As I said above, imagination plays a role, although some would argue that is a tidy excuse. Some experiences are so general in their similarity that they can be grouped and analyzed together.
Nudging doesn’t require a suspension of the laws of physics. It just requires their manipulation. This isn’t just a question of degree because it is the difference between what is physically possible and what is not.
Because the Born Rule isn’t fully testable. It is not possible to establish whether or not the quantum dice can be loaded. This is what parapsychologists have been investigating for decades, and their results are always borderline positives, open to interpretation, and therefore never conclusively end the debate.
I can provide the full theory if you are interested. It is not meaningless, and its true/false status cannot be empirically verified.
The experts don’t agree on any of the interpretations of QM.
That’s of far less metaphysical import than not knowing what “probabilistic” means if we are suggesting that it is a fundamental aspect of the metaphysics of the universe. The Heisenberg equation. and all of the QM that come out of it. require engaging in a form of quantifying observations that we use in multiple ways, all of which we call “probability”. We use it to predict outcomes of future events without perfect information about the relevant current states of affairs, to describe variable and not strictly repetitive patterns of prior observations, and we use it to describe the degree of credence we hold or believe we are justified in holding in predicting an outcome. I assume that list isn’t exhaustive.
However, back to the question at hand. The “nudging” version of God is probably the worst version of God of all that I mentioned. It is essentially as dissimilar to the conventional use of the word (miracle performing, etc) as the “generic creative force” God but I have less credence in it, as it requires the acceptance of a/some empirical claim(s) that on their face seem to be unevidenced. It’s the worst of both worlds. A basically impotent God that is nearly as unlikely as a miracle performing God.
The Copenhagen interpretation is favored by around a third of scientists, which, perhaps surprisingly, puts it in the lead by some margin.
I don’t think it’s surprising, as it doesn’t really require much if anything in terms of metaphysical commitments. Among the hard sciences, it seems to me that there is a culture that is broadly dismissive of the value of metaphysics.
Call my approach cynical but I thought it might be surprising because they actually agree. Haha.
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If God appeared to you in a burning bush and said, “I am who I am”, how would you interpret the experience? Would you think, “I must be hallucinating”?
How about if you saw Lazarus raised from the dead?
There are always alternative explanations for anything we witness.
Also the “laws of nature” are human creations (like God, perhaps). I wrote the following poem for my son’s 7th grade physics class:
REFLECTIONS ON MR. SCHWARTZ’ SCIENCE CLASS
Apples knew not which way to fall,
Objects in motion were apt to stall,
Reactions were opposite, but not equal,
(If this verse is confusing, read the sequel)
Things accelerated when no force
Acted upon them (out of balance, of course)
In short, nature’s laws weren’t so high fallutin’
Before being discovered by Sir Isaac Newton.
The point, of course, is tbat apples fell even when there were no “laws” describing how they fall. So called “miracles” don’t defy the laws of nature; they alter them.
If the leading interpretation has only one third support (after 90 years), then the most reasonable conclusion is that all of the interpretations currently on the table are wrong.
Your post isn’t serious. It’s mathematical. There needs to be only three interpretations for “one third” to count for something and there are about a dozen interpretations of quantum effects. Also note that the Copenhagen interpretation is really more the absence of a interpretation—“shut up and calculate” in the words of Feynman.
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It is all the same problem. We have no coherent model of reality, either scientific or metaphysical, and this one of the three core problems (the others being consciousness and now cosmology).
It is what you get if you are a committed Christian but find YEC unbelievable because it requires a suspension of the laws of physics. If you remove Abrahamic religion from the equation then there is no reason to believe in such a god. However, I don’t think we should ignore the difference between YEC and OEC. YEC is far more corrosive in terms of people being able to form a worldview appropriate to the 21st century. If I could wave a magic wand and turn all the YECs into OECs then I would do so, because I think it would make the world a less awful place for everybody else.
Exactly the same culture doesn’t even understand that physicalism and naturalism are metaphysics. This is called “scientism”.
From an evolutionary biological perspective our thoughts and beliefs are a product of this body we possess - with its well over a half billion years worth of evolving experience in navigating the world.
For me that leaves me with an inevitable conclusion. Since our body/brain interacting with the world produces our sense of consciousness and thought processes - it seems self-evident that it is we our selves who create our own God’s from within our individual and collective minds.
Meaning for me that God is as real or as unreal as an individual’s life experience leaves them wanting to believe.
Maybe hallucination, maybe some other explanation. The main thing is I wouldn’t instantly take these things at face value. That’s because when I look at the world, God speaking through burning bushes and people being raised from the dead appear to happen somewhere between hardly ever and never, but people being mistaken about such things seems to happen pretty often.
Exactly, which is why it makes sense that we consider which is more likely, all things considered. That’s what I’m engaging with using this argument.
I agree. But if God doesn’t override the laws of nature, then God isn’t supernatural. There are no miracles, and God just becomes a super-powerful alien. Not impossible, but certainly not more likely than the old alien pyramid hypothesis. Also, I think if I went into any of my neighborhood churches and polled people on the following questions:
- Is God an Alien
- Is God supernatural
I think overwhelmingly the answers would be “no” and “yes” respectively. I am really pretty uninterested in novel conceptions of God, unless they can be demonstrated to effect my life.
No coherent model, or no complete and unquestionable model? If you mean the prior, you are demonstrably mistaken. We have many coherent models.
The only way I would consider these things a problem is if I thought there was such a thing as “perfect knowledge of the universe” (in any sense that was not aspirational).
That sounds right in theory, but I suspect that observation would show it to be incorrect. It assumes that people as a whole are more self-reflective and consistent in their beliefs than they actually are. In my experience, the most common approach among people who are otherwise reasonably thoughtful, is to just carve out a cognitive space for religion that isn’t subject to the strict scrutiny they apply to the rest of their lives. There are certainly many non-YEC (including non-Christian theists) denominations and sects that accept the claims of historical miracles as fact yet reject the miracles without believing in YEC.
The bottom line is that the YEC/OEC dichotomy really doesn’t effect my argument. The position of OEC adherents who believe that miracles happen and God’s will is discoverable are equally captured by my argument.
I think sometimes philosophers employ Maslow’s hammer. It is possible to not make metaphysical commitments by simply engaging in accepting hypotheses provisionally. I’m not suggesting that “scientism” doesn’t exist, but I do dispute the old saw that everyone engages with metaphysical models, whether they know it or not.
It is illogical to calculate the existence of god upon the fact that there have been numerous god stories and that there have been claims of miracles in many of them. There is no logical correlation. In other words what humans do in their heads has no structural bearing on what exists in the cosmos. Your argument is a non-starter.
This sounds to me a bit of rhetorical flourish, but ultimately unsatisfying and empty. When delusional people make false claims based on their delusions, we don’t say that their beliefs are “as real or as unreal as an individual’s life experience leaves them wanting to believe”, we say their beliefs are false… and then hopefully based on this knowledge try to get them the psychological help they need. I’m not suggesting that religion is a delusion, but for the sake of this individual point I think it is an apt metaphor.
What people do effects how we should evaluate their claims. I am evaluating people’s God claims. When I look at the universe, the only reason I would have to believe in a specific and knowable God like the Christian one is entirely based on the claims people have made.
First of all, some views skip this first bullet. A deistic view says the universe is a product of divine creation, but left to itself thereafter. At which point in time represents this initial state is up to debate. Could be last Tuesday.
You perhaps omitted that the shit-giving god has preference for my species or my tribe. Miracles are performed to benefit the preferred thing, but no miracle is performed to save the bug from the spider web.
Any interfering god probably wants to be known. As such, it predicts that disjoint cultures would come up with the same god story. They don’t. That’s huge evidence against theism.
Sure, there’s common themes. Christianity borrowed all kinds of ideas from earlier myths, including virgin birth. Religion evolves like that. True religion does not. Morals for instance would be fixed, not evolving over time with changing styles, fads, and circumstances.
The title of this thread and the first sentence from your OP say otherwise.
quote="Dobbler, post:1, topic:2657"
Why God almost certainly does not exist…I want to explain why I think that God almost certainly doesn’t exist
/quote
You are attempting to bridge the two. Your bridge fails for the reason I gave in my previous post.