Are Agnostics Welcome Here?

[slingblade]

You stated it better than I ever could. If one is incapable of defining something, trying to define it's characteristics is meaningless.

Indeed, I agree. You both have put it well.

It seems, to a great extent, that we always run into certain problems defining gods.

Either what makes a god a god is a supernatural ability, and whatever is not natural does not exist. If it did exist, it would then be natural by the fact of its existence alone.

Or else a god is so far removed from the natural realm, that we not only would not know it's there, but could not even discern its effects, and so its existence cannot be discerned from its non-existence.

Gods are impossible.

 

[laca]

How do you get from"consider all ideas equally" to,

"treats all beliefs and possibilities with equal regard"?

By recognizing the fact that beliefs and possibilities are ideas.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

…’a god plus the universe requires two substances’. This, of course, depends entirely upon what is meant by ‘universe’. Above we have FattyCatty concluding that ‘universe’ = God. It is at least interesting to note the conclusions of recent research (discussed a while back on another JREF thread) that accurately point out that particles are informational in nature and their physical form is a derived state. The most parsimonious interpretation of this ‘metaphorical’ understanding of ultimate reality could arguably be addressed as follows (taken from another JREF discussion many moons ago):


All you really know about the universe and all therein is that it's objectively independent of you in some way (realism) and that it works just fine according to chemical/physical laws and processes (naturalism).

But that's all you know. You don't know what its ultimate nature is.

Furthermore, as soon as you accept that all the things we experience about the universe are filtered through our senses - which they are - you're accepting that we can never truly know the ultimate nature of neumenal reality.

So I'm left to wonder. We have:

A) A magical self-perpetuating and self-generating non-conscious powder or power behind it all.

Or

B) A magical self-perpetuationg and self-generating consciousness behind it all.

Without any way to conclusively answer the question I'm wondering why you don't just apply Occam's razor instead of multiplying unknown entities?

Consciousness can create, store and retrieve information and we all, intimately and directly, know that consciousness exists.

Is it really logical to assume that a Universe (composed ultimately, of massless wavy-gravy information) is more likely produced by an unknown thing (that is pure conjecture) than a consciousness which has a firm theoretical grounding being based upon something we do know exists (i.e. our own individual consciousnesses)?

....parsimony is in the eye of the beholder.

Answers to the above take a while, but here goes.......

As to parsimony, as I have stated several times this god is entirely non-parsimonious. There are two reasons to reject this god on reasonable grounds -- one, it requires magic to make sense and magic is, by definition, what does not make sense; and two, there is no reason to suggest such a god. It is simply possible.

From what I can see there are four types of god of which we can make some sort of sense. One is the caretaker god mentioned above, but it has clear problems. One is the deist god, but it is inconsequential. One is the pantheist god, also inconsequential. And the other is the idealist god which you bring up.

I do not accept the argument that idealism makes more sense than 'materialism' for the following reasons:

1. The argument you make is based on analogy. The only consciousness of which we are aware is our consciousness, and all the evidence we have of this type of consciousness indicates that it is based on material action (atoms banging around). Stop the functioning of the brain and thinking ceases. Of course you can propose an answer to that issue, but then you multiply problems because you would have to say that the brain is simply a receiver of the Conscious Mind; and if you've made that move you've stepped head first into substance dualism. If we're going to deal with substance dualism why not go all the way and invoke Yahweh?

2. If you analyze what we mean by consciousness it is based in thought or mental action of some sort; it unfolds (that is the kind of consciousness that we know exists). Some people try to define Awareness as simply existing in the moment to try to get around this, but it is not clear that even makes sense. So, what we are left with is an action -- mental activity of some sort -- that unfolds in time. If that is the case, then Awareness in the moment cannot be the primary substance itself. Whatever energy it 'uses' and time (let's call it space-time just for chuckles) would be more fundamental. So, now we're back at time and energy.

Since you are using an analogic argument, we are stuck with the kind of consciousness which we know as the basis for the analogy. The kind of consciousness that we know suggests something more primary than it. If you want to propose another type of consciousness, then the analogy falls apart and you're stuck in the same position -- something we can't know as the basis of it all.

If you want to believe that everything consists of thoughts in the mind of god, that's fine with me; but I don't think we should pretend that is more likely than any alternative explanation for what *is*.

I'll repeat now what I've said several times before -- we can't get to basic ontology. The language argument against it should be good enough to show why it is not possible. Something exists. That's all we can say.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Or else a god is so far removed from the natural realm, that we not only would not know it's there, but could not even discern its effects, and so its existence cannot be discerned from its non-existence.

Gods are impossible.

But, isn't that a contradiction? On the one hand you have said that gods are impossible, but you have proposed a possible type of god. That we can't tell if a god exists or not tells us something about us, not god.

This is what I have been trying to get across. Instead of saying that gods are impossible I think it makes more sense to use Doctor X's old line that gods are either non-existent, evil or inconsequential. Saying "I know gods don't exist" sends the wrong message, I think. I know that gods either don't exist, are evil, or are inconsequential seems to cover all bases nicely though.


ETA:

To pre-empt the inevitable -- but isn't this the same as proposing that green pixies exist? I answer, no. We have a theoretical means of looking for Santa Claus or green pixies. There is no means to look for a Deist God that does not interact with the universe. I think that puts the concept of that type of god into a different category than anything within the universe. It's just an unecessary idea of no consequence.

 

[Belz...]

I don't understand. What is left in the non-overlapping bit is the god and anything organized. We have two universes -- one has an organizing principle (which happens to be our god) allowing for the formation of matter and development of new types of beings and the other consists of unorganized energy with no god.

There doesn't seem to be the need for an organizing principle.

 

[Belz...]

No, this god actively holds it together and directs what happens. His direction just looks to us, on the inside, like the laws of physics.


ETA:

I should restate that. His direction looks to us on the inside like the unfolding of the universe. We try to describe it and our description of how this god works is the laws of physics.

So it interacts with the universe, then. We can detect it.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

There doesn't seem to be the need for an organizing principle.

There has to be some organizing principle. The issue of contention is always between 'it's god' and 'it's the laws of physics'. God seems too complicated an explanation compared to the laws of physics which is why we side on the laws of physics.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

So it interacts with the universe, then. We can detect it.

Yes. We do detect it. We call that detection the laws of physics.

 

[punshhh]

By recognizing the fact that beliefs and possibilities are ideas.

The difference is while considering all ideas equally, I give them the time of day and chew on them. Some I favour others I don't. However they all get filed in my memory.

I do not regard all ideas equally, the ones I favour I hold in high regard. The ones I don't favour, I give little regard to.

At no point do I disregard ideas before considering their content.

 

[Lord Emsworth]

[snip](taken from another JREF discussion many moons ago):


[snip]
But that's all you know. You don't know what its ultimate nature is.

Furthermore, as soon as you accept that all the things we experience about the universe are filtered through our senses - which they are - you're accepting that we can never truly know the ultimate nature of neumenal reality.

So I'm left to wonder. We have:

A) A magical self-perpetuating and self-generating non-conscious powder or power behind it all.

Or

B) A magical self-perpetuationg and self-generating consciousness behind it all.[snip]

How would you tell A and B apart? Right. You can't. You don't know what the ultimate nature of the universe is.

Sure you can call it names, but that is all that you'd be doing.

 

[Belz...]

There has to be some organizing principle. The issue of contention is always between 'it's god' and 'it's the laws of physics'. God seems too complicated an explanation compared to the laws of physics which is why we side on the laws of physics.

Yes. We do detect it. We call that detection the laws of physics.

So basically you've decided to call the laws of physics "god". Yeah, we can detect them, then, and there is no supernatural "god". What was your point again ?

 

[Piggy]

No, this god actively holds it together and directs what happens. His direction just looks to us, on the inside, like the laws of physics.


ETA:

I should restate that. His direction looks to us on the inside like the unfolding of the universe. We try to describe it and our description of how this god works is the laws of physics.

How does that work?

And what makes this thing a god, and not a force of nature?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

So basically you've decided to call the laws of physics "god". Yeah, we can detect them, then, and there is no supernatural "god". What was your point again ?

No. We all see this god's actions as the laws of physics. But the god itself is aware, intelligent, and directing the universe. It fits the definition of a care-taker god. There isn't a way to demonstrate that such a god does not exist. The problem is that it is superfluous, non-parsimonious; and if it is not coequal with the universe then it is made of a separate substance it also requires magic (it is supernatural). Magic is a problem for any conception, I think.

Such a god could exist. It is inconsequential, though. My point is that we shouldn't be saying that we know gods don't exist full stop, but that gods either don't exist, are evil, or are inconsequential. That's pretty much it.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

How does that work?

And what makes this thing a god, and not a force of nature?

If separate from the universe, it works by magic; it is supernatural. It is not just a force of nature because it intends all that we see. It is intelligent and has the power to control its creation.

 

[FattyCatty]

So you equate God to the elephant, while I equate God to all the planets (too vast to examine) and to the Salmonella (don't have the tools to see). I don't claim that God did any of those things you mention. He may have, I don't know. I don't know if we would have detected these things or not; some people claim to have seen or experienced some of them (I have my doubts). I do believe God created the universe that led to the world, the weather, natural laws, etc. I don't see how that could be "detected."

Well, first I'd have to ask you to pretend that I'm an alien who never heard of the concept of "god", and then tell me what it is you think "may have" done those things (or not) and which we shouldn't expect to have any evidence for because it might be too big or too small for us to perceive.

What is that?

I'm not sure that this is what you meant, but first I would explain to the alien about God as I understand Him. I would tell the alien that God is beyond our comprehension and we can't really know Him. But we try to by putting Him into terms we understand.

God just is, he does not "exist." He is everything and everywhere He wants to be; it is God that "contains all dimensions or levels of existence one may care to define." God contained these things until he created them as separate things and gave them existence. He contained existence until He created it outside Himself; He contained the universe until he created it outside himself when he created existence. He contains every other possible universe until He chooses to create them.

God is a something outside time and space, so we don't have instruments that would allow us to see Him. We don't have empirical proof of His existence. All we have is faith and belief.

My own belief in God comes from the universe and the way it worked and works. The coincidences needed to arrive where we are seem too many. The way forces and processes and events mesh to create life, the fact that life produced a being capable of thought and able to learn about how nature works and to question how it came to be and to theorize God is too incredible for me to just believe it was chance. It is much more likely to me that it was planned and maintained to function as it has by a something that I call God.

So I believe that the universe was created by God. It was made to function in a certain way, with certain laws and properties and elements. It was set up to develop in a way that led to life, both ours, and it seems, the alien's.

<snip>
... I don't know how coherent my beliefs are, as I am still working on understanding them and still reading what smarter people say. I believe there was God, He was all there was and he was all there could be. There was no time or space or matter or anything but God. So there can't be existence yet (because having being implies a place to be and "place" didn't exist).

Then God created everything. And if science is right about the Big Bang starting outside of time and space (like God) as just a singularity that contained all matter and a unified single force, then that is how God set creation into place. Because, like an egg, it contained all the parts and information on how those parts work that was needed to grow into the universe we know. Then God cracked the egg and the singularity expanded. So now there was existence and the universe, because now there was "place" and there could be existence, and what hatched into existence was the universe.

You'll have to forgive me for making God sound like a chicken. All of a sudden I could picture it and I was trying to find a way to say that the initial creation contained everything needed to arrive at where we are right now, and the way an egg turns into a person or a duck or whatever is also an example of containing all the information needed to become something else. ...
<snip>

The things you mention being done are:

<snip>
...a supernatural being which does things like create the world, answer prayers, cause miracles, generate the weather, send prophets with magical powers, implant souls in bodies, judge us in the afterlife, and so forth....
<snip>

To answer what I think "may have" done these things, I would say that:

• I believe the world was created by the natural forces of the universe.
  
  
• Some people believe that it is God who answers their prayers, but there is no way of knowing.
  
  
• Some people believe that God causes miracles; I don't know whether the miracles actually happened nor do I know who caused them, although I believe God could do it if he wanted to and if they happened He probably caused them.
  
  
• The weather is generated by natural forces.
  
  
• If prophets were proved to have magical powers, and said they were given by God, I would believe them. I believe God could do that if He wanted.
  
  
• I'm not sure whether we have souls, as some people believe; there is no way of knowing. If we do, I believe they would come from God, but I don't know whether they would be given directly, or whether they would be part of the process of creating a person (e.g., DNA).
  
  
• I'm not sure whether there is an afterlife and/or a judgment, as some people believe; there is no way of knowing. If there is either of those, I believe God is responsible.

Also, I don't see how you could know whether or not there were souls or an afterlife. You seem to turn a lot of can't knows into I'm sures.

We know there are no souls because we have now examined the brain sufficiently to be sure that our conscious experience is brain activity, and when brain activity stops we cease to exist.

Souls as described in various places would be immaterial and not detectable by our instruments. They wouldn't be part of our conscious experience. We have no way of knowing whether or not they cease to exist when we die (brain activity stops) as we don't have instruments to measure beyond death.

Furthermore, we know that the brain is built to think about other people in terms of a single indwelling personality... in other words, a soul.

Are you sure about this? Why would we have developed dual ideas of personality and soul if we were built to think in terms of only one? And I don't think personality equates to soul. Personality is tied to the body; the soul (as described in various places) is of the spirit and can be released from the body.

So it's not surprising that people continue to believe in souls, even though when you think about the issue closely, it doesn't add up.

I don't see why it wouldn't add up. It would be a matter of belief, not of empirical evidence. I don't know how far back into human history the idea of a soul goes, but it does seem to be at least a primitive idea and a prevalent one.

 

[tsig]

Yes. We do detect it. We call that detection the laws of physics.

Then god is just a personalization of nature?

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

Then god is just a personalization of nature?

No. I already answered that several times. This type of god directs everything that happens. All we can do is examine what happens. We call it the laws of physics. From the god's eye view, though, he is doing it all himself, intentionally.

 

[tsig]

No. We all see this god's actions as the laws of physics. But the god itself is aware, intelligent, and directing the universe. It fits the definition of a care-taker god. There isn't a way to demonstrate that such a god does not exist. The problem is that it is superfluous, non-parsimonious; and if it is not coequal with the universe then it is made of a separate substance it also requires magic (it is supernatural). Magic is a problem for any conception, I think.

Such a god could exist. It is inconsequential, though. My point is that we shouldn't be saying that we know gods don't exist full stop, but that gods either don't exist, are evil, or are inconsequential. That's pretty much it.

If I think that gods don't exist why would I assign any characteristics to them?


This all just special pleading:

Such an god invisible pink unicorn could exist. It is inconsequential, though. My point is that we shouldn't be saying that we know gods IPUs don't exist full stop, but that gods IPUs either don't exist, are evil, or are inconsequential. That's pretty much it.

 

[Belz...]

No. We all see this god's actions as the laws of physics.

I'm not sure that even makes sense, but it's your mind, not mine.

 

[Ichneumonwasp]

If I think that gods don't exist why would I assign any characteristics to them?

You wouldn't. There's no reason to do so. It is other people who do so. I didn't invent this god; this is a very old idea.

This all just special pleading:

Such an god invisible pink unicorn could exist. It is inconsequential, though. My point is that we shouldn't be saying that we know gods IPUs don't exist full stop, but that gods IPUs either don't exist, are evil, or are inconsequential. That's pretty much it.

What reason would you have for proposing that an IPU is evil? The difference is that we could potentially detect an IPU through some means but there is no way to detect a deistic or caretaker god.

ETA:

Let me rephrase because I stated that incorrectly. What does an IPU do? This god holds the universe together and directs everything. It is detectable from the standpoint that we can see its actions in everything that occurs. So, it has a presence and a meaning. What presence or meaning does an IPU have?