This is not necessarily true at all.
We can literally speculate anything not logically impossible, if we are not concerning ourselves with anything we know. But that’s all we’re doing. Speculating. I believe that it is nearly certain that invisible dragons don’t exist as well, but the exact argument you are making applies to them. Until we have some reason to believe something, it’s as reasonable to believe in it as it is to believe in invisible dragons.
Yes, I am explicitly talking about that. Frankly the practice of calling “the great mystery” or “the logical necessity” or other such abstractions “God” seems at best poor metaphor and at worst self-deception. Why call such an abstract idea the same thing we call Zeus or Shiva?
For most of human history, “god” meant what I’m talking about (Yahweh, Zeus, Shiva, etc.). For the past few hundred years that conception of a god has become less credible, but people are culturally and emotionally attached to it, so it looks like they decided to call these other things a god rather than let it go. That’s my dime store analysis of the historical context around the world, which is neither rigorous or important to my central point.
Do you agree that what you are describing is basically the definition of speculation? Do you agree that any speculation that is not logically impossible and is completely detached from any known facts of the world is equally as credible as any other?
In theory yes, but have we done all that speculation yet ? Or have we just done the speculation that is dictated by (a reflection of) our nature (our world, or behind the blindfold). Again we are only talking about what is in our little (by comparison) world.
This is the FSB argument ( the Flying Spaghetti Monster argument). We are talking about things beyond what we can imagine, rather than imagined entities, which are fictional.
We have revelation.
God is by definition beyond what people can talk about. I know there are many competing definitions of God, but that is due to the limitations of human thought, language etc. What they all have in common though is that God is somehow beyond us and our world, is miraculous, is unknowable.
No, because we can only speculate about things indicated in the world we find ourselves in. So all those things might be equally credible in some sense.
The issue of God is different, firstly it has a philosophical relevance when addressing our origin, so there are philosophical arguments in which Gods are considered. Secondly it is an existential question about our origin, our being and our continuation. As such it must include questions about our limitations in addressing such issues, or realities. This being the case, we are obliged to consider that we might be mistaken, have gone down a blind alley, or that the reality is entirely inconceivable to us. Also that what we are given in our world might in someway be a distraction, fiction, or veil (blindfold again). That, for example, God, heaven, or what ever divine reality one is considering, is here with us now, but we just can’t see it. This is why many religious, or spiritual people pray, or meditate. They are seeking to still the self such that the inner reality might somehow shine through.
Fine. Just saying that the lack of a unified story arising independently is a huge piece of evidence supporting your side. You might want to leverage it.
You say this evidence is not required, that existence of a true god will nevertheless result in thousands of different god stories, none standing out except, like anything else subject to evolution, it thrives for a while before going extinct. I don’t buy that. If one story is correct, it would stand out. On the other hand, there may be one correct story, but nobody has thought of it yet. All the current stories are wrong. Such would be the nature of a non-interfering god.
Another piece of evidence in support of your view:
Almost everybody shares the same beliefs as their local society/family. Sure, a few care converted elsewhere, especially by predatory evangelism, but for the most part, beliefs are taught/preached, not discovered. This again would probably not be the case if said ‘presence’ could be felt as so many claim. Funny that you feel only the presence of what you’ve been taught, and not the presence of the god way over there that you never even heard of.
Yet you imagine such a thing exists. If you did not, we could not be speaking about it. Whether God, FSM or whatever else is fiction is a question we can methodically determine. The fact that it was imagined neither determines that it’s fiction (the Higgs Boson was imagined to exist before we knew it did), nor is it escapable that it is imagined if we are to speak about it.
What do you suggest “revelation” is, if not some effect on the world? I assume that you believe that you are a part of the world, and I assume that revelation is something that happens to you, correct?
That’s your definition, but neither reflects common use nor what I specifically said I was talking about. If you want to talk about your abstract notion of God, do so elsewhere, it isn’t what this thread is about.
Again, I don’t disagree, but I think adding all of these disparate things that can lower our credence in religion tend to muddy up the discussion.
Counter-intuitively, if we offer 20 reasons why God probably doesn’t exist, and one of those reasons might appear to be roughly rebutted, in the mind of many, that rebuttal (even if it isn’t logically sound) dramatically outweighs the remaining 19 reasons. It’s not good reasoning, but it’s a pretty predictably psychological outcome because of how people are cognitively built. So I prefer to keep the argument as simple as possible. Again, having a one in a billion credence isn’t functionally different from having a one in a trillion credence, so I don’t think lowering the credence further is worth muddling the argument.
Alas, yes.
We don’t even have to say any magic words. We can just know with absolute certainty… one way or the other.
So I agree.
I don’t imagine something, I retain it as a possibility. As an intelligent origin of the world.
That’s not true, it’s possible to talk about hypotheticals. The Higgs Boson was a hypothetical.
Also the possibility of unknowns can be determined to determining what we don’t know.
There are a number of problems with this, firstly we can only imagine things which resemble, or equate to things given to us in the world we find ourselves in. So how are we to talk about other things? Philosophy has tried to do this throughout history, Kant being the go to guy for this. If we are discussing universals they may go, in principle, beyond what we know in the world, making it difficult to deal with them. But they can be addressed logically, mathematically, philosophically. Then there is the case of God which is a special case, special because it deals with us, ourselves as an inescapable expression of what we are talking about. The idea being that if we consider (hypothetically) that God is everywhere, always (for example), then God is in us in this moment, which is itself inescapable.
The idea is that revelation is an experience of transcendence, that people are somehow able to experience transcendence. A common belief in religion is that Gods can be both of this world and above (transcend it) it simultaneously.
Show me a God that isn’t regarded by its believers as ineffable?
Again, I’m not here to be a kill joy, a pedant, or overly argumentative. But this is a philosophy forum and I am giving the opposing philosophical view.
You think of something in your head that you’ve never experienced. It’s the same thing happening as when you think of a FSM in your head that you’ve never experienced. If you don’t want to call that imagining, then tell me what word you prefer for thinking something in your head that you’ve never experienced.
Right. So if people experience transcendence, and people are part of the world, then revelation is a way that you think God affects the world. A way we know about. Previously you said that we don’t know about any effects God might have on the world. Which is correct?
Yes, and I laid out a very explicit case and defined my terms, and you’ve decided to ignore them. That isn’t being pedantic, but it is engaging in strawman, and worse, you are doing it blatantly and trying to defend doing it. That means you’re not giving me an opposing view, you’re giving me a non-sequitur.
I say again, if you want to argue in favor of your abstract God that doesn’t perform miracles, speak to their followers, and never manifested themselves on earth, then start your own topic about it and maybe people who care will join the conversation. I am not someone who cares about such a notion, and it is clearly not what this thread is about. Clearly and explicitly.
Here’s an addition to puzzle over.
The notion of an omniscient being appears… problematic.
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Not really relevant to the tack I’m taking. A god needn’t be omniscient to fail my test, and needn’t fail further to be functionally less credible.
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Just wondering how you came to the conclusion stated in the OP. Is there a probabilistic computation involved?
Did you check for a Deus malus (malevolent God)?
It can be a hypothetical, a theoretical entity, for example an intelligent originator of the world.
I haven’t said that, I would have said, there may be effects that we don’t know about.
Ok, I’ve gone back and read the OP. I agree with most of that when it comes to what people say and believe. I think your point about people having an innate tendency to develop these kind of stories, is strong.
Also I would say that probabilities don’t really help, because, what comes across as a small possibility doesn’t rule out the possibility and may be a result of a certain perspective.
My initial point was that this is all very well, but doesn’t answer the question, does God exist? Because we are looking at it from a limited perspective (the world and human knowledge) and don’t have sufficient knowledge, or data about our origins.
That we just can’t answer the question rationally and any attempt to is in inevitably just talking among ourselves, about what we find in our world.
I may not be able to show you anything that isn’t regarded as ineffable. Here’s Tennyson’s take:
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower – but ‘if’ I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
So for Tennyson, flowers, Gods, and humans are all ineffable.
I’d suggest, though, that Zeus, Apollo and many other Gods are no more ineffable than flowers or men.
So I can call it “hypothesized”, but not imagined? Okay. Then God and FSM are both hypothesized. There is nothing metaphysically special about hypothesized entities. Whether they are fictional or not need to be methodically determined. That is what I previously said before we got derailed with this pointless semantic digression.
So you don’t think Bayesian reasoning is worthwhile? When evaluating competing explanations where there is no certain answer (which is most of the time) how do you suppose we should weigh them if not to assign them some level of credence (likelihood/probability that each option is correct)?
Why must your definition of god be the correct one? Every major religion makes explicit claims of miracles and the (at least partial) knowability of God’s will. You’re trying to tell me that adopting the usage of every major religion is “wrong”? Stop trying to bully the question into your definition. If you want to talk about that, take it elsewhere, don’t spam my discussion with your irrelevancy.
Like with most evaluations of competing explanations, I could assign numeric values to my credences, but it is not part of the process of my evaluation (I assume that’s how people work in general). I think how I arrive at my evaluation is pretty explicit in the post. I don’t think assigning numeric values would make the argument any clearer.
Deus Malus would be subject to the same evaluation and the same conclusion so long as it is purportedly an empirical god. However, it’s not really a god in the modern sense. I am really trying to reflect the common use of the world’s biggest theistic religions.
Then what does it mean to say that God exists, and how is it different to saying that Foo exists?
Presumably the word “God” means something, and that this meaning allows us to distinguish God from things which aren’t God. It can’t be as simple as meaning “ineffable” because presumably it’s possible that there are ineffable things which aren’t God — e.g. Foo.
While I think your response lands on an appropriate question, in my experience it’s also likely to lead to a quagmire of abstraction on top of abstraction. I am happy to have people worship their ineffable, abstract and completely unknowable gods. I am happy to be agnostically unconvinced by them. They are trivial, meaningless gods. It is only when they claim to know something about their god when I find myself an atheist. Frankly, most people who are engaged enough to stick with such a debate do believe in an interventionist god, but (even though lying is a sin) misrepresent their beliefs on the matter.
Ok. As I said earlier your argument is sound. It’s just that almost surely has a mathematical ring to it, probabilistically speaking. No matter.
Deus malus is a live option if you must know. It’s part of the argument you’re making.
Lets be rational, go to a public stage or public place say god doesnt exist and say every religion is illusion or similar. The output would be ,you would face legal actions because of hurting sentiments.
While humans search for god, pray to god and the output? Positivity following religious acts like unity, forbidding lying, killing. Which only brings goodness and no evil.
While talking about real god, ask Yourselves if you are real and what is yours and not yours and why you are not similar to other humans or why you are not an object or why theres a duality. If you find that you are real Yourselve first then search for god later, just explaining that i feel pain and happiness doesn’t makes you real one moment you feel pain other second you completely forget. Morals and ethics are different in every human one cannot say they are real because there’s no one structure of moral or ethic that is the final solutions. For saying universe came from nothing first ask why nothing recquires (thing) word in it, for theory of everything, first ask what are all or every things then formulate it. Like one doesn’t know dark matter or dark energy and hence cannot solve it. Human limit themselves because of their insecurity and then illusions forms themselves. If the god gave humans many universe wisdoms to live peacefully they would still become evil. If god gave proof of himself they would still become evil, and if we say asking for proof of something that is considered infinite and greater than universe how can you give its proof where the capacity of finite is wanting to see infinite and become it.