not sufficient, condition of true OLP thought is that everything it says you already agree with (that's why an 'olp' philosopher circa , idk, 1340 would correctly mock people who didn't believe in God.) A sufficient, but not necessary, condition is that there're Terry Pratchett or Kurt Vonnegut style barbs about how things are absurd and we live in a society.
You could’ve spoken of the “existence” of “numbers” or “tables”. The meaning of the terms posed must, imo, be set out prior to further questioning. The meaning is limited by how the term functions in both plain speech and as a “configuration” of various ideas and practical applications.
This is the reason I insist on people stating what they mean by “God” before I can say anything else - most of the time this is met with accusations of “reductionism” and/or “word play”.
In the ethical sense the best I’ve heard is equivalent to Anselm’s definition (sorry, may have been someone else in the rough historical vicinity not him?) which is to say that “God” is the highest known “good”. This has it’s own embedded questions (which is also a key feature to concepts of a God; that of questioning and endless discovery) as we are constantly reevaluating what is “better”. This is likely why some more religious folks fail to grasp that religion doesn’t own “morality”.
As for “going beyond” this is somewhat esoteric in its formation. We “play” with ideas for the sake of it and occasionally stumble across something of practical application and use - not necessarily in a physicalist sense as we can orientate aspects of our sense of being that are not fully consumed with a “physicalist” outlook; such as “love” and “justice”.
In these sense “god” is a phenomenon of multiple forms, and life is a phenomenon of many aspects with the concept of “god” being the proposition of meaning existing where we cannot currently observe any. To talk of “god” is merely ONE expression of a universal human phenomenon; that is to “exist” in whatever way/form/idea we “exist”. We must necessarily attach ourselves to one more unified idea than another in order to differentiate “being”. It seems to me this ‘distance between’ tells us more in its silence than any word articulation - for this reason I can most certainly sympathise with the frustration I see in myself and others when trying to shed our light of understanding hoping to light the way for others and ourselves.
People will defend their grounding to the death because they’d likely die without. I really think the concept of the Axis Mundi is important in this regard. We cannot see the world other than how we see it. To have this torn away from us is going to cause resistance and/or death (metaphorically if not literally). We don’t really have an endless openness to the possibilities at our feet. We’re blinded, and sighted, by what we do and don’t see; this is also empirically verified in the neuroscientific data we’ve accumulated (neural priming) and apparent in psychological fixedness long before the empirical data gave a more physical substance to this knowledge.
As to meaningful and meaningless answers, we can spin this on its head and ask if one-hundred meaningless questions are worth knowing more than one meaningful answer? Therein is the confusion of language and the component of word play ready to greedily take on any phrase and destroy it: meaning we could say that knowing one-hundred meaningless/fruitless questions is of value negatively so it is ‘meaningful’ in that sense. The underlying article, as far as I can see - and as I’ve hopefully outlined prior to the above quote - is that the question of the question is one that avoids askance (quite obviously) by its very nature. Maybe we shouldn’t be viewing the ‘question’ as a ‘question’ ... but that is just another question and to break the cycle is not something logically tangible. In such realms fools, geniuses, madmen and shamans dance their silent dances - for them the question is ignored.
Quoting I like sushi
The question 'Does God exist?' requires a definition of God which is not always provided with the 'proof of God'. It is not a meaningful question without that definition.
Depending on the exact definition of God used, 'Does God exist?' may or may not be addressable with logic and science. For example, St Anselm’s definition as the GCB does not lead to any logical proof in my opinion (the GCB does not have to exist in reality despite what St Anselm says).
Defining God with all sorts of additional, far fetched attributes (like the 3Os) also makes proof of God a non-scientific / non-logical proposition.
For a logical proof of God, it is best to be quite strict and spartan with the definition used. For example, if you restrict the definition to 'the first cause', then it is possible to make a reasonable argument:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5577/was-there-a-first-cause-reviewing-the-five-ways/p1
Quoting Jake
I usually answer the 'Does God exist?' question with a probability God (according to a particular definition) exists. I don't see how anyone, theist/atheist/other, can arrive at yes/no as an answer with certainty.
Logic is generally a guide not a soothsayer. Meaning we can establish many logical arguments, but they’re always open to the questioning of inference ... hence why I decided to focus on the concept of “question” more than meaning. All questions assume at least the ‘ghost’ of a meaning, but the question as a activity is much more mysterious to me because it is so ‘obvious’ yet evades capture.
It is logically impossible for anything to exist without a first cause.
Quoting I like sushi
It's the axioms that are usually attacked. For example, all that is needed to show there is a first cause is causality (actually you can even show there is a first cause without causality) so causality often gets attacked.
Is it then logical for something to be a “first cause” if it cannot be caused? Such argumentation is called a contradiction. Just in case this isn’t clear you could argue about where a circle begins and ends ... it would be a thankless task and regardless where you propose the point the circle begins to be I’d likely not be massively convinced (unless you said “at the centre” or “at the circumference”)
Your second reply makes just as much logical sense as the first.
The first cause is timeless - beyond causality. It has 'always' existed. It was not created. This is the only way to avoid an infinite regress of time stretching back forever. It's the only way the universe can be.
I’ll stop there. Someone else may be able to see more eye-to-eye with you.
see here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/282657
I think you’d appreciate what is being discussed there maybe? It’s not theological, but it touches on a rather similar theme in regards to time. See you there, if not have fun here.
A timeless cause would have to always be the underlying cause of every action and interaction - not just the initial ‘something from (apparently) nothing’.
Aquinas's Argument From Necessary Being expresses this nicely, paraphrased below:
- Can’t get something from nothing
- So something must have existed ‘always’.
- IE if there was ever a state of nothingness, it would persist to today, so something has permanent existence.
- It’s not possible to exist permanently in time (an infinite regress; it would have no start so could not be), so the ‘something’ must be a timeless first cause.
See here for more reasons why there must be a timeless first cause:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5577/was-there-a-first-cause-reviewing-the-five-ways/p1
(sorry for going off topic)
Thanks for continuing to enrich the analysis by helping us see how we got where we are. Everything you're saying here makes sense to me, though I don't know the history well enough to say it myself.
I would phrase it that most of the time we don't think things through for ourselves but rather reference some authority, typically some slice of the group consensus. So for example, if we see lots and lots of very smart famous people operating within the boundaries of the typical God debate, we may tend to assume that this is the way we should approach the subject as well. While this is very understandable in human terms, it's not all that interesting or productive because the same going nowhere discussions tend to get recycled over and over again, as is easily observed on any philosophy forum. So, this thread is attempting to escape that small circle to the degree it is possible, for the few who may be interested in attempting that.
Quoting Wayfarer
For the purposes of exploration, we might note that even the term "relationship" assumes two separate things. This may be an appropriate conception, or perhaps not. The various possibilities seem worthy of investigation.
Catholic doctrine suggests that God is ever present in all times and places, which if taken literally would mean God IS all times and places. But, best I can tell, Catholics don't take it that far, and preserve the division between "God" and "everything else".
Space is ever present in all times and place, so if space were to have some quality of intelligence the Catholics may be on to something. But as explored above, our concept of intelligence seems hopelessly small in comparison to "all times and places" the scope of most God claims.
Quoting Wayfarer
This seems an important insight which I hope to address in more detail as we proceed together. For now I would just suggest that such an experience is still available, because what is obstructing it is not some collection of modern philosophies, but instead thought itself.
Quoting Wayfarer
In my view, this is addressed quite directly in the Garden Of Eden story written some 3,000 years ago. Although that story has too much of a children's fairy tale style to appeal to many moderns, if one can get past that and translate the story in to one's own preferred language, it seems interesting to note that the modern predicament is not a new phenomena, but just an acceleration of a long existing process.
In my view, the experience of exile, otherness, separation etc arises directly out of the divisive nature of thought (ie. the apple of knowledge). And so as thought has gradually become a more dominant part of the human condition the experience of division has increasingly taken center stage.
If it is true that the experience of separation arises not so much from the content of thought (such as modern philosophies) but from the nature of thought itself, that can be very good news. None of us can steer the course of history, but we can learn how to better manage our relationship with thought.
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, very understandable. But 500 years after the dawn of the Enlightenment, rejecting the ancient Catholic formula you refer to is no longer all that interesting, in my view at least.
In our time we might better invest our energy in challenging the new dogmas which modernity is generating. For just one example, recall my thread regarding challenging our "more is better" relationship with knowledge.
Quoting Wayfarer
Please educate us further here if it interests you. I'm sure that wherever this thread is heading somebody has probably already been there. It would be helpful to see what's come before.
But I do agree with you that "are there any gods or not" is probably the wrong question. It is probably a false question.
The question ultimately has to do with the true nature of the REALITY of existence...and what we humans can accurately say about it. The answer to the false question seems to require saying that "X" (in this case, a creator god) MUST exist...or that (a creator god) CANNOT exist.
My reasoning is that one cannot logically answer the false question "yes" unless the "god" MUST exist, because there is no way to determine IF it exists. The "yes" answer prevails only if the god MUST exist.
Conversely, one cannot logically answer the false question "no" unless the "god" CANNOT exist, because there is no way to determine IF it exists. The "no" answer prevails only if the god CANNOT exist.
My take (which I have shared many times) is:
[b][i]I do not know if gods exist or not;
I see no reason to suspect gods CANNOT EXIST...that the existence of gods is impossible;
I see no reason to suspect that gods MUST EXIST...that gods are needed to explain existence;
I do not see enough unambiguous evidence upon which to base a meaningful guess in either direction...
...so I don't.[/i][/b]
Every "Proof" someone provides of the existence of god, whether it's accompanied by a description or definition or none, begins with the assumption that god exists. Logic and reason don't function properly when they begin by assuming something exists in the absence of its demonstration. Logic has been pathologically misused for many centuries in this way.
I hear you continually claim that there are many "Proofs" for god and none against it. This is because those who argue on behalf of the existence of god make bold irrational and illogical claims and attempt to disguise them as rational and logical, and confirmation bias on the part of the reader can result in belief regardless how nonsensical the thing believed is then rationally and logically demonstrated to be.
Doesn't this rather completely dismiss relations and processes?
The Empire State Building doesn't exist as anything like the Empire State Building if the matter in question isn't in particular relations, undergoing particular processes. Relations and processes do exist, by the way. It would be misconceived to say that 99-point-whatever of the Empire State Building doesn't exist while only point-zero-whatever of it does exist. The properties that make it the Empire State Building supervene on not only the exact matter in question but the relations and processes of that matter. Properties of anything are a factor of all "three" of those things, with "three" in quotation marks because nothing really seems to be able to exist sans matter, relations or processes--so those "three" things are all really just different sides of the same coin.
Quoting Jake
On my view space isn't something that exists "on its own" per se. It's definitely nothing like a substance, a container, etc. Space is rather another way of talking about relations of matter. Or we could say that space supervenes on the fact that matter can be relationally separated from other matter (via extensional relation more specifically).
Quoting Jake
I don't agree with that, actually. It's rather that our concepts and beliefs often don't match up with the world very well, but we don't want to let go of those concepts/beliefs. They're at least pragmatically useful to us/it would be too much work to let go of them (and thus have to develop alternate concepts/theories). An example is the rather baffling beliefs that people have about meaning (in the semantic sense) being something other than an activity that our individual brains do (of course often in response to many environmental and social things, but nevertheless the phenomenon in question is something that our individual brains do).
What I'm claiming is:
- there are many proofs that a first cause exists
- there are some things we can deduce about the first cause
You could try to come up with some specific counter arguments.
The only proof of God I know that starts with God exists is French philosopher Jean Buridan's(c. 1300 – 1358):
- God exists.
- None of the sentences in this pair is true.
You have to assign true/false value to the above pair so that you don not get a contradiction.
There are absolutely NO PROOFS that a first cause exists.
NONE WHATSOEVER.
You keep claiming that...but it simply is not so.
There are 10 given here:
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5577/was-there-a-first-cause-reviewing-the-five-ways/p1
There are proofs in the sense of:
(1) If P, then there is a first cause.
(2) P
(c) Therefore, there is a first cause.
Which goes to show us just how much value proofs are.
Those all have promises with their premises, such as "Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another"
Quoting Terrapin Station
That is only the prime mover argument - 1 of 10 and anyway, that seems a good axiom to me. Everything is put in motion by something else. It looks like everything was put in motion by the Big Bang so he was right.
There's no way to know whether that's the case or not.
If you want to continue to claim something as a proof...that OBVIOUSLY is not a proof...
...nothing can be done about that except to call the error to your attention.
I've done that.
Exactly.
Are you suggesting two simultaneous 'first' movements?
There are no valid arguments or counter arguments concerning something that is presently impossible to determine. There is evidence, or there is a lack thereof. You talk about proof as if stringing words together is incontrovertible by default. If this is the case then you are both correct and incorrect at all times and so is everyone else.
There is no evidence of what you call first cause. There is certainly no proof of it. There is presently no way to determine it. There will probably never be a way to determine it.
There are numerous extensive and intensive methods of observing reality and describing its contents and its laws, yet no god or grand cause has ever been demonstrated. There has never been a motive apart from such conditions as overactive imagination, desperation for meaning, lack of awareness or assertion of dominance to proselytize this ideology you deem as proof.
There is no scenario in which attempted logic will ever succeed after beginning with a blind assumption.
To search for something for which there's no reason to search and through means that are incapable of discovering it is unconditionally unproductive and no string of words can demonstrate otherwise. To attempt to dissuade others from such a search is potentially productive.
The question 'was the universe created or not?' is imminently determinable.
Quoting whollyrolling
I gave you a load of evidence and you have not rebutted it. Put it this way, can you construct a model of the universe that does not have a first cause?
Quoting whollyrolling
The Big Bang?
Eternal Inflation?
These are first cause based models.
I already posited a model with no first cause, but all you heard was the inside of your own head. The question can't presently be answered. You haven't given a shred of evidence.
Also, the models you presented don't demonstrate cause.
We actually have no idea if that's the case, either.
Even the leading multiple universe theory (eternal inflation) posits a first movement.
First movement!
Gotta be Freudian!
Just busting chops, Devans.
The word "movement" has lots of meanings.
My thought after reading your post went to the euphemism, BM...initialization of "bowl movement."
No nastiness meant.
To me it was a humorous thought. I laughed...and then shared it.
I had not thought of it like that... a first movement... the prime mover... not awfully respectful!
I believe that certain ancient religions associated creation with the bodily fluids of certain gods (Egypt), pretty sure none of them posits God taking a crap as the birth of the universe though!
Though obviously when life is getting you down, maybe you could imagine...
I went through a strong rejection phase against any form of organised religion and what I saw as 'consensus reality'. But my views have softened, because I have begun to appreciate the vast diversity and depth of the Christian tradition. It encompasses all kinds of perspectives, some dogmatic and brutal, others refined and nuanced.
Second, and I'm certainly not claiming any attainments, I have had epiphanies of sorts at various times of my life. Of course the implications of these are extremely hard to communicate, and I find that when I try to do so, I'm often completely misunderstood. But I make the point because I think such episodes have opened up perspectives about these questions which cast them in a new light.
A somewhat tongue-in-cheek illustration: imagine if you were from a world where there was no sound. Everything was communicated visually. You mount an interstellar mission and land on earth, and happen to fetch up in a concert theatre, where an orchestra is playing. What in heaven are these people doing? you would wonder. What are those things they're holding, what purpose do they serve? If you were an anthropologist, you could even come up with an ornate theory about the visual meaning of their actions - look how well synchronised their movements are! But of course without understanding the nature of sound, you would have no idea.
So, interpreting the 'nature of religious experience' is analogous to this. Often when you read of such things, what you're encountering is a second-hand account of an epiphany. But the person who has that epiphany might see something or understand something quite outside ordinary experience - another dimension of experience altogether. 'What "dimension"?', you might demand. But without an inkling of that experiential dimension, you can only conjecture. 'Oh well, she's making it up', is quite an understandable reaction.
You could argue that a great deal of what is put under the umbrella term of 'religion' are the records of just such 'encounters with the numinous'. But then when they're encoded in symbolic form, they become like a two-dimensional depiction of a three-dimensional object. So something becomes lost. And now, with the incredibly rapid transformation of culture and society - we are living through the greatest rate of change that the planet has ever seen - the original intent or meaning of these symbolic forms is now almost entirely lost. So maybe what you're engaged in, is a kind of 'reimagining' of what the original intuition was before it became encoded in the cultural tropes of what we now see as 'religion' (as I myself have devoted a lot of time to.)
To which end, have a read of John Hick's 'who or what is God?'
Quoting whollyrolling
What you're not seeing here, is that the 'extensive and intensive methods' you're referring to, are those of modern science, which was defined in such a way as to specifically exclude any ideas of first, final or formal causes. The whole point of modern scientific method is to proceed wholly in terms of what can be empirically observed, quantified and explained in line with current physico-mathematical hypotheses. So while it may be true that Devans99 exhibits confirmation bias in his arguments, this is no less the case for yourself, who is essentially arguing from the general perspective of positivism.
It isn't that way by design, it's that way by ignorance of its design. When conducted properly, it should be objective, or as close to objectivity as possible with the information available. The problem isn't science, it's people. I don't accept the views of every celebrity scientist who takes to a stage, neither should many of them stand up to public scrutiny.
There's no confirmation bias where there's nothing to confirm or deny and no reason to attempt to confirm or deny it.
The problem is, nothing is 'wholly objective', right? Science, scientific method, and indeed knowledge itself, runs up against limits. I mean, science has failed to discover an ultimate material unit, 'the atom'. At the other end of the scale, debate is boiling about whether there is or is not a multiplicity of universes, and whether this is even a scientific question at all.
But even that is beside the point, in some way. If you become familiar with the meaning of the idea of the first cause, then it becomes clear that such ideas are excluded from science as a matter of principle. Modern science simply has nothing to say about it, and shouldn't have, as a matter of principle; it starts by saying, 'let's not consider such things as 'first causes'. But then, as 'science' is now the 'arbiter of what is real', then for a lot of people, if science has nothing to say about it, then it's not meaningful. Which means, you're back at positivism.
Sometimes things are excluded as a matter of efficiency. How much would science have failed humanity if it had spent its entire history chasing unicorns? It would just be another religion, and maybe for some it is. But it isn't conceptually a failure, it's rather a good idea. Either way, I don't rely indiscriminately on science. And I use the term "objective" very loosely.
It makes many indispensable things, and I wouldn’t contemplate living without it. However while science is neither philosophy nor religion it tends to occupy the space that was previously accorded to them in today’s secular-scientific culture. Understanding the implications of that takes a lot of study, for example, in philosophy of science and related subjects. But meanwhile, it is often simply assumed that science has proven or shown that the axioms of traditional metaphysics are empty or false when really it’s done no such thing.
That's a good one sentence summary of what I'd hoped to accomplish.
However, I must admit that such a hope is illogical given that there is no market for reimagining such ancient constructs. From Nobel prize winners down to stoned college sophomores everyone is comfortable with the rules of the God debate game as it is currently configured. Nobody really cares that those rules are built upon nothing but air, they just want to play the game. Theists will keep chanting their stuff, atheists will keep chanting theirs, and everyone is happy with this pattern as it is.
Although that pattern seems a hopelessly repetitive and fatally boring process to this reader, it does have it's own logic given that life is short, thus fun is good, and the God debate game in it's currently illogical configuration has been proven to be fun for many.
Challenging the God debate on a philosophy forum might be compared to challenging the divinity of Jesus on a Jehovah's Witness forum. Yes, a clever person might be able to present devastating logical arguments, but the effort itself is not logical because it will accomplish nothing other than stir up pointless unproductive controversy, or just bore the audience to sleep. The logical thing to do in such a circumstance would be to simply leave the Jehovah's Witnesses in peace to do what they find necessary.
Consider the avant garde jazz musician who is reimagining the musical scale and chord structure. Such a reinventing of the musical wheel is fascinating to the musician, but....
What the audience wants are songs they already know, tunes they can sing along with.
The illogical jazz musician tries to shove his new form of music down the audience's throat, and winds up working as a door greeter at Walmart.
The logical jazz musician covers the same old classic American standards every jazz band covers and perhaps some Beatles tunes. Now the audience is happy and the musician can make a living playing music.
This process might raise the question, how does one become an authority that others reference? And the answer is simple. Just like the jazz musician above, one becomes an authority by giving some sizable number of folks whatever it is they want.
The Catholic Church is 2,000 years old, is a trusted authority for many, because it excels at giving large numbers of people what they seek. Christopher Hitchens was a popular speaker because he too delivered a product that many in the public wished to consume.
In the end it is the audience who determines who the authorities are, and...
The audience isn't actually all that interested in the issue.
A lot of people but not everyone.
And I write jazz, myself. Jazz is continually being reinvented and reimagined. Avantgarde has always been a minority movement in a minority art form. And one becomes a jazz musician by - well, you have to have some talent - but also by loving the art, and by living it. Those who created the art form in the first place aren’t necessarily ‘authorities’ so much as archetypes.
And why so negative? What’s point of starting a thread like this if it only turns out to be sour grapes? :angry:
But it can be argued it is weighted towards 'no' because the 3Os seem unlikely (so inductive evidence against the proposition is built into the proposition).
Contrast that to the question 'was the universe created?' - this is a true 50/50 proposition. The less demands you place on God, the more likely his existence is I think.
Ok, fair enough, so introduce me to those who are challenging the foundations of the God debate. You're clearly more broadly educated on such subjects than I, so I welcome your input.
Quoting Wayfarer
Is the above commentary negative? Or is it just inconveniently accurate?
That said, there never was a point to starting a thread like this, and I knew that before doing so, so any disappointment I might experience is entirely my own problem. Seriously.
I'm a typoholic, and I'm compelled beyond reason to type such things somewhere. If you can help me find a more appropriate place to type them, I'm all ears.
That said, the most rational thing I could probably do is to just let all this go. Working on that, making little bits of progress here and there.
Well, that’s what we’re doing here. I thought the videos you posted made some good points. I hope you looked at the John Hick article. There are many interesting people and centres and schools exploring this space. I agree that there are many people that fall into one side or another but no need walk away, just take a breather from time to time and let things percolate.
Quoting Wayfarer
------------
Ok, so one direction we might explore is...
If we wipe theism and atheism off the table, who is left?
------------
Another issue of interest here is the structure of authority. Is it true that authority is assigned by merit, or is it more true that authority is more a product of a competitive cultural marketplace, where whoever does the best job of giving the audience whatever it is they want is rewarded with authority?
Let's imagine some hypothetical expert who for convenience sake I will name "The Genius". Let's imagine that The Genius understands these topics far better than any of us, me and you included. Let's imagine for the sake of this thought experiment that The Genius has indeed arrived at the truth of the matter.
Under what conditions would the The Genius be assigned authority? To be less "negative" I'll use myself as an example.
Like many of us here, I'm pretty emotionally attached to my pet ideas. So, does The Genius validate anything I've been publicly stating? If he/she doesn't, will I be interested? What if what the Genius reveals demonstrates in a convincing manner that nothing I've been saying for years has any value and my posts have all been a big waste of time, fueled primarily by my ego, a not unreasonable theory. What then? Will I surrender everything I've spent a lifetime building and embrace The Genius?
If I am truly interested in the topic I would so surrender. But am I truly interested in the topic, or only in "my position" on the topic?
If The Genius can't or won't deliver what the audience wants to hear, will they become an authority? Or will cultural authorities, like successful businessmen, always be those who excel at satisfying the customer?
A question, if I may:
If a GOD exists...especially one that sought to "reveal" itself to an ancient, relatively unsophisticated, unknowledgeable, relatively superstitious people...
...why would the GOD continue to make it so difficult to KNOW its existence to people who are relatively sophisticated, relatively knowledgeable, less superstitious now?
If the GOD exists...and wants humans to KNOW of its existence...
...why not "reveal" itself in a totally unambiguous way?
Why should people have to go through what you went through to derive this communication?
Why the need for an epiphany...when absolute certainty could easily be given by the GOD?
But I must agree with you that reality is probably not as obvious as science hitherto claimed. Empirical demonstration or proof is a reasonable demand because otherwise we'll be exorcising demons rather than giving antibiotics to a man suffering from cholera which would have fatal results. That said we only have to realize that once radiowaves were not empirically demonstrable and yet they existed.
We have two options:
1. Believe that reality is not bound or limited in any way by what we call empiricism. Ghosts and demons may exist.
2. We need to develop our empirical tools further and maybe, in the future, it could be possible to detect evidence of the supernatural and, strangely, then it wouldn't be supernatural anymore.
Give an example.
I hope you eventually answer my question.
Sorry, but I very seldom view videos posted to me.
Hide and Seek.
God has no way of communicating his existence to us - the universe is billions of light years in size - how could we expect God to possibly communicate to us?
Can you think of a way that God could communicate to us (assuming non-omnipresence)?
- Messages in the sky look different from different angles, would be destroyed in the BB in any case
- Messages encoded in the standard model might upset a delicate balance
God is aware that life exists in the universe but not aware of our presence on earth in any specific sense IMO.
You are suggesting a God who could create the planet Earth, the other planets in the Solar System, the Sun, the 200+ billion stars in our galaxy...and the 300+ billions of other galaxies we know of...
...and it cannot do something as simple as contact us????
C'mon.
Yes.
Are you thinking the only way would be by writing a message in the sky?
I'm saying I cannot think how. For starters, how would God ever find us amongst the 2*10^23 stars in the observable universe?
If you can think how, please tell...
If there is a being that could create the entire of what we puny humans call "the universe"...which may well be just a tiny part of a much, much greater "verse"...it could find us the way we can find our car keys in the morning.
Look in the refrigerator.
The universe has only been around for 14 billion years - you cannot search 2*10^23 star systems in 14 billion years - no where near enough time - so there is no way God could have found us.
Devans...step away from the edge.
We do not even know if there are any gods...let alone that particular being you are calling God.
And you are assuming an entity that can create EVERYTHING...and then limiting its ability to find us.
Stop! You are going to fall off.
Its just basic math:
number of stars in universe / number of years universe is old = number of stars God must search a year
2*10^23 / 1.4*10^10 = 1.4*10^13
So God must search 1.4*10^13 stars a year in order to find us. That is plain not possible.
You are being a jerk here, Devans.
If the god could actually make all of that...it could easily search the whole thing in 10 humans seconds.
And stop with the phony statistics...and pretense at "basic math."
You do not know the number of stars in the universe...you do not know how many years old the universe is...so it is all bullshit.
Quoting Frank Apisa
Number of stars in observable universe:
https://www.space.com/26078-how-many-stars-are-there.html
Age of universe:
https://www.space.com/24054-how-old-is-the-universe.html
Quoting Devans99
I said you do not know how many stars there are...and I stand by it.
Neither does anyone else alive...or who has ever lived.
As for your link...notice how many times the word "estimated" is used...and what it means. It is being revised as we speak.
There was breaking news last week of a major revision of the age of the universe.
Also keep in mind that prior to the early 20th century...scientists supposed they knew the extent of the universe...and found that they had missed the mark by a factor of gazillions.
You should either refrain from statistics...
...or learn to use qualifiers. And the qualifiers should not include "it is basic math."
How about:
You want herpes.
Or
The empire state building does not exist on the moon.
So God can't find us? He has the ability to search for us but not enough time to find us. That's almost comical.
As a matter of fact he might not even know we're here.
He'd better not find out, or else he's going to be really pissed.
The reason I didn't answer is that it is (pardon me) condescending in the extreme. Us moderns sit on our comfy perch, convinced that all the benighted, backwards people of 'earlier times' were primitive superstitious fools who thought that the Gods made thunder. Maybe if we're nice about them, we can understand some sliver of something that they might just have understood. Maybe.
There are radically different ways of understanding this whole question. Earlier in life I discovered the writings of some of the bona fide Indian sages (as distinct from the many hoodoo gurus that came along later). They had a wholly different kind of spirituality about them than what I understood as 'religion'. The key insight of those teachers was the idea of 'God realisation'. To cut to the chase, this is the teaching that God is not 'something that exists', but is the only real existent. All of what us deluded mortals take to be real are ephemera - shadows on the cave wall, in Platonic terminology. We're so full of ourselves, our ideas, our pursuits and pleasures, and then it all comes to a crashing halt after four-score years and ten; we don't actually understand or see what is real. And that process of 'seeing what is real' *is* the aim of any religious or spiritual practice (yoga, in their lexicon).
Teachers of that style were designated 'Advaita Vedanta', and they're radical and non-conformist by Hindu standards - counter-cultural, in a sense. But their kinds of teachings, as well as the teachings of the Sufis (Idres Shah) and other Eastern and Western mystics convey a radically different sensibility to what we normally understand as religion.
That's something for you to think about! I agree the whole subject of authority is vexed especially in regard to religion. I think that's part of what I regard as the shadow cast by religion in Western history - the sense of the God-father-figure sternly judging and consigning unrepentant sheep into hell. Looms large in the whole debate.
If only it was so simple as looking at the track record of religion and weighing pro against con.
But if we were doing it correctly = Utopia because God = exists. And because I don't understand anything God = exists.
What's the supposed problem? I know what they ordinarily mean, which is explained by my previous reply to you, and I would rightly answer that, no, I do not want herpes, and yes, the Empire State building does not exist on the moon. The second one is a little ambiguous, but I'm assuming that you're talking about the location of the Empire State building, which is how I think the statement would be most commonly interpreted. It exists, but it is not on the moon, it is on Earth.
Are you doing that philosophy-type thing of making a problem over nothing?
Experts extract complication from simplicity.
The ordinary man doesn't know what he knows either, just accepts his fate by letting it go for the sake of a common good, and the philosopher, an expert, accepts his fate by verbosely clinging to it, or to some defiance of it, on behalf of a common evil, and there is no ordinary man, and there is no philosopher, so all musings are vanity.
The way I’ve been trying to tackle it is to think about all the information we have about ‘God’ as expressions of genuine human experience, without rushing into an evaluation. So, Moses relaying what God apparently told him on the mountain when everyone else only heard thunder probably didn’t happen in the way it was written - but that doesn’t mean he didn’t have an experience which he was motivated (as a human being in time and culture and with human emotions, etc) to describe in this particular way, and then for someone to write it in this particular way.
The question I keep asking is: how do these experiences we associate with ‘God’ relate to each other and to the experiences/understanding/knowledge of the universe that we can verify? What is it about the universe and how humans relate to it that enables these expressions of experience to make sense to those who experienced them? And if I leap to a conclusion based on what information I have, and then encounter those who disagree, I have to exhaust the very high probability that they at least have experiences of the universe that I don’t. Like the blind men and the elephant...
I realise it’s a messy way to approach it, particularly to those who prefer to work systematically or analytically (or alone). It often feels like I’m piecing together a jigsaw puzzle without an image - one that doesn’t have any edge pieces to speak of. I’m not looking for a definition of ‘God’ - I’m looking for an understanding of the universe that is fully inclusive of these experiences we associate with ‘God’ and spirituality, rather than of what anyone claims to ‘know’ about ‘God’.
As far as I’m concerned, it shouldn’t matter whether ‘God’ exists or not. What matters is that people keep referring to experiences of ‘God’ as if the personal and reciprocal nature of such experiences point to the existence of an actual, sentient ‘being’. Like our experience and awareness of ‘time’, it could easily point to our ignorance of the complex relations between all events in the universe, and may effectively ‘disappear’ as an external entity as our awareness develops. I think we need to accept that possibility, frightening though it may seem to people of faith, if we’re going to engage meaningfully in the discussion.
But just as ‘time’ still exists for us in our inner experience of relating to the world, I’m confident that ‘God’ will continue to exist as part of this same inner experience for many of us. And for those of us who approach the discussion from an atheist perspective, accepting the existence of God as a very real part of people’s experience of the world will be as much of a challenge. That’s my take, anyway. Sorry for the long post.
This is a great cliche! Which explains why I typically don't spend a lot of time reading the experts.
Quoting Wayfarer
Easy question. That's how we nerds jerk off.
Quoting Possibility
But if our definitions of existence and non-existence bear little resemblance to reality, then all such questions are rendered pointless.
Or said another way...
...I didn't answer the question because there are no decent answers.
The epiphany nonsense is nonsense.
If there is a god that wanted to KNOW it exists...no epiphanies would happen.
Sorry you were insulted by my question. But considering the question might be a lot more beneficial than reading all those books that lead to your epiphany.
2) Our notion that time is a fixed measure which can be used to calculate the distance between events, completely wrong.
3) Our concept of intelligence, central to the God debate, derived from an immeasurably small sample.
4) Our unexamined assumption that human reason can make meaningful calculations on subjects the scale of gods, totally unproven, and not very likely.
For those few who might wish to actually learn something about religion...
Observe how you've completely ignored all of the above and continued with the same old God debate game as if none of these inconvenient facts were present.
Such a willful denial of reason, such a determined clinging to a comfortable fantasy... Not the religious condition, but the human condition.
To prove this, observe how I keep typing such things over and over again despite any evidence that it will ever do any good. Me too. Clinging to the self flattering fantasy that I can make some kind of difference here. I see the evidence of my delusion, I see the evidence is inconvenient, so I ignore it, and keep on doing the same old thing, over and over and over.
Human condition.
or, because you're never going to get the answer you think you deserve. You really should have had a lesson to Keb' Mo', he nails it. :-)
No, I'm just saying that there is an enormously undefined grey area in which ordinary language operates, and it is a sort of cop-out, philosophically speaking.
I agree. The entire question is pointless, because neither definitions of God nor existence bear any resemblance to either the experience or understanding of reality. Hence the rest of my post:
Quoting Possibility
Quoting Possibility
Then one wonders why we are endlessly discussing it in thread after thread after thread....???
But, there may be a good reason for that. If the process eventually leads us to the understanding that we have no idea what we're talking about, that could be useful information that could be acted on in a productive manner.
Got a long way to go yet though, eh?
Problems appear when a person expects anyone else to immediately feel the same fear and trembling awe. (The movie Contact depicts this scenario wonderfully). Perhaps only Art can convey such depth of feeling, such breadth of vision. (Art who? Vandelay? lol). But what about the majority of us who can’t produce a masterpiece that will make the ground tremble? We can only share our undoubtedly limited perspective, like the Ancient Mariner telling his tale. Hopefully as honestly, humbly, and accurately (and logically) as possible. If someone else happens to find it helpful or at least interesting, all the better then.
(And here I present a best case scenario. Those who callously wrap themselves in the holy and pure robes of sanctity and righteousness to intentionally mislead others for power and profit are the dregs of the earth, and are rightly mocked. Self-righteousness is the last refuge of a scumbag.)
For “evangelical” atheists who scorn and deride those clueless masses still injecting themselves with Marx’s “opiate of the people” *, I have little respect or time. Certainly, contempt, and controversy sells. And they are raking it in as much as the Bible-and-bombs school of thought(lessness).
How can one balance the need for answers with the benefits of having an open mind? It is like the tightrope that the Karamozov brothers were on.
I respect atheism in general. I respect belief in general. The ignostic skeptic in my mind debates with the curious mystic. I would not get rid of either of them, since they balance its opposite without negating each other. That which seems more complex and interrelated upon inspection is more deeply satisfying, imho. Simple answers devised after much market testing smacks of an ideological pyramid scheme.
(Perhaps this is a distinction between the natural and the artificial: upon closer inspection, does something display a complex connection with the outside world? Or is it all surface, with no depth beyond itself?)
(parts of this are from a post from another thread. Wanted to give it a chance to be ignored here too, lol).
* Marx’s full quote has much more nuance:
[hide][i]The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.
Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.[/i][/hide]
Attempting to break down “the big question” into smaller ones, this thread about spirit was created. One would imagine that if there is indeed an Absolute source, there is a good chance that It would intersect or interact with us generally in the realm of what is described as spirit. And on the other hand if there is no Creator, the needs, hopes, dreams, and weaknesses might also reside in our spirit, or higher/deeper consciousness.
Quoting Jake
Exactly. The naïveté, hubris, or emotional longing that compels us to declare and define absolutely the nature and existence (or non-existence) of the Absolute is quite understandable and all-too-human. But we live in a relative world where absolute answers are rarely, if ever, seen in the wild. To put in Buddhist terms, let not desire or aversion lead us into ignorance.
Agreed, very understandable and very human. I'm attempting to develop more compassion for this need and a more realistic acceptance of it. I managed this a long time ago with the religious, but apparently still have considerable work to do in regards to the atheist true believers.
Quoting 0 thru 9
I'm not debating here, just suggesting that if ignorance is the reality of our situation then let's embrace it and mine this asset for the value that it offers. Not sure how this relates to Buddhism though. For now it's merely Jakeism. :smile:
Or, to put it another way, problems appear when we try to translate an experience in to an explanation. A better approach may be to skip the explanations, and offer some practical tips on how the other person might have their own experience. An even better approach would probably be to wait until they ask for such tips. :smile:
Quoting Possibility
Yes, that is a reasonable approach to that which seems to beyond reason. (Sometimes thinking about the possibility of the Divine is like trying to catch hydrogen atoms in a butterfly net, lol. Or as Huston Smith put it, a dog trying to comprehend the contents of a book by giving it “the sniff test”). Without totally abandoning healthy skepticism, I think we can learn from each other’s experiences.
Quoting Possibility
There is something of value in a “messy way”. Life is messy, birth is difficult, death is a downer. We intuitively know this, and eventually make some kind of peace with it. The experience of consciousness, and the awareness of experience is foundational to us. It is difficult to package and market, which is probably why simplistic slogans to rally the troops are so prevalent... and unfortunately so effective at controlling behavior.
Thanks for your reply, and for starting this thread which hopefully (with all of our best efforts) will generate more light than heat. And any heat present be used to warm the cockles of our hearts (whatever those are, hee hee).
Quoting Jake
A noble goal, which if achieved, might deserve a Nobel prize, lol. They may be two sides of the same coin. (There’s no anti-Catholic like an ex-Catholic, as a saying goes). The polarity of beliefs, be they religious, political, sociological, or other, is attention-grabbing and divisive by nature. It’s a love-hate relationship. One person’s meat is another’s poison. For example, some entertainments I used to devour years ago, I can no longer stomach. Strength is a quality, but more is definitely NOT always better (despite appearances to the contrary).
Quoting Jake
Definitely. Just adding to what @Wayfarer wrote above. Buddhism (and Taoism, which if I recall correctly you had elsewhere expressed an interest in) has a useful way of reconciling the opposites, as in the symbol and idea of yin and yang. Apparent opposites that complement rather than compete or wage battle against the other. In very general Buddhist terms, the ignorance you refer to might be more like an acceptance of sunyata, or emptiness. Ignorance (in Buddha’s thought, such as I understand it) would be more like pounding one’s own head with a hammer, and taking aspirin for the pain.
Quoting Jake
Yes. Sometimes, I wonder if our animal pets listen to all our babbling, and think to themselves “there they go... human-splaining everything again! :monkey:
That isn't where the process leads, that's where you're trying to lead us.
Yet you haven't been able to provide an example, upon request, relating to the topic of discussion, where my method has caused a problem.
And what's your argument for that? Just because you've surrounded what I quoted above with text, that doesn't mean that you've actually supported it.
I give ordinary language priority because it makes the most sense in the bigger picture. It's appropriate to say that the Empire State building doesn't exist if we're playing a secluded language game where saying something like that, which is absurd on the face of it, is a rule of the language game. But what use is that outside of a little community of self-important know-it-alls? At the end of the day, the Empire State building is still there. It clearly exists. All you would've succeeded in doing is using the language differently, unusually, in a way which will raise eyebrows and require an explanation, whereas I don't have that issue because I choose to talk like a normal person and am not a willing participant in language games which I judge to be a foolish waste of time.
Oh dear, too late for that, but anyway, life goes on.
Quoting 0 thru 9
Aha! I meet someone who understands what I am trying share, probably better than I do. :smile: If I had a brain I would be on a Buddhist forum, where I might actually learn something.
Yes, so long as one feels one has "The Answer", whether theist or atheist, there is really no need for an investigation, so the process degrades in to a competitive ideological shouting match.
I've been attempting, however ineptly, to pull the rug out from under the God debate so that the fantasy answer machine is destroyed. What makes this rather difficult is that many or most speaking to this subject are not actually interested in the God debate at all, but rather in the competitive shouting match experience which can be launched from it.
Anyway, should one succeed in liberating oneself from the God debate, if all the unproven and unprovable authorities are destroyed and discarded, one is left with nothing, no ground to stand on, no answer, or even any methodology which might promise an eventual answer.
At first, such an outcome may sound like a distressing, depressing failure. Isn't this opposite of what we were reaching for???
On the surface, yes, it is. But just underneath the surface the failure of the God debate is leading us towards the experience of unity that we most seek. That is, maybe the failure is not really a failure after all?
We feel isolated, separate, alone, fearful, and sometimes angry about this because we don't know how to escape. We try to think our way out of the trap, perhaps through religion, perhaps through reason, or something else, anything. And so we build a mountain of fantasy knowings and cling to it fiercely, protecting it from all enemies.
But what is hopefully eventually given to all who are patient and serious is the realization that it is thought itself which is generating this experience of isolation and separation, and the fear which springs from it. Once one has seen this it becomes obvious that no philosophy or ideology can cure the hunger we feel, because every one of them is made of thought.
But the emptiness can heal the wound. Not because it's some magic mystery medicine, but simply because it's not thought, it's not a conceptual machine which depends entirely on the processes of division. It's not that logical to assume one can reach the experience of unity via a device whose specific purpose is to divide reality in to conceptual parts.
I have little idea how this might relate to Buddhism, because as may have long been obvious, I'm not well read. Well, that is, I don't read many books.
Why settle for second hand information about the real world when the real world is all around us in every moment of our lives, entirely willing to be read directly? If Jesus knocked on our front door would we talk to him directly, or close the door and go read a book about Jesus instead? The answer is just common sense, right?
Regrettably, members are now reading what somebody says about the reality of the human condition, the very flawed methodology I just got done debunking. And I'm helping them do it. No wonder my application for guru status was denied!! :smile:
Blah, blah, blah to the power of ten. Oh well, the embarrassing irony is helping build my sense of humor. :smile:
From an outside perspective, it looks like you have characterised investigations which do not reach exactly the same conclusions as you have reached as "ideological shouting". The irony is that that itself seems more ideological than investigative, especially when you decide to simply block out or dismiss these critical outside perspectives.
As I have mentioned previously, this theme is rather similar to the teaching of Krishnamurti. From the current homepage:
Very similar, right? So is Krishnamurti 'an authority'? He always denied it. 'The speaker', he would say, referring to himself, 'is like a telephone'.
I was significantly influenced by Krishnamurti in my youth. I credit him with first introducing me to the insight that thought is inherently divisive (ie. operates by a process of division). At this point so many years later, I can no longer say where the boundary is between that influence and other influences, my own life experience etc. For the last 15 years or so my primary influence has been a state park up the road from here.
Quoting Wayfarer
JK would have likely referred to the God debate as a bunch of silly nonsense, or words to that effect. There is also the similarity that JK typically didn't just spell things out, but tried to create an atmosphere where the reader conducts their own investigation. I've been reluctant to spell many things out as well until readers have rid themselves of the God debate, which rarely happens, so I remain mum on some topics.
Quoting Wayfarer
As I'm sure you know (but most others probably won't) JK was raised from a child to be the next big savior figure etc, a role which he rejected when he came of age. He called a big meeting of the religion being built around him and told everyone to go home, claiming that "truth is a pathless land".
That said, Krishnamurti had a confident authoritative manner of speaking which did unintentionally suck some people in to authority worship. I once had an online conversation with the lead teacher at the Krishnamurti school in Ojai California who told me Krishnamurti was the closest thing to a god we would see, which I read while banging my head against the monitor.
Another similarity between myself and JK is that I say way too much way too often. This can be useful to some (like myself when I was young) because the only way some folks will ever be able to enter this arena is through intensive nerd analysis. JK met over thinkers where they actually live, and that was helpful to me at the time.
All that said, there was another book which came out around the same time I met JK called "Be Here Now". I'm sure you know the book. I dismissed it as a college sophomore because the book Be Here Now was sort of a cartoon comic book, and I was an "intellectual!!" who wanted the "serious information!!". :smile:
With the passing of time I've come to see those three words Be Here Now are actually all any serious person really needs, and long honking bloward rants such as this are really just getting in the way, delaying the moment of decision.
But, I was born to blow hard, and nothing can be done about that apparently, and so I accept my embarrassing situation with a sense of humor as often as possible.
And, I spend the majority of my days in the woods from dawn to dusk. That too. Very important.
There is a cure for this problem which I am pioneering. Regularly act like a junior high school jerk. I find I have a natural talent for this technique and am perfecting it to a high art form. It might have helped if Krishnamurti had added some fart jokes to his talks. :smile:
Encountered it in a shared house in London in 1972 (the year after it came out). Of course I was massively impressed by it, but I have never really followed Ram Dass in the decades since.
I read Krishnamurti from about 1978-84, but I realised that 'reading Krishnamurti' (and even listening to his talks) would only get one so far. If he hadn't been 'discovered', he might have lived in obscurity and died young, but I think his general character would have been much the same. But I think teachings are very like the Buddhist Prajñ?p?ramit? teachings. (Actually the Dalai Lama said the same.)
But when he asks 'is it possible for the content of that consciousness to be dissolved?' the answer is: it's extremely difficult! Might not be for him and his (rare) ilk, but for persons, for individuals like ourselves - not so easy! Left to our own devices, that will never happen, unless by some miraculous 'stroke of insight' (like what happened to Jill Bolte Taylor, the neuroscientist who had a massive stroke which also turned out to be a spiritual awakening.)
So that is where the necessity of a 'sadhana' ('praxis' in Western terminology) arises. To actualise that sense of 'selfness awareness' is a life (or more's) work.
Agreed. But I think JK himself would have said the point was not to listen to him, but to conduct one's own investigation. The way I see it, he was just trying to talk folks in to doing that. The problem though of course is that often the speaker becomes an alternative to one's own investigation. Thus, the urgent need for fart jokes. :smile:
Quoting Wayfarer
I know nothing about this, please feel free to educate us further. Also, have begun digging in to John Hick as you suggested.
Quoting Wayfarer
Maybe. Certainly it's difficult if not impossible to establish that as a permanent condition. That's not even a healthy goal imho.
However, if one is reasonable and realistic, lowering the volume of thought is available through simple techniques. Techniques aren't even required necessarily. For me, it's just time in the woods. Ok, lots of time. But still it's the time that does the work really, more than me. If you show up, and hang around, and stick around, and don't be greedy and impatient, good things in the right direction can happen pretty much on their own.
Quoting Wayfarer
I heard that story on NPR, fascinating! We should dig that story up and share it.
You know, Buddhism (and several other ancient Indian traditions like Jain) were actually called the ‘forest-dwelling schools’.
I don't mind cosmic consciousness arguments if that makes me agnostic then sure.
Interesting!
Why don't you care about it?
I personally do not believe in cosmic consciousness either.
Quoting Devans99
Why? You're giving this thing human properties such as drives. They don't necessarily apply to it. How do you define "drive" anyway? Does the moon have a "drive" to revolve around the earth? That statement is just too vague. And I don't see why the beginning of the universe needed a drive. Do apples need a "drive" to fall down wards? If you mean to say that drive only applies to conscious creatures then you've already assumed the answer to your question and stated that the first cause is conscious which is a logical fallacy
Quoting Devans99
Because we've pretty much explained every possible physical phenomena and we haven't found that this "first cause" factors in anywhere or else we reinterpreted it as something else. We know how and why particles go where they go and there is (almost) no unexplained phenomena left. Whatever this first cause is it's either no longer a factor, or is one of the forces we see in physics. Maybe the first cause was gravity, or electromagnetism, or some mystical force that no longer plays a role because we don't detect it.
The earth's mass causes the moon's motion.
The universe is fine-tuned for life. This seems to also requires intelligence. Also, the prime mover argument: something has to move by its own accord. Is autonomous movement possible without intelligence? Automatons require an intelligent agent to create them. So it all seems to point to an intelligent first cause...
Quoting khaled
Its important for cosmology; there are competing models, some have first causes others do not. People are wasting a lot of time working on models without first causes.
No it's not. If it was why would there be so many useless stars and planets elsewhere. Why wouldn't it be just earth and the sun.
Quoting Devans99
Why not?
Quoting Devans99
Whoa there watch out Mr expert coming through.
Still no need for the first cause to be conscious
Quoting Devans99
And why should I care about cosmology exactly?
Those are for the aliens to live on.
Quoting khaled
Explain how autonomous movement is possible without intelligence then?
Quoting khaled
You are on a philosophy forum. Metaphysics and cosmology overlap.
Read about the 4% Universe?
Can we explain what this concept we call potential energy is and where it comes from? We can observe evidence of the impact (energy) it can have on the physical world, we can even define, quantify, measure and predict this impact with impressive accuracy. But what is it causing this impact: investing everything in the universe with a capacity to do work (ie. to develop and achieve)? What is this formless, timeless, unchangeable existence that preceded the Big Bang and continually ‘reveals’ itself to physical reality through works?
Is it enough to simply give it a name and a number and use its works to our advantage? In physics (Shut Up and Calculate) we can pretend that we don’t care what it is - but from a philosophical perspective, I think potential energy remains largely unexplained...
link to Philosophical dictionary page
An axiom is an assumption, not a proof. An axiom is declared only because there is no proof (of the concept in question). If there was proof, we'd just state it and move on, wouldn't we?
I am a traditionalist when it comes to axioms. They have to be good axioms - in agreement with our everyday experience and science - I only adopt them if they are very likely to be true.
OK, it looks like we have to do this the hard way. :sad: Please state the statistical science that justifies your ability to define the numerical probability (likelihood) of any axiom being true. Please do this in the knowledge that axioms are not associated with any evidence or proof:
Quoting Pattern-chaser
If you guess that cause and effect or God's existence is (say) 99% likely - 0.99 probability - where do you get that figure from? What is the statistical science that justifies and demonstrates a numerical probability for this value? How do you assess the probability of an axiom being true? A simple, clear and explicit answer would be appropriate, and appreciated. :smile:
OK I estimate I witness 30 instances of cause an effect a minute, so that's 43200 in a day, 15,379,200 in a year versus no examples of causeless effects. That 99.99999% certainty from 1 year of data.
I think your understanding of statistics is somewhat lacking. That isn't how it works.
* - Justified in the context of the scientific discipline of statistics.
* - I can't teach you statistics because I don't know enough to teach someone else, I'm too lazy anyway, and it's a Big Deal: understanding statistics takes a long time and a lot of effort. Over to you....
I think the statistics I've given indicate that the universe does get things done with cause and effect in the vast majority of cases - all cases probably; we know of no other mechanism to replace it.
But I acknowledge that the support for the axiom is only inductive. Cause and effect is still a goof axiom though.
Is it as good as 'the whole is greater than the parts'? I think probably almost. Its almost as good an axiom as I know.
Of course we do. :up: My only wish is to clearly identify assumptions as such. To call them proofs, or anything more definite than the guesses they actually are, is misleading and damaging to the reasoning which follows.
Quoting Devans99
But you haven't given any statistics. You created an example experiment, and observed that all of the resulting observations confirmed your pre-existing beliefs, while none contradicted it. You made, for example, no effort to confirm that your observations did in fact confirm the existence of cause and effect. Such confirmation is, of course, impossible, as I think you know. Anyway, the large number of observations you made, and that they all confirmed your expectations, is not "statistics". Medians and means, and normal distributions, and so forth: those are "statistics".
The axiom of cause and effect is just an axiom. Proofs built upon it stand or fall depending on whether the axiom is correct or not. This is the way with all our theories.
Quoting Pattern-chaser
I think that is the nature of induction. Should I get on that plane today? The last ones did not crash so yes. So we make potentially life threatening decisions based on induction. To make any progress with the whole metaphysical debate about the origins of the universe requires some axioms. If I would trust my life to induction, I would trust induction for the question of origins of the universe.
Quoting Devans99
Well that's a wild theory. But according to it there should be Martians right now
Quoting Devans99
Ok I can't. But what I'm suggesting is that the start of the universe wasn't autonomous. Would you call the movement of the earth around the sun autonomous? I wouldn't. And besides even if we give that the first cause of existence was intelligent that doesn't mean it's conscious or that it still exists now.
That's what I meant when I said that the first causes for creating the universe are either no longer relevant or have been reinterpreted as something else. Potential energy may be this first cause that created the universe. Exactly what it is I don't know and don't care because I know all it's properties. Maybe the first cause was the forces of physics but we reinterpreted them separately (electromagnetic, gravitational, etc). The only other alternative is that there is some mystery form of force that created the universe and can no longer be detectable by us/is no longer a factor
There are aliens they just don't visit earth very much or at all. It's a long way to come, +4 light years.
Quoting khaled
What could the start of the universe be if it is not a first cause. The first cause logically has to be timeless - itself uncaused - beyond causality. So because it is timeless, it should still exist now. A timeless thing probably has a 1:n relationship with time - it can see all of time in one go.
[hide]Quoting Jake [/hide]
Thanks much for the thoughtful and in-depth reply. (Such messages are more filling and satisfying, imho. Posts with dazzling name-dropping, feats of logic, or one-line zingers may be tasty, but leave me hungry again too soon. :yum: ) The “god question” is a funny one. On one hand, it might be THE QUESTION. On the other, it can easily produce so many more words, theories, polemics, factions. There seem to be enough of those. It could probably be assumed that we are all (self included) doing at least some psychological projecting. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but awareness of it helps immensely. I think humans have many innate emotional needs. And it seems that almost all of us are damaged or hurting in some way, maybe unconsciously. (I don’t think our culture is very nurturing and encouraging to the human spirit, but that may be another topic).
Certainly I sympathize with those who yearn for the possibility that there is some Divine order in the universe. That there is meaning and justice. And I understand the general atheist position of living a moral and productive life without a human-created mythology that doesn’t inspire being dumped on you. (Mythology equaling other people’s religion, as the joke goes). Maybe the popularity of superhero movies and literature is trying to fill the mythical need we seem to have for “poetic truth” and meaning. (As opposed to mere facts about existence). Whatever gets you through the night, and makes you want to get out of bed in the morning...
Yes, agree with both points. Let's examine the logic of this process.
First, what's really being asked is not whether the idea of god exists, for it obviously does. To be more precise, the question is "does a god exist in the real world?"
This seems obvious too, until we realize that we aren't actually looking in the real world, but in the symbolic world ( words, theories, polemics, factions etc).
It's as if you asked if your shoes are in the bedroom and I replied, "I don't know, I'll go look in the garage." Nonsensical.
If we can set aside the God debate (words, theories, polemics, factions etc) then all that's left is looking in the real world.
The atheists suggest observation of reality as the appropriate method, and I agree. But not observation as a means to the end of theories and conclusions, but rather observation pursued for it's own value. Theories and conclusions just take us back in to the same old failed game.
We are rarely really looking or listening to the real world. Instead we are typically so very busy thinking and talking about the real world, something else entirely.
If our approach is to be reality based we might remember the the overwhelming vast majority of reality is.... nothing.
You know that...how?
What we "look at and listen to" MAY be the real world.
Not sure what you were trying to say there.
Perhaps. But perhaps not.
What we listen to is typically the noise going round and round in our brains. That is, the symbolic world. And that's where the God debate is looking for God, in the symbolic world. We already know that the idea of God exists, so why are we still looking in the symbolic realm?
PERHAPS "the real world" is just the noise in MY head.
No way I can know that is not the way things are.
If there is a "you" out there discussing this with "me"...how do you KNOW that all that noise in YOUR head is not the real world.
In any case, the comment I took issue with, Jake, was:
"We are rarely really looking or listening to the real world."
All this stuff I see with my eyes; and hear with my ears; and feel with my fingers; and taste with my taste buds...MAY BE the real world.
I personally would not bet on it...but it may be.
Right?
*Nothing* is just another concept in the “symbolic world.”
What are you trying to say?
If someone "trusts" an airplane and its pilot and chance and all associated external factors with their life, then why does turbulence frighten them? That the last few planes didn't crash actually increases the odds that the current plane will crash. Probability is actually working against us every moment we avoid harm.
I'd say it's sheer stupidity that we "trust" airplanes, or any of our inventions, with our lives. We sacrifice our safety in many ways for the sake of strange new experiences. It's the high cost of being adventurous. We're at risk every moment of our lives, and we habitually increase the potential of that risk.
I'd appreciate an elaboration on how you connect the airplane analogy with the grand clockwork of the universe.
1. The way we assess the danger of an airplane journey with reference to examples of previous successfully completed journeys.
2. Is similar to the way we observe causality around us happening and thus assume it holds.
So my argument is that there is overwhelming inductive evidence of cause and effect and that evidence is of a similar nature to that which we already take potentially life threatening decisions.
Your explanation is based on a very specific assumption of conditions which are widely variable. I dismantled your airplane analogy already--every moment that injury or death are avoided is a moment closer to injury or death--each of us is at statistically increasing risk as time passes without incident. Every action brings us closer to innumerable forms of risk, and many of those risks are in some way interdependent.
Also, you can't flippantly apply an infinitesimal understanding of cause and effect to events in the universe and beyond it for which there's no method of quantitative or qualitative exploration apart from complex abstract symbolism which no one outside a small number of specialists understands.
You have been discussing nothing but "the axiom of cause and effect", you've just recently added the word "axiom" to the only thing you ever discuss.
I just explained that some humans travel despite understanding the risk while others don't. Some people won't even set foot on airport property while others enter a career as a pilot. Some people travel regardless of risk for various reasons they consider on some irrational level to outweigh it. Maybe they're more afraid of the prospect of dying of old age on their couch in front of a television than of dying in a horrible plane crash. A sense of adventure is enough to bring some people very close to death.
Either way, there are countless factors and variables behind the scenes from the surface we see all the way down to what even microscopy can't reveal. What is the cosmic crux you feel you've resolved in ten words after the human race sat scratching its heads for trillions of man/years in an absence of modern distractions?
Every time someone attempts a rational explanation for something that is infinitely inexplicable, the probability that they're wrong is infinite.
It does not matter too much what the pre BB universe is like; as long as it follows cause and effect, we can reason about it at a high level without knowing the specifics. We know the universe has to follow some basic common sense rules; infinite regresses are impossible for instance, which leads to a timeless first cause. We can deduce that without solving the BB singularity etc...
Quoting whollyrolling
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5704/poincare-reoccurrence-theorem-and-time
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5749/cantors-paradox
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5735/bottle-imp-paradox
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/5726/unexpected-hanging-paradox
So I only discuss cause and effect?!?
Please accept my most humble apologies, you're right, there are four comments you copy/pasted from Wikipedia into threads started by other members, and none of them contained the words cause or effect.
You offered unoriginal paradoxes based on contradictory assumptions.
For example, why would you say in one breath that nothing exists without a first cause, but in another breath that abstract symbols humans invented represent something infinite which can have no first cause?
Thanks for the reply. Would not disagree. A small quibble I might have is about the words “the real world”. This would seem to open up the question of what is real, what is really real, etc. and be distracting. Maybe I would use the phrase “inner experience” or “personal perception”.
(Obviously, you won’t be replying to this... sorry to see you banned. But if it’s your choice, then that is that. Your walks in the woods will no doubt continue to inspire you. Thanks for the ideas and conversation. Peace and blessings to you, and to all.)