[Ant] I'll leave atheism to someone else, but agnostic, in a broad sense, means "one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god". [www.m-w.com]
So what are we of the CoV, we brights, we unchurched committed to? Is there one tenet that is common to all of us? Surely it is a commitment to reason?
So we're reasonables...
[aperick] Are we not committed to, not only Reason, sweet reason with a capital R. But also to a larger method: the Scientific method. It will always eventually lead in the direction of truth, since proper Scientists are NEVER 'completely' committed to any view of reality.
I argue at great length in favor of Atheism (Scientific Atheism) in:
However it's easy to show that faith in the existence of God can be useful for uniting people behind arbitrary causes whose guidance was declared as being inspired by God. Thus God has effectively served as a force of centralized human power and control. This I would regard as a negative consequence.
On the other hand, the search for God or animus has resulted in many of mankinds sciences. The quest for God is also a quest for understanding our universe. Thus it is the search for truth or a search for the fundamental properties of the universe.
Since that is the case, perhaps we should state that we do not yet know whether God or a universal truth exists, but we encourage actively seeking these things. If only to keep the seeking alive?
[Ant] I'll leave atheism to someone else, but agnostic, in a broad sense, means "one who is not committed to believing in either the existence or the nonexistence of God or a god". [www.m-w.com]
So what are we of the CoV, we brights, we unchurched committed to? Is there one tenet that is common to all of us? Surely it is a commitment to reason?
So we're reasonables...
[aperick] Are we not committed to, not only Reason, sweet reason with a capital R. But also to a larger method: the Scientific method. It will always eventually lead in the direction of truth, since proper Scientists are NEVER 'completely' committed to any view of reality.
I argue at great length in favor of Atheism (Scientific Atheism) in:
> [simul] I think it's too hard to disprove God... > > [Lucifer] Actually it is easy to disprove God with modus tollens > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens > > If God exists, then <some reasonable consequence> > <some reasonable consequence> is not true > Therefore God does not exist > > > [rhinoceros] > I think a patch was dispatched for this purpose, so that they can make > claims about the real world. > > "Mysterious are the ways of the Lord" > > They don't want to make it any easier for us... [Blunderov] or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsificationism <q> since God is typically alleged to be a transcendental being, beyond the realm of the observable, claims about the existence of God can neither be supported nor be undermined by observation. </q> Which leads me to wonder how it is that 'god' can be detected at all. Oh, yes, right...'revealed religion'. I smell a contradiction - back to the Wiki I go...
(Thanks for the illuminating discussion about Kant BTW - if I may chip in? Didn't he 'give' us The Enlightenment - "The freedom to make public use of one's reason in all fields"?)
What if god is merely primitive man's expression of a possible universal law that makes cooperative distributed systems more powerful than centralised ones? In other words...God is merely Love anthropomorphised?
> [simul] I think it's too hard to disprove God... > > [Lucifer] Actually it is easy to disprove God with modus tollens > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modus_tollens > > If God exists, then <some reasonable consequence> > <some reasonable consequence> is not true > Therefore God does not exist > > > [rhinoceros] > I think a patch was dispatched for this purpose, so that they can make > claims about the real world. > > "Mysterious are the ways of the Lord" > > They don't want to make it any easier for us... [Blunderov] or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsificationism <q> since God is typically alleged to be a transcendental being, beyond the realm of the observable, claims about the existence of God can neither be supported nor be undermined by observation. </q> Which leads me to wonder how it is that 'god' can be detected at all. Oh, yes, right...'revealed religion'. I smell a contradiction - back to the Wiki I go...
(Thanks for the illuminating discussion about Kant BTW - if I may chip in? Didn't he 'give' us The Enlightenment - "The freedom to make public use of one's reason in all fields"?)
[Erik] What if god is merely primitive man's expression of a possible universal law that makes cooperative distributed systems more powerful than centralised ones? In other words...God is merely Love anthropomorphised?
At 09:34 AM 15/10/03 -0400, "Erik Aronesty" <erik@zoneedit.com> wrote: >I think it's too hard to disprove God...
I agree. It would be less trouble to create a god or gods.
You want to really panic the bible belters? This would be better than cloning. Tell the world you were raised religious but were later convince that there wasn't any god. You regret this fact so much though that your organization is dedicated to creating a god or gods.
> You want to really panic the bible belters? This would be better than > cloning. Tell the world you were raised religious but were later convince > that there wasn't any god. You regret this fact so much though that your > organization is dedicated to creating a god or gods. > > heh. [Blunderov] <chuckles> Design-a-deity in the comfort of your own home, specifically tailored to your own special requirements. Get the set - choose from a range of prophets for all occasions. Log-on today and order yours now! (Executive chrome plated model add 10%.) Best regards
who says that the existance of god has to be attached to some reasonable consequence? perhaps i am misinterpreting, but by reasonable consequence, i infer that you mean, say, karma, or that when one "sins" there are repercussions.
well, that is only true if god cares to interfere with what is already going on. i'm not argueing that the judeo-christian god exists, nor that god is benevolent, nor that god is intelligent, nor omniscient, nor that god gives a shit what we do....
just that an entity beyond our comprehension, existing outside time and all other dimensions we understand, exists.
something cannot come from nothing. this is fact. therefore, as we exist, this proves that at one point in time (or feesably at the end of or before time) a god existed. it might not have been a sentient entity, but there at one time was a "god".
if energy never goes away, that means that on a cosmic scale, nothing ever truly dies, it just transmutes. our bodies and consciousnesses may fall away and rot back to their original building blocks, but this doesn't mean it goes away. just that it undergoes radical change.
next, envision what reality would be like outside of space and time. remove all the empty space from between the nucleaus and the electron cloud, from inbetween atoms, etc, and what is left is a matrix of energy. reinsert space/time, and that same entity exists, but has come to experiance all of its individual aspects subjectively for more perspective.
my actual theory is that god fractalized itself for the purpose of learning greater understanding. that god as a localized phenomenon doesn't happen, and if it ever should, would mean the end of reality as we comprehend it.
well, i understand that this is an anthropomorphised view, but as a human entity i cannot conscieve of things in a fashion outside what i am capable of comprehending.
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what's coming through is alive, what's holding up is a mirror... totally void of hate, and killing me just the same... coming over like a storm again now considerately.
Alexander Vavrek > Sent: 16 October 2003 0918 > who says that the existance of god has to be attached to some reasonable > consequence? perhaps i am misinterpreting, but by reasonable consequence, > i > infer that you mean, say, karma, or that when one "sins" there are > repercussions. > > well, that is only true if god cares to interfere with what is already > going > on. i'm not argueing that the judeo-christian god exists, nor that god is > benevolent, nor that god is intelligent, nor omniscient, nor that god > gives > a shit what we do.... > > just that an entity beyond our comprehension, existing outside time and > all > other dimensions we understand, exists. > > something cannot come from nothing. this is fact. therefore, as we > exist, > this proves that at one point in time (or feesably at the end of or before > time) a god existed. it might not have been a sentient entity, but there > at > one time was a "god". > > if energy never goes away, that means that on a cosmic scale, nothing ever > truly dies, it just transmutes. our bodies and consciousnesses may fall > away and rot back to their original building blocks, but this doesn't mean > it goes away. just that it undergoes radical change. > > next, envision what reality would be like outside of space and time. > remove > all the empty space from between the nucleaus and the electron cloud, from > inbetween atoms, etc, and what is left is a matrix of energy. reinsert > space/time, and that same entity exists, but has come to experiance all of > its individual aspects subjectively for more perspective. > > my actual theory is that god fractalized itself for the purpose of > learning > greater understanding. that god as a localized phenomenon doesn't happen, > and if it ever should, would mean the end of reality as we comprehend it. > > well, i understand that this is an anthropomorphised view, but as a human > entity i cannot conscieve of things in a fashion outside what i am capable > of comprehending. [Blunderov] If I understand you correctly, you are saying there must have been a 'first cause'?
Perhaps you have not given enough weight to the fact that 'something cannot come from nothing'?
To me this implies that there can have been no first cause at all. (The Big Bang itself cannot have come from nothing.)
<q> Parmenides [Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
Parmenides (b. 510 BCE.)
Parmenides goes on to consider in the light of this principle the consequences of saying that anything is.
In the first place, it cannot have come into being. If it had, it must have arisen from nothing or from something.
It cannot have arisen from nothing; for there is no nothing.
It cannot have arisen from something; for here is nothing else than what is.
Nor can anything else besides itself come into being; for there can be no empty space in which it could do so.
Is it or is it not? If it is, then it is now, all at once. In this way Parmenides refutes all accounts of the origin of the world. Ex nihilo nihil fit. </q>
[LhyR of Chaos] who says that the existance of god has to be attached to some reasonable consequence? perhaps i am misinterpreting, but by reasonable consequence, i infer that you mean, say, karma, or that when one "sins" there are repercussions.
[rhinoceros] Any particular god, personal or inanimate, is in fact a new definition of a god. Apparently, proving that no gods at all exist would sound funny, because we would try to argue against a whole class of definitions we haven't even heard.
But... when someone brings up a claim for the existence of a particular god, shouldn't he show that it matters in some way, empirical, explanatory, anything at all? If no consequences at all can be shown for the existence of a god, what would make it any different from any other story? On the other hand, if there is a claim for consequences, these can be subjected to scrutiny and evaluation.
[LhyR of Chaos] well, that is only true if god cares to interfere with what is already going on. i'm not argueing that the judeo-christian god exists, nor that god is benevolent, nor that god is intelligent, nor omniscient, nor that god gives a shit what we do....
[rhinoceros] Which brings us to the next checkpoint. Definitions of gods who do not interfere at all are safer from empirical scrutiny. (although they may be still subject to rational scrutiny or semantic analysis). Even the definition of the judeo-christian god has gone a long way to that direction, although there is still a problem of utility which keeps the church from going all the way to a god who does not interfere: If there are no practical consequences at all, the concept will not be as compelling to the "faithful".
About the issues with a non-intervening god, more below...
[LhyR of Chaos] just that an entity beyond our comprehension, existing outside time and all other dimensions we understand, exists.
something cannot come from nothing. this is fact. therefore, as we exist, this proves that at one point in time (or feesably at the end of or before time) a god existed. it might not have been a sentient entity, but there at one time was a "god".
[rhinoceros] I can read this in a different way. Let me play a little game of semantics. You say that "something cannot come from nothing, this is fact". Yes, this is an empirical fact so well established that we have made it a part of our rationality. When we are faced with something that contradicts it in physics, we immediately make up models which require a cause for that something. By doing so, we make a prediction that a cause exists and will be found. It has worked so far, barring some cases in the realm of quantum physics which still resist to give us causes in terms of the usual physical quantities we have been using. We still insist. Some researchers are even willing to give up the concepts of position, momentum, energy, or time as we understand them just to keep causality.
Now, the game of semantics I promised: If there always has to be a cause in the material world we live in, we can assume an outside realm where it does not have to be so. An entity without a cause can exist there. A god. This entity is special because, although it does not need a cause itself, it did constitute a cause for the material world. Essentially, what this model does is addressing the probelem of the infinite causal chain of events by putting a black box at the end, one which somehow is not subject to causality itself.
Of course, there are simpler ways to do just that without talking about a god. It is probably the mystery of this situation which conjures the word "god". Another approach would be investigating the origins of causality itself, either in the physical realm or in our brains.
[LhyR of Chaos] if energy never goes away, that means that on a cosmic scale, nothing ever truly dies, it just transmutes. our bodies and consciousnesses may fall away and rot back to their original building blocks, but this doesn't mean it goes away. just that it undergoes radical change.
next, envision what reality would be like outside of space and time. remove all the empty space from between the nucleaus and the electron cloud, from inbetween atoms, etc, and what is left is a matrix of energy. reinsert space/time, and that same entity exists, but has come to experiance all of its individual aspects subjectively for more perspective.
[rhinoceros] That sounded interesting... Well... space, time, matter, energy, are all interconnected. The energy of an "electron cloud" is a function of its position... All these concepts come in a single framework, a single package, or else they lose their meaning.... the energy and time pair can be used as an alternative to the position and momentum pair for the description of an elementary particle. The energy and time pair is even subject to the same Heisenberg uncertainty relations as the position and momentum pair... Err... did I digress? I am not that good at poetry....
[LhyR of Chaos] my actual theory is that god fractalized itself for the purpose of learning greater understanding. that god as a localized phenomenon doesn't happen, and if it ever should, would mean the end of reality as we comprehend it.
well, i understand that this is an anthropomorphised view, but as a human entity i cannot conscieve of things in a fashion outside what i am capable of comprehending.
[rhinoceros] Good, but why god? A theory such as "the world is one" (out of space) and "nothing never changes" (out of time) along the lines of what Parmenides was teaching long ago (thanks Blunderov) would look like a simpler start. Yes, a personal god equiped with a will, comprehension, and curiosity sounds somehow anthropomorphic, but I understand that if you start from such a "first cause without a cause" it should be self-motivated if anything at all was to happen.
"who says that the existance of god has to be attached to some reasonable consequence? ... that is only true if god cares to interfere with what is already going on. "
Possibly. Though such conceptions of god tend to be rather rare for the simple reason that the god they depict is at best an irrelevance. In practice, modus tollens is applicable to most conceptions of god; for example, consider how the theory of natural selection had 'reasonable consequences' for the Biblical account of creation. That did not invalidate the existence of god but it did invalidate a particular conception of god.
Quote:
" What if god is merely primitive man's expression of a possible universal law that makes cooperative distributed systems more powerful than centralised ones? In other words...God is merely Love anthropomorphised?"
There are those who have made arguments similar to that; Tillich and Ehrlich especially if I recall correctly. That said, such arguments tend not be too convincing; people do not seem especially enthused by the prospect of a god that has only metaphorical value.
and don't forget this little ditty from David Hill:
On 25 Jan 2002 at 8:16, David Hill wrote:
The classical attributes of a deity are singularity ("there can only be one") omnicience (all-knowing), omnipotence (all-powerful), omnipresence ('(S)He's everywhere!"), omnibeneficence (all-good), and omnisoothience (all-true). One can immediately see that the attributes of omniscience and omnipotence cannot simultaneously inhere in a single universe. If a deity were omniscient (knew everything), then it would know the future and thus be powerless to change it, but if it were omnipotent (all-powerful), then it could change the future, and therefore could not know it for certain. It's like the simultaneous impossibility of an irresistable force and an immoveable object; if one of these two deific properties exists (and they are considered to be the most important two), then the other logically cannot. Furthermore, If deity were everywhere, it could perceive nothing, for perception requires a point of view, that is, a spatiotemporal perspective other than that of the perceived object from which to perceive that object. Deity being omnipresent (everywhere), there is nowhere that deity would not be, thus nothing it could perceive. It gets even worse. Deity must be perfect; in fact, perfection is what is broken down into all those 'omni' subcategories. thus, a perfect deity could not even think. Thought is dynamic, that is, to think, one's thought must move between conceptions. Now, thought could conceiveably move in three directions; from perfect to imperfect, from imperfect to perfect, and from imperfect to imperfect (from perfect to perfect is not an alternative, perfection being singular and movement requiring distinguishable prior and posterior). But all of the three possible alternatives contain either prior or posterior imperfection or both, which are not allowably entertained in the mind of a perfect deity.
There's much, much more that I could add, but this should more than suffice to demonstrate that asserting the existence of a deity possessing the attributes that most consider essential to it deserving the deific appelation mires one in a miasmic quagmire of irretrieveable contradiction, once one journeys beyond emotion-driven faith and uses one's noggin to divine (Luvzda pun!) the nonsensical and absurd consequences necessarily entailed.
Show the proposition to be false or accept its possibility.
rhinoceros wrote:
> Back to god proofs and disproofs... > > [LhyR of Chaos] > who says that the existance of god has to be attached to some reasonable consequence? perhaps i am misinterpreting, but by reasonable consequence, i infer that you mean, say, karma, or that when one "sins" there are repercussions. > > [rhinoceros] > Any particular god, personal or inanimate, is in fact a new definition of a god. Apparently, proving that no gods at all exist would sound funny, because we would try to argue against a whole class of definitions we haven't even heard. > > But... when someone brings up a claim for the existence of a particular god, shouldn't he show that it matters in some way, empirical, explanatory, anything at all? If no consequences at all can be shown for the existence of a god, what would make it any different from any other story? On the other hand, if there is a claim for consequences, these can be subjected to scrutiny and evaluation. > > [LhyR of Chaos] > well, that is only true if god cares to interfere with what is already going on. i'm not argueing that the judeo-christian god exists, nor that god is benevolent, nor that god is intelligent, nor omniscient, nor that god gives a shit what we do.... > > [rhinoceros] > Which brings us to the next checkpoint. Definitions of gods who do not interfere at all are safer from empirical scrutiny. (although they may be still subject to rational scrutiny or semantic analysis). Even the definition of the judeo-christian god has gone a long way to that direction, although there is still a problem of utility which keeps the church from going all the way to a god who does not interfere: If there are no practical consequences at all, the concept will not be as compelling to the "faithful". > > About the issues with a non-intervening god, more below... > > [LhyR of Chaos] > just that an entity beyond our comprehension, existing outside time and all other dimensions we understand, exists. > > something cannot come from nothing. this is fact. therefore, as we exist, this proves that at one point in time (or feesably at the end of or before time) a god existed. it might not have been a sentient entity, but there at one time was a "god". > > [rhinoceros] > I can read this in a different way. Let me play a little game of semantics. You say that "something cannot come from nothing, this is fact". Yes, this is an empirical fact so well established that we have made it a part of our rationality. When we are faced with something that contradicts it in physics, we immediately make up models which require a cause for that something. By doing so, we make a prediction that a cause exists and will be found. It has worked so far, barring some cases in the realm of quantum physics which still resist to give us causes in terms of the usual physical quantities we have been using. We still insist. Some researchers are even willing to give up the concepts of position, momentum, energy, or time as we understand them just to keep causality. > > Now, the game of semantics I promised: If there always has to be a cause in the material world we live in, we can assume an outside realm where it does not have to be so. An entity without a cause can exist there. A god. This entity is special because, although it does not need a cause itself, it did constitute a cause for the material world. Essentially, what this model does is addressing the probelem of the infinite causal chain of events by putting a black box at the end, one which somehow is not subject to causality itself. > > Of course, there are simpler ways to do just that without talking about a god. It is probably the mystery of this situation which conjures the word "god". Another approach would be investigating the origins of causality itself, either in the physical realm or in our brains. > > [LhyR of Chaos] > if energy never goes away, that means that on a cosmic scale, nothing ever truly dies, it just transmutes. our bodies and consciousnesses may fall away and rot back to their original building blocks, but this doesn't mean it goes away. just that it undergoes radical change. > > next, envision what reality would be like outside of space and time. remove all the empty space from between the nucleaus and the electron cloud, from inbetween atoms, etc, and what is left is a matrix of energy. reinsert space/time, and that same entity exists, but has come to experiance all of its individual aspects subjectively for more perspective. > > [rhinoceros] > That sounded interesting... Well... space, time, matter, energy, are all interconnected. The energy of an "electron cloud" is a function of its position... All these concepts come in a single framework, a single package, or else they lose their meaning.... the energy and time pair can be used as an alternative to the position and momentum pair for the description of an elementary particle. The energy and time pair is even subject to the same Heisenberg uncertainty relations as the position and momentum pair... Err... did I digress? I am not that good at poetry.... > > [LhyR of Chaos] > my actual theory is that god fractalized itself for the purpose of learning greater understanding. that god as a localized phenomenon doesn't happen, and if it ever should, would mean the end of reality as we comprehend it. > > well, i understand that this is an anthropomorphised view, but as a human entity i cannot conscieve of things in a fashion outside what i am capable of comprehending. > > [rhinoceros] > Good, but why god? A theory such as "the world is one" (out of space) and "nothing never changes" (out of time) along the lines of what Parmenides was teaching long ago (thanks Blunderov) would look like a simpler start. Yes, a personal god equiped with a will, comprehension, and curiosity sounds somehow anthropomorphic, but I understand that if you start from such a "first cause without a cause" it should be self-motivated if anything at all was to happen. > > ---- > This message was posted by rhinoceros to the Virus 2003 board on Church of Virus BBS. > <http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=54;action=display;threadid=29519> > --- > To unsubscribe from the Virus list go to <http://www.lucifer.com/cgi-bin/virus-l>
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I like it. I imagined that as my God and I am enthused by it. And I'm a person. -----Original Message----- From: "Kharin" <kharin@kharin.com> Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2003 08:54:20 To:virus@lucifer.com Subject: Re:virus: Atheism, Reasonables, Scientists
"who says that the existance of god has to be attached to some reasonable consequence? ... that is only true if god cares to interfere with what is already going on. "
Possibly. Though such conceptions of god tend to be rather rare for the simple reason that the god they depict is at best an irrelevance. In practice, modus tollens is applicable to most conceptions of god; for example, consider how the theory of natural selection had 'reasonable consequences' for the Biblical account of creation. That did not invalidate the existence of god but it did invalidate a particular conception of god.
" What if god is merely primitive man's expression of a possible universal law that makes cooperative distributed systems more powerful than centralised ones? In other words...God is merely Love anthropomorphised?"
There are those who have made arguments similar to that; Tillich and Ehrlich especially if I recall correctly. That said, such arguments tend not be too convincing; people do not seem especially enthused by the prospect of a god that has only metaphorical value.
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