Julian Sanchez on the New Atheism
Posted by Henry Baum at 00:48, 14 Jul 2010Why the new atheism tends to get on my nerves. A piece by Julian Sanchez called Agnosticism and the Varieties of Certainty counters the idea that atheism is really just agnosticism - i.e. it's not a fundamentalist belief that God doesn't exist, because that can't be proven either. His basic premise is that because God can't be proven, it's not worth believing. Different than: God could exist.
To the extent that it is a meaningful question, I have no reason to expect that science either eventually will, or even in principle could answer it. But I am not sure why I am supposed to care, except insofar as it’s interesting to mull over, if you go for that sort of thing. Suppose I allow that it is a genuine mystery—radically uncertain, even. It’s outside the realm about which we can talk meaningfully or offer evidence. So what? If there were some part of the world about which we couldn’t even in principle gather information, would I have to declare myself a basilisk agnostic because, after all, they might be there?
Trouble is God isn't a thing like a basilisk. Here's a basilisk, by the way, a mythical serpent.
God is (potentially) everything - including good and evil. It's not an entity that answers prayers like a fact-checker. God is consciousness, time, space, beyond our current understanding. To suggest that concept is not worth exploring - because it can't be proven - is sort of a slap in the face of scientific inquiry. When have scientists ducked from a good challenge (don't answer that)? So, taking spiritual questions out of life doesn't make life more concrete, it makes it less so.
I will admit that I am a weirdo who believes that what we imagine has the potential to be real. A mythical creature doesn't exist in Newtonian reality. But maybe...one day. We won't need a helmet to access virtual reality. We'll be able to project it with our minds (possibly). If matter is just energy, perhaps the energy of thought can one day become material. And once the imagined becomes real - everything becomes imagination.
That's a science fiction story, though, and won't fix my TV if it breaks.
He goes on:
I don’t know why there’s something instead of nothing, if the question is even intelligible, any more than I can prove I’m not a brain in a vat. These are interesting facts to reflect on in an epistemology seminar. They have very little to do with my ordinary assertions about how to get to The Passenger or whether the details of any particular cosmology seem persuasive, or whether praying to Mecca or confessing to a priest seems like a sensible thing to do.
Keep religion out of it. Religious ritual has little to do with the debate about the possible existence of God, which is a far cry more important than something to merely be debated in an epistemology seminar. No, the debate doesn't give you directions to some place on the map, but neither does art or music. The question of God is fundamental to human existence - proven, of course, by the interest in the new atheism. Obviously, it's a vital topic. But the premise of much atheism seems to be that God is too unknowable to even bother thinking about, let alone believing. What separates us as humans is the ability to think about these topics, so depriving us of this seems to trivialize a fundamental aspect of being human.
It's also telling that he says, "I don’t believe in...psychic powers either." So he discounts all anomalous phenomena? There's a whole host of puzzling and fascinating information about general esoterica. If he's discounting all instances of anomalous phenomena, how are we to believe it when he discounts all evidence of God? Again, these types of topics are currently unprovable, but unprovable today doesn't mean unprovable tomorrow. Saying otherwise is a sort of arrogant view that what we know today is all we will ever know. But that has never been the case with human knowledge and progress. To not keep looking - and to not acknowledge that it's worth looking for - is anti-knowledge as well as anti-theism.
He ends, "There’s still no reason to treat God talk as anything more than another bit of human storytelling." That would suggest that storytelling is a triviality - which is why it seems like the new atheists suck the fun and magic out of - not just God - but life itself. It's the condescension that gets to me: God is just a story. There's no such thing as just a story. Yes, but you can say - God was invented, just like a work of art. Until you can answer me why a particular work of art came to being, where in the dreamworld of the imagination it came from - not just the how, but the why - God is an inspiring topic and worth investigation. That's my belief - not: God exists. But: God is worth exploring.
Cross-posted at The American Book of the Dead.
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Comments
22 November 2004
4 weeks 6 days
Indeed, the amazing persistence of the God story makes it very interesting. That is the case for religions in general, and for the monotheist religions in particular. They have been widely believed by a sizable percentage of the population, across very different cultures. That is certainly an interesting subject.
----
We are the cat.
7 August 2004
39 weeks 5 days
Whew! Great post! Any atheist who says that God and religion is "just a story" needs to really consider science. Science is nothing more than a model that we use to describe what we see, feel, hear, smell, taste and touch(at varying degrees of magnification). Don't get me wrong, it is a very good model, but "science" is not what is really happening "out there"(if there really is an "out there", out there), in that sense science is also just another bit of human story telling. A story used by humans to describe what we interpret as going on "out there"...and it is a continually changing story at that!
I try not to "believe" too many things, although I do have more than a few opinions. You made some great points. Keep posting, this was a fun read!
Dustin
ps Your book looks like fun...I hope this post wasn't just a one time plug for your website and book, the Daily Grail thrives on the kind of intellectual stimulation that your mind obviously generates. I am fairly confident that you will find many like minded folks here with which to bounce around ideas.
12 April 2007
4 min 16 sec
Agreed. A human being who thinks thinking about the possible existence of God is a waste of time must be rather boring. Nobody thinks about the existence of God all day; but I dare anyone to refute ever having toyed with the possibility during a clear starry night.
God is worth exploring. That's a phrase worth having on a t-shirt! :)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
1 day 12 hours
The hard thing here is making up ideas and testing them, as opposed to making up ideas and just believing in them.
I agree completely that there is a large difference, sometimes missed, between religion and the philosophical possibility of God/s. Perhaps, or probably, even theology and the philosophical possibility of God/s.
The subject is certainly still worth thinking about, but this should not be used as an apologetic (i'm not a lover of that word, but hay) stratagem to distract away from fair criticism of already tendered, and sometimes tested, ideas.
Just as it is fair to ponder on whether reality is simply material as a philosophy, it is not correct to use this philosophy to assert that ideas such as parallel universes or multiple universes are correct or more likely. The possibility of God/s should not be used to assert young earth ideas, or as objections to anything that is evidenced - after all you are as likely to pit yourself against God/s when ignoring evidence as you are science.
We are not talking about the right of philosophers to conjecture on multiple possibilities though, but whether it is correct to believe in any given conjecture. Should we pick one possibility that we like and actually invest full blown belief in it?
Then we move onto what is most special about God/s. It is not the philosophical investigation occurring in academia, but the construct that is religion. It is the things that if anything has slown down investigation into God and spirit. That has historically combated investigation. Perhaps far worse has been done to the philosophical investigation of God, as well as the scientific, by religion, than a few non-believers could ever do. Not to mention the fact that many non-believers are non-believers because of religion, even if philosophy tells us that invested belief in philosophical conjecture is poor philosophy.
12 April 2007
4 min 16 sec
How do we test the idea of God, then?
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
7 August 2004
39 weeks 5 days
Well for starters you'll need a really big Petri dish...okay, from there I'm not so sure, but that should get you started.
Dustin
12 April 2007
4 min 16 sec
You think that was the reason Jesus changed the name of Simon to Peter? ;)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
1 day 12 hours
You lot just can't resist making me bite can you?
OK firstly we should take a second to acknowledge that there is a difference between science and 'just' story telling. If there was not many of us would already be dead. If a person cannot tell the difference between Narnia or Star Trek and physics or geology then that is their call, but they will surely struggle to answer anything particularly complex to anything other than their own standard.
Now onto the meat:
How to test for God?
Well, which one? ;) Some people leave it at that as if they have won something, but there is a more serious philosophical point. There will always be a disconnect between any actual deity and the human constructs we create. If God is unknowable and beyond our understanding then all of our concepts of it, our ideas of it, fall infinitely short. Therefore we are never testing the actual unknowable God, but instead our fallible human concepts of it. I hope you can see the difference because testing our fallible human ideas is exactly what we can do, and should do.
Human ideas can be conceived that are not testable. The external boundary of the universe is a teapot on the table of a celestial deity... Perhaps there are even an infinite number of propositions of this type, maybe even an infinite number of epistemological propositions that have nothing to do with God/s that are equally philosophically valid.
Now to the nitty gritty. What sort of God do we all want? What would we be satisfied with? There are surely possibilities that either individuals or groups find unsatisfactory. We drag the purer philosophical God possibility down into our world, where we take the basic concept and add to it, generally reducing its power, since we add testable weaknesses (even if it increases it aesthetics).
There is a funny thing here. Science can never prove something to 100%, it can only disprove. God can never be disproved, only proven. I remember hearing Alistair McGrath (an Oxford theologian) saying that the biggest mistake of modern theologians was to position Christianity too close to science, by making claims outside of the purely philosophical, and render it testable, this struck me at the time - these things are continuously updated man made constructions.
The temptation of course is to move the God concept out of pure philosophy and make all sorts of testable claims. While the concept of God can never be tackled, especially if it is formulated (by man) as something ultimately unknowable and 'outside', theologians break their own rules and create something that is testable.
Of course we are not testing God her/himself. Just the various claims hung on him/her/it.
This is the difficulty. A statement of God small enough to remain of the philosophically pure type that remains an external possibility does not contain enough information to wet our natures. We like to have God as an answer for life, the universe and everything. This cannot be done without hanging something on the basic theology - and that renders it external to just the philosophy.
God created the universe.
God created the stars.
God created the planets.
God created Life.
God listens and cares about our dreams.
God punishes non-believers.
God grants prayers.
Jesus was the son of God, but also God and the Holy Spirit. They are separate, but indivisible.
Insertion of anything of the type above results in a change to the type of argument being made. Though we would need to ask what we mean by 'natural' in the first place though. If natural means occurring on its own without requiring any intervention for it to occur from original conditions then we can test to see whether systems around us conform to that hypothesis, or are best explained by intervention.
I think you can create many God definitions, some testable, some currently untestable, some specifically designed to be permanently untestable. Each is special in its own way.
It all depends on what is going on in any specific argument or claim, just like anything else.
This topic almost seems to be sidestepping all these complexities though. It is asking whether the right to disbelief in specifics is the same as the right to disbelief in the possibility. Obviously this is not true. Science cannot philosophically prove to 100%, but we are also saying that here it cannot disprove to 100% either.
I have a tiny man sitting next to me. He is about 1 inch high and smoking the biggest cigar you have ever seen. It is at least 10 miles long and half a mile wide. Science can deal with this to an accuracy that any reasonable person would consider high enough to be a disproof, but can philosophy?
How does philosophy tackle the difference between our world, be it imaginary or whatever, and stories like Narnia? I do not see philosophers wasting too much time over the notion that the only thing that seems to indicate that Narnia is not inside your wardrobe, or that Neverland is not past the second star to the right, is the evidence. They do face the wider problem of subjectivity and dreamworlds, but they also make their specific ideas relate to the evidence. So questioning wider reality seems fine, but a specific such as frogs being born by the elements coming together and spontaneously generating life was compared to evidence.
My point here is that philosophy is not a get out of jail free card when testable specifics, or specifics affected by evidences, are incorporated into an argument.
The pure 'outside' God that exists as a philosophical possibility, without added information, alongside an infinite number of other philosophical possibilities is philosophically acceptable. Past philosophers have shown that when information/claims are added to these pure philosophies that evidence does begin to matter though. To ignore it would not be philosophical.
This is how I would begin to proceed. There are God types that are purely philosophical possibilities, and we can speculate about them forever (though believing is different to speculation, and arguing that people should in some way believe is different too). Then there are plenty of types that present claims that are testable. It could just be that the God is supposed to be real, physical, material, visible and glowing green, and sitting to your right. If it is not then it is disproven, we have disproven a God type (i don't have one next to me either). Every claim placed upon the pure philosophical God type risks reducing it in some way, even if it is harder to test than just looking to your right. This is why the sciences affect the different God types in different ways, though the pure philosophical notion remains as unaffected as any of an infinite number of possibilities.
- having said all that I do think we can all create God types that seem either reasonable, or more reasonable, to us individually - but that is philosophy for you. Mine would be more deist I think.
12 April 2007
4 min 16 sec
I'll try to encompass what's already been said in previous comments.
I don't agree with valuing any imaginative construct we can come up with as 'philosophical' in nature. To me, philosophy uses human reason to make sense of the world; it may differ from Science in the sense that it doesn't use a body of rules like the Scientific method, but that doesn't mean it's an "everything goes" discipline.
So, in order for an idea to be philosophically valid, this idea has to be helpful in trying, through reason, to make the world easier to understand. Thinking that the boundary of the Universe is part of a metaphysical tea service fails to accomplish that :)
Listening recently to a Paracast show with a guy named Walter Bosley, I came across certain ideas that seem reasonable enough —or perhaps, 'reasonable' is not the right way to put it; rather they 'rang' true.
What Bosley said is, to put it simply, that God has to be experienced. And in order to do that it involves an actual conscious effort from your part. So it is the perfect paradox: God is not going to show Him/Herself to you unless you go looking for him, and you might not be inclined to look for God if you don't think there's anything to find in the first place!
It seems nonsensical, but at this time of my life this assertion feels to be closer to the Truth than any other epistemological arguments we can try to come up with.
You know what this discussion reminds me of? A segment of the TV show The Big Bang Theory, in which Sheldon —the obnoxious Aspergerian genius with a complete lack of social skills— tells his roommate that he knows how to swim; and his roommate quickly reminds him that he has NEVER got in the water in his whole life, that he has only READ books about swimming; so Sheldon replies that reading a book is the only thing he WANTED to know about swimming, that he was comfortable with only the theoretical principles, but he didn't have any intention of actually putting them into practice anyway —his reasons to read a book about swimming was that in a world with global warming, it only made sense to be prepared ;)
So, this argument is kind of the same. I admit I taunt you with my question, because I kind of expected you to give me one of your looong :) & carefully constructed replies, full of sound reasoning —and that I always enjoy reading... when I have the time :-P— but in the end I feel (emphasis on 'feel') that the answer to this will not be found with sound reasoning and epistemological constructs.
You want to experience God? I suggest you start by looking in the eyes of your beautiful son :)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
7 August 2004
39 weeks 5 days
What Bosley said is, to put it simply, that God has to be experienced. And in order to do that it involves an actual conscious effort from your part. So it is the perfect paradox: God is not going to show Him/Herself to you unless you go looking for him, and you might not be inclined to look for God if you don't think there's anything to find in the first place!
It seems nonsensical, but at this time of my life this assertion feels to be closer to the Truth than any other epistemological arguments we can try to come up with.
No, no, no, RPJ, you're on the right track! Think of it like the color red. If you've never experienced the color red, nobody, and I mean NOBODY is going to be able to explain it to you with words. You have to experience it at least once with your own eyes in order to comprehend the color red. Go ahead and try to explain the color red to a person born blind. I dare you. See, God is the same way.
Now obviously God is not the same as the color red in that God is not tangible nor visible like the wavelength that we label the color red. Those ineffable physical experiences are called qualia, and God is certainly more than qualia...but the analogy still holds...ineffable is inexpressible, beyond words, indefinable, and God, like qualia, is ineffable.
I disagree with your paradox because I personally know people with no inclination for religion whatsoever who have had NDE's and drug induced religious experiences who later swear that they experienced God. I will agree however that a paradox exists, but the paradox in my opinion is that even if you want to experience God, until you've had the experience of God, you have no idea what to look for. Bummer.
Dustin
12 April 2007
4 min 16 sec
Maybe they were looking for God, but they just didn't know it? ;)
PS: And in case you were wondering: YES, I get paid 1 buck each time I have the chance to link a Youtube clip of The Matrix :-P
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
1 day 12 hours
Hay RPJ,
Yep, I don't seem to be able to sum things up in a few lines. Then again I still think 500 pages would be more realistic.
I agree with you on your point about philosophy applying reason, and really wish it were correct. I don't think it is though. The fact that different definitions of reason are usable creates diversity that in the example of the material world would fail to home in on something like magnetism (for example). It only becomes more diverse when we attempt the metaphysical.
Experience is all well and good. Obviously we can all use our heads, hearts or some combination of the two. In the answer I gave above I obviously just used my head, somewhat reluctantly I didn't address pure thought, feeling, or the paranormal for the philosophical reason that we do not yet have answers for them. I addressed only that which would begin to create more certainty than we currently have - to test to a greater degree than the systems the world already uses. I felt that was the only fair answer.
Obviously I could have come in and said that it was about the feeling if I was playing the other side of the debate. I am full of feelings of mystery and love for this world, and I am quite capable of calling the feeling I get when I look in my child's eyes 'God', why wouldn't I be?
But we are at the beginning of exactly what I was talking about. The start point is the definition. The 'feeling of awe' exists in (presumably) most of us. If you start in a debate about God by defining it as the sensation of God or the feeling of love ,mystery and amazement of life then we get into a fun bit. Those sensations obviously exist, so the mental temptation is to take that as proof for the overall idea that you have linked them to. This is not rational though as you would first need to show some connection, which you haven't. Humans have the ability to become emotionally involved in most things. Firstly we don't know whether we even are becoming emotionally involved in God, as opposed to what happened to me when I became emotionally involved in the amazing world around me, but it expressed itself in an eventual understanding of geology.
Obviously this is a tricky point. Many people would not accept the above. Feeling can overpower thought and the application of reason you suggested can easily be derailed. Theologians argue that this is correct, and it is the innate feeling of God correctly overriding internal requests for more. Theologians who would position God entirely outside of the universe, always acting within, but never close to any experiment, might go further and state that that feeling is all the God we need to take them seriously.
This idea, like any other, needs to be put in the context of its competitor arguments as well though. It is not like there are not other ideas of why we might have certain feelings in the first place.
It is not that I don't have sympathy for this argument, I think it is one of the better unknowable arguments, it is just that historically feelings have been more related to culture than to accuracy. If i am being entirely honest I just could not say that I considered the feeling that I was right to be the same as evidence that I was, in any circle. Hopefully I have never argued, here or anywhere, that I am right because I feel it.
12 April 2007
4 min 16 sec
You're right; but the fact that humans in all circumstances and historic times have been able to connect with the same feeling arguably shows there might be something behind the feeling worth exploring.
What should come first in the search for God? the emotional chicken or the rational egg? Obviously the egg is necessary for the chicken to hatch properly.
It's funny how, when you research the life of Nikola Tesla, you find out that the man who almost single-handedly brought the world to the XXth century never had much need for experimentation of his scientific ideas. It is said that he had the ability to 'see' the machine he was thinking on in perfect clarity and three dimensions; he could concentrate on any part of it, and 'put it to motion' as it were, BEFORE even starting to actually, you know, build it. What does that say about the need for proper 'proof' in the scientific method?
I think I need to disagree with this. I think theology and organized religion have ALWAYS felt uncomfortable with people that bypass their authority and have a direct communion with the God feeling —St Francis was not exactly welcomed warmly when he went to see the Pope.
It's not just a 'feel-good' sensation we're talking about, something that would make you feel part of a mere flock and give more money on Sundays; it's an event that has the potential to open the doors of perception and expand your conscience! I presume something like that undermines any need for regulating authorities.
We call this 'feeling' because there are simply no good enough words to describe this mental process, that seems to surpass rational deduction. Like Dustin wrote in other comment, you don't need to rationalize why or how your eyes are able to perceive the color red; you just do.
Having said, that, I remind myself that the rational egg is always needed. So a mystical experience that is not tampered with the sobriety of rational thought might not be of much use. But the rational aspect is *not* meant to serve as an explanation for those people who haven't yet experienced that other part. Those people would keep asking for proof and evidence, and you won't ever be able to provide them, because no one can see with somebody else's eyes.
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
7 August 2004
39 weeks 5 days
...a Amen in the house! A Hallelujah, my brothers and sisters! Thank ya Lord!...blessed be his holy, name, THANK YA LORD! This we pray in his holy and ineffable name...so sayeth the Shepherd, so sayeth the flock, AMEN, and Amen, and Amen...
*final "Amen" spoken in a whisper for greater effect*
*breaks into a tearful first verse of Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty...both arms and hands raised high...palms facing upwards...face looking towards the heavens...gently swaying back and forth*
Dustin
21 February 2009
1 day 12 hours
Hay RPJ,
We are starting to tread into a bigger subject I fear.
You are setting forward the case for specific information content in emotions and not in thought itself. That an emotion can be felt and that we might not need to think about it and can trust that the information present in the emotion is actually true. To be honest I suspect that this never occurs. That thought is always occurring and emotions are acting in response to it - that emotions have no actual information content other than in the context of thought, even if the thought is only subconscious. In theory this should be testable since we would be looking for isolated brain activity in emotional and 'reasoning' centers never occurring in isolation. I suspect that what happens in gut reactions to advanced concpets, such as machine constrcution or electrical theory etc, is that rational construction of concepts occurs subconsciously and after that we get a gut feeling we are on to something. I.e the information is processed by the brain normally, though subconsciously, and subconscious ideas and models created. These ideas sit below the conscious mind and we then get the 'feeling' of their presence and have to put the effort into dragging them out and into our conscious mind - in effect rediscovering something our brain has subconsciously figured out. Importantly though these gut instincts also get things wrong.
I am not yet convinced that emotions occur without subconscious activity drawing on memories and previous experience (- i.e building knowledge in exactly the same way as the 'rational' thinking mind must do). I don't think that the emotions are a different type or new type of information processing system, but that they are just as capable of emotionally reacting to subconscious processing activity. Hopefully I am explaining myself enough here. In one philosophical idea information content exists independently in the emotions, or that they can independently process information and arrive at conclusions without drawing on brain physiology that is involved in what we might call the 'rational' and 'thinking' portions of the brain. So in this idea Tesla was not being guided by his emotions, his emotions were reacting to rational thought occurring subconsciously.
I guess in this model some people are alot better at not getting in subconscious muddles; of having rational subconscious minds. So Tesla gets up with a gut feeling about some fantastic machine that is on the tip of his tongue, while someone less rational subconsciously gets up with a gut instinct that is gibberish - along the lines of increasing your DNA by chanting for example. The implication is that it is not new information stored specifically in the emotion that is guiding people of prodigious output to rationalise the emotion out, but that the emotion exists because the rationalisation has already been done and it is reacting to it - informing the user so to speak.
We may have to await better brain scans done during this part of the thought process before we will know who is right - then again maybe it has already been done and is out there somewhere.
the fact that humans in all circumstances and historic times have been able to connect with the same feeling arguably shows there might be something behind the feeling worth exploring
Perhaps, but we have been modern humans genetically for over 10,000 years and the genetic bottleneck has guarantee'd low genetic diversity. Perhaps the feeling points towards our ability to similarly experience and lends itself to exploring genetic diversity and the way the brain manifests emotions and deals with the knowledge of mortality and the problem of uncertain epistemology. Everything is worth testing though and the 'historic argument' is not a bad one, though I think it is best recognised as an observation rather than data itself; since otherwise it is data for both sides, which is silly.
I think I need to disagree with this. I think theology and organized religion have ALWAYS felt uncomfortable with people that bypass their authority and have a direct communion with the God feeling
I definitely agree that they have felt 'uncomfortable' (to be honest murderous is a better description for many events). I don't think it is a strong point against my point though. Better to look at religion as just confused and confusing. The truth is that if you really pin a theologian down on a point they will, if you can get them to be honest, admit that they do not understand it either. This aught to reduce their authority, as you say, but your point is reduced because it does not reduce their authority. Their claim that God is ultimately unknowable, even to them, secures it. They just have to say that no-one understands it, but that they understand what is available to understand the best. Even if the parishioner comes to understand that the priest/vicar/theologian does not understand it themselves they will still be sold the idea that they understand bits of it better than themselves. The authority is maintained, not lost. Bare in mind that the answers that priests/vicars/theologians have been trained to give might not really answer the question, but they will 'sound' like they do. The authority is still handed to them.
it's an event that has the potential to open the doors of perception and expand your conscience! I presume something like that undermines any need for regulating authorities.
Quite true. Philosophy can be used to support metaphysical authority though. Just use the same tactic as tobacco and oil companies and sow doubt.
We call this 'feeling' because there are simply no good enough words to describe this mental process, that seems to surpass rational deduction.
Does it surpass rational deduction though? Or is it a choice not to use it?
you don't need to rationalize why or how your eyes are able to perceive the color red; you just do
True, you don't have to. If you do though you discover biology, optics, quanta......... Spirituality has been locked up in misconceptions and authorities for most of our species's recorded history. I think it can only benefit it if we draw back the curtains. If emotional information exists then perhaps we have had an internal guide, but if it is like everything else and we will have to rationalise our way through it's maze then our hopes and predictions are not certain, and I think that scares people.
Having said, that, I remind myself that the rational egg is always needed.
And in good fashion I do the same with the other parts of my brain too.
But the rational aspect is *not* meant to serve as an explanation for those people who haven't yet experienced that other part
Good point. After all a description of love is not *meant* the same as the experience. Actually though a description of the fossil record is *not* the same as experiencing it. A description of an earthquake is not the same as being in one. The point works for the material as well. Biologists studying evolution are not likely to consider reading their paper the same as seeing 50,000 generations of bacteria evolve similar traits converging on environmental fitness through mathematically random mutations occurring in genes. Just like reading about geology is not the same as going into the field an experiencing it. I guess the difference is that even though it is not the same an attempt is made to help people understand. You won't catch me claiming that education will never work and people who have not been in the field will never get it. Doing so is a different type of experience, but it is still possible to understand geological principles without the experience. The problem for theology is that they claim the experience is it - they do not have the principles yet; arguably they are pre-principle.
26 June 2005
1 day 21 hours
Hay RPJ,
We are starting to tread into a bigger subject I fear.
Indeed.
For what it's worth, my concept of God is this: God is everything. Full stop. There is nothing external to God. You, I, the universe and any other dimension or reality that might exist are all God. Therefore God cannot be denied because that would be denying our own existence.
It seems to me that dogmatic atheists and religious fundamentalists both make the same mistake: that of limiting God to some kind of anthropomorphic caricature. Generally a Man, existing outside His creation, creating and then judging His creations. It is very easy to rationalise such a God out of existence. I did so before I was 14.
Given that we exist, then, it seems to me that the real question is: does existence have a purpose? Is reality conscious? Would conscious purpose mean intelligence? Love?
It also seems to me that these are questions that science cannot answer. Science measures things ... but how to measure purpose? How to measure love? This is why science needs philosophy - to give it context. Some scientists would insist that they have no philosophical agenda ... The facts, Maam. Just the facts ... I think that might be somewhat disingenuous. Most present day scientists are materialists and it is clear to me that data that confirms this philosophical world-view is given far more credence than data that might suggest otherwise. Materialism is the philosophical context for most of today's scientists.
Now we are into a big subject :)
Dave.
Wanted: More White Crows ... http://whitecrows.davidsmuse.co.uk
21 February 2009
1 day 12 hours
Hay Dave,
You know i have a bit more of a softer spot for your type of God. Even Richard Dawkins has said that he has no problem with 'God is love' or 'God is energy' type deities. I believe Chris Hitchens has said he is fine with it so long as it is kept out of his face - he's a little sterner I guess.
These things that are more pure philosophy are not really a worry to anyone. We'd have to pin down every atheist to try and determine exactly what atheism is with respect to more philosophical notions of reality. I suspect that a different word is neccessary to show belief or disbelief of these types of things. As you say, you dismissed many God types at the age of 14. I am afraid that many christians would lump you in exactly the same boat as me if you don't believe in 'their' God. I am sort of OK with atheism being a particular stance in relation to certain God properties, rather than a blanket statement of every single God possibility either imagined or un-imagined.
As Sam Harris has pointed out we do not have cultural words for non-astrology belief or non-unicorn belief etc, or a billion other non-beliefs. Some God types have had such a strong influence on our cultures that disbelief in them seems to have necessitated a word to describe such people. I am one of the people who does not believe in those God types. I have no idea whether I am dreaming right now, or in some sort of shared dream. I don't know whether consciousness is the only reality and there is only one being (all of us - so there wouldn't be a God in that sense either). I don't 'believe' in those things, but they are possibilities - as are many other things, including multiple universes and quantum jiggery pokery in out brains. Who knows. Simply not being in a state of belief about the main God types is enough for me to declare cultural atheism, if not certain philosophical atheism (how can there be such a thing - I know of no major atheist claiming such). I stay away from calling myself agnostic (as i suspect many people calling themselves atheist do), even if it might be a better description of my philosophical position since to many it implies 50/50 on the issue of culturally popular deities, and like you I think they are nonsense.
Does existence have a purpose and can science answer it?
Yes and definitely no. We can ask questions of nature and see if it conforms to the answer we would like. So what we can do is test various versions of meaning. Perhaps, for example, the universe is just about myself and no-one else. We can test that. Does the universe give me everything I want? Nope. In which case maybe that version of meaning for me is false. You like the idea of emergent biology implying direction to material life (as have many in the past) - we can test it and see. It is not true that we cannot scientifically test any theory of meaning, but it is true that we cannot test them all. The universe might well fall into the category of being of a type that contains scientifically testable meaning, but it is looking more and more like it doesnt, and that will be for philosophers to discuss as scientists test more and more meaning avenues.
Then again the paranormal offers hope that meaning is scientifically accessible. But maybe we will just find that that is due to new types of material affects we have not yet discovered. Who knows.
Whatever the discoveries set to be made I think we will all be fascinated, skeptics and dogmatic atheists like myself, as well as people on the other side. Who isn't fascinated by the scientific work being done on consciousnesses easy problem?
12 April 2007
4 min 16 sec
I suppose the reason for this is that they want a God so abstract and impersonal as to shove it aside from their daily life. Oh, yes; there's possibly a God, so what?
Whereas Catholics long for a God so personal that He not only counts the hairs on their head every femtonsecond, but watches over them during any quantum wave function collapse they come across :)
I admit I'm looking for a God that's somewhere in between.
Because even if we accepted to follow the Deist vision of the American forefathers, of a God that created the Universe and then decided to leave His creation untouched so that it could unfold without external influence, I suspect that would give us a different viewpoint from the atheists who could settle with an abstract idea of Universal order as "God".
We would imply some purpose to the Universe, and try to conform our lives according to that purpose. Even if God was absent, we would not be able to cast Him out of our lives.
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
1 day 12 hours
I suppose the reason for this is that they want a God so abstract and impersonal as to shove it aside from their daily life. Oh, yes; there's possibly a God, so what?
Maybe. Would there be a problem with that anyway? Abstract and impersonal deist type Gods make it quite awkward to know what they are up to, or what they want (if they want anything) anyway. That concept always seems strange to me anyway.
What makes a God different from an extremely powerful alien force anyway? If the universe was created not by a God, but by aliens how would we have to shape our ideas, and how different would it practically be from deism? We accord God's something strange philosophically, I can't even get a straight answer on what one is supposed to be (not just here - anywhere). Nobody seems to be able to give an educated reason as to why reality cannot have existed forever and Gods are a necessary initial condition rather than having an infinite universe in which beings evolved into creatures so powerful they appear as Gods. Deism is a funny thing, would you honestly use the same language to state that God like beings existed and were being shoved aside by non-believers? rather than fully blown philosophical Gods (whatever they are?!). Is there some sort of ranking that goes theism>RPJmiddle-theism>deism>super aliens>atheism ;)
I admit I'm looking for a God that's somewhere in between.
I'm not sure what i'm looking for in my God. As i've said elsewhere I have experimented with my own, and in a Pratchet'ian world maybe there were even real for the moments i believed in them, but they didn't do very much so i'm not sure. I'm not too happy with the state of the world to be honest. I wouldn't even know where to start with the number of disagreements I would have with any deity. Sort of like having a political party in power that you don't like very much (as measured by the state of the country etc).
12 April 2007
4 min 16 sec
Same thing could be said about personal deities ;)
Oh, sometimes I WISHED I could be an atheist, for exactly the same reasons! How easy it could be to explain away the problems of the world in that fashion. Believe me, I've tried.
Then again, maybe the reason I still entertain the notion of God is that I need someone to shout out during rush hour :-P
OK, my brain is sweating from all this hard thinking. I'm gonna look at some porn now. BRB :-3
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
26 June 2005
1 day 21 hours
Nobody seems to be able to give an educated reason as to why reality cannot have existed forever and Gods are a necessary initial condition rather than having an infinite universe in which beings evolved into creatures so powerful they appear as Gods.
The difference is that you are willing to accept that evolution from "initial conditions" to what we can observe today must have been accidental, therefore without purpose. I am not willing to accept that.
We could discuss the anthropic principle and the fine-tuned universe but there are many sites and books discussing that elsewhere. Very interesting but polarised according to the philosophy of those who advocate one side or the other. So I'll just repeat that I have read nothing that has yet convinced me that we are here by sheer fluke.
The intelligence that gives existence purpose is what I call God. Perhaps that's not an educated reason but it's all I can manage.
[Later Edit]: I'm always one to look for give-away phrases when people say or write something. Words or phrases that indicate an underlying prejudice or motive. When I re-read what I had written here I noticed the phrase "I am not willing to accept that". That's not good for someone who claims to be open-minded. I need to work on that.
Dave.
Wanted: More White Crows ... http://whitecrows.davidsmuse.co.uk
21 February 2009
1 day 12 hours
When I re-read what I had written here I noticed the phrase "I am not willing to accept that". That's not good for someone who claims to be open-minded. I need to work on that
Don't worry, i didn't read it that way anyway. I'd take it more like 'I am not willing to accept that right now'.
The difference is that you are willing to accept that evolution from "initial conditions" to what we can observe today must have been accidental, therefore without purpose
Surely the purpose of these blogs is to talk about our ideas and misconceptions of each side. So people can point me in the way of remote viewing and other possibilities and talk to me about what they might mean; thats why i'm here - even if I am skeptical or have fun play devils advocate with you or myself. It is probably the exposure to ideas that is important.
I think you are getting your subjects mixed. In the above quote you are referencing two different ideas; namely evolution and the big bang.
It is entirely possible to have guided creation of the universal constants and still have random mutation guided by natural selection. It seems like you are confusing the two.
I know you are a man who looks at all evidence. The physical constants of the universe are very precisely 'tuned' to create this type of universe. Though this could be said of any universe (as those constants determine the universe) they are precisely what is needed to make life like us (i.e stars with planets, organic chemistry etc). Either lucky for us, their are many universes so many sets of constants, or they are fine-tuned specifically to our type of life by something or someone (unlucky for any life that is not like us that might have been, but isn't).
I like discussions, either purely philosophical, scientific, or a mix of the two, that relate to the fact of the precision of these constants to output us.
Then we also have biological (as opposed to nuclear-synthesis, geological, astronomical etc) evolution. This is a completely separate subject, just like the evolution of a river system is separate, even though it still requires atoms and stars. Meandering of rivers is non-random, guided by physics. Evolution by natural selection is non-random and is guided by the 'physics' of natural selection. Evolution by natural selection is the antithesis of accidental and random. If it was a random process it would never have created complex life suited to it's environment, existing in so many symbiotic relationships, and with parallel-evolution of features like wings, eyes, echolocation, plus convergence on body types such as cats in Africa filling the same niche, and so adapting similar body plans as some marsupials in Australasia.
I presume you are happy that quantum mechanics features randomness (it is built on it after all), but that rules applying to it do not result in a random soup universe where nothing occurs other than randomness on a quantum scale. It is the same thing for mutation. Mutation occurs randomly (just like in the maths for quantum mechanics), but principles affecting it (i.e natural selection) pick and choose its products and that creates the non-randomness we see around us in biology. The emergent behaviour that gives us all the complex life around us happens due to some rules (just like in physics where gravity applies order to particles). It just happens that in biology it is not gravity doing the ordering, it is that fact that survival and replication dictate which biology exists in the next generation.
Emergent properties in our universe do not spring out of nowhere. They emerge because laws are acting on randomness, this is the bit we can see and measure (it is where the laws come from that is debatable, not their existence). This is common throughout the universe (that bit we can see, i.e about 140 billion light years) and also occurs in biology.
Perhaps the bit you are having difficulty with is that in physics emergence follows mathematical laws resulting from relationships between matter and energy. In this way it can be viewed as being a bit magical and mysterious. Natural selection emerges because of a little bit of physics (namely that molecules replicate, but don't if they are 'dead') mixed with behavior, with is a little different than a physical force, but non the less is still a force acting on matter and energy - and in this instance creates non-random emergent patterns in that matter and energy.
We can play with this a little. Behavior might be said to be consciousness (especially in your model of consciousness where it is everything). I am sure that the idea of consciousness resulting in non-random order to life is right up your alley, but it is still natural selection on the random mutations that consciousness is applying to that is resulting in the 'evolution' of biological systems.
Of course we might have to call all actions 'decisions' to apply consciousness. So we have no problem calling ourselves 'conscious', but also have to call all mammals, birds and reptiles, amphibians, fish, worms, multicellular life, single celled life etc conscious - and ultimately right back down through that bit where chemistry became organic chemistry. I would that thought that right up your street though.
Ultimately I would have thought that the forces of the universe that create 'emergence' would be some of the most interesting to you, and natural selection is among the most powerful principles - right up there with gravity. It is just that it mixes in behavior with the physics and chemistry, whereas gravity appears to be just physics. It doesn't matter to it though, it still ends up the same.
(as for the argument that mutation in general is not random, imagine rolling a dice, if each number comes up the same then it is random, if you consistently get more 2's then something is going on. Mutation occurs in a statistical fashion like a dice roll. I see no way of getting around it. All that is left is either something like intelligent design where data is inserted at some specific point, or an increase in the sophistication of your argument to feature natural selection as the emergent principle working on these random mutations, and hence a very clever idea by the universe, in which biological evolution by natural selection on random mutation ultimately does work to create the non-randomness you seek anyway; as shown by experiment and simulation).
It is only in this context that your phrase "I am not willing to accept that" can be tested. If you are not willing to accept mathematical and statistical evidence that mutations are random as well as experiment and simulation to show that natural selection (and including the other selections) turns the randomness of mutation around and creates order and importantly order in the direction of increasing complexity and adaptation) then I really don't know what science would be able to do to make you change you mind. On one side it seems like there is a mountain of evidence, on the other you have some philosophy. I don't see the problem with making a choice that includes both, and as such improves the likelihood any philosophy you create in the future will be more likely to contain a glimmer of any ultimate truth.
26 June 2005
1 day 21 hours
I think you are getting your subjects mixed. In the above quote you are referencing two different ideas; namely evolution and the big bang.
No, that was deliberate. I see no reason to separate the two. Why should biological evolution be a special case? I see it as a continuum - from Big Bang to Einstein.
Evolution by natural selection is non-random and is guided by the 'physics' of natural selection
I do have problems with that statement but I generally dislike getting into the evolution debate because the arguments tend to be so well rehearsed and pat. In the end, you get drawn into defending things you never intended to defend because the whole debate is so polarised. Suffice to say that when I think of random in terms of evolution, I'm thinking of random mutations. I believe that is what underpins the whole theory.
"Cumulative selection is the key to all our modern explanations of life. It strings a series of acceptably lucky events (random mutations) together in a nonrandom sequence so that, at the end of the sequence, the finished product carries the illusion of being very very lucky indeed." -Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker
My alternative is that mutations are consciously selected (perhaps even consciously created). I'm not sure of the hierarchy of consciousness involved but I think it might be that a species has a collective consciousness and learns from previous adaptations. Thus, the consciousness that is everything continues to explore its own potential through the process of evolution. Essentially, it is an experimental process - something every good scientist would recognise.
Nevertheless, I'm sure you are going to come back with those well rehearsed arguments and I really don't want to go there right now. However, on a related topic, I've just posted a Blog entry that might tickle your fancy.
Keep well,
Dave.
Wanted: More White Crows ... http://whitecrows.davidsmuse.co.uk
12 April 2007
4 min 16 sec
No I'm not. I'm afraid I wasn't clear enough in stating that I think the solutions is closer to your later statement that "what happens in gut reactions to advanced concpets, such as machine constrcution or electrical theory etc, is that rational construction of concepts occurs subconsciously and after that we get a gut feeling we are on to something.".
So we shouldn't confuse the messenger with the message.
Yes, but don't you see?? it's oh so easy just to finish the inquiry by concluding it's all magically produced by the subconscious "black box". Well, I for one want to open that box, dammit! I want to see what or who is inside.
Whitley Strieber tells in his book Communion that his son (or someone speaking 'through' his son) told him that "the subconscious is like the Universe beyond the quasars; it's a place you have to travel to in order to see what's there".
His son was like 8 or 9 when he told him that, BTW.
Maybe, but I believe you might be negating a truly tantalizing possibility, in your sticking with the preconception that knowledge follows only through a unidirectional arrow of time. Haven't we discussed in other threads the peculiarities of time, and how it's 'arrow' appears to be a mere mental artifact? how does that change our concepts regarding intuition, when we start to consider the possibility that one can 'remember' the future?
What if through their subconscious some remarkable individuals can bypass the 'normal' flow of experience? What can we conclude of experiments in remote viewing, that seem to suggest consciousness follows the same quantum rules of effects 'preceding' causes? The investigators discovered, for instance, that the RVers were far more accurate when they followed the procedure of disclosing to them the results of their previous sessions, in a form of 'spooky' reverse self-reinforcing information loop.
True; but all early steps in any endeavor are bound to be full of mistakes. Science has had its mishaps too after all ;)
Like I said; maybe you don't use it because you don't need to.
I think you're following the argument that mysticism prefers to keep its eyes closed for fear of losing clarity; and yet all of the great scientists of previous centuries WERE mystics! Not even Bacon, Descartes or Newton; but the modern scientists who lay the foundations of quantum mechanics ended up with a pretty Eastern-like mystic way to look at things —obviously, something some of their successors are not too comfortable with nowadays.
This is not a fight between left brain vs right brain. Consciousness obviously needs to include both.
No. The problem with Theology is the same problem Sheldon had in The Big Bang Theory: they urge you to be content with reading about how to swim; they predicate all about the back stroke and the flip, but they never truly coax you to get into the water.
They themselves are afraid of the water! :)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
1 day 12 hours
Hi RPJ,
This conversation has been food for thought, as ever. So cheers.
OK, so you don't see emotions as actually containing information (i.e Einstein didn't have an emotion containing relativity), but instead reacting to idea's (relativity was in other parts of his mind and emotions reacted to it).
Thats more how I see it and guess thats how it works from the neurology i've read. I think i'm only mulling with this idea because people sometimes argue that emotion is another avenue of understanding. At first glance that seemed reasonable, but I am just trying to understand whether that is possible if emotion is only reactive to ideas, rather than specifically containing information itself. If emotions are only reactive, and especially if they only align themselves with what is believed (in effect just providing a cross reference with new information to preconceptions) then the idea that emotions contain specific information is trickier. I can't even remember what got me wondering about that now though.
Yes, but don't you see?? it's oh so easy just to finish the inquiry by concluding it's all magically produced by the subconscious "black box". Well, I for one want to open that box, dammit! I want to see what or who is inside.
I too want to crack it open ;) When I wrote the above I was actually thinking about whether brain scans at the point of conception of an idea or of understanding might be able to show a chain of activity showing where ideas were forming and whether emotional activity came first or after conception and formalisation of idea in the brain. In effect cracking it open a little. Its hard to imagine they could see it, but they have isolated individual memories on neurons (from what I remember) and read an image from the neurons in the visual cortex, so i tend to think a lack of imagination on my part isn't a precise limit on what neurologists can achieve. Maybe they could check to see whether emotions were occurring before the idea happens in pther brain regions(and so maybe providing a glimpse into emotions containing information and being another type of knowledge).
Maybe, but I believe you might be negating a truly tantalizing possibility, in your sticking with the preconception that knowledge follows only through a unidirectional arrow of time.
Very good point. Damn time.
True; but all early steps in any endeavor are bound to be full of mistakes. Science has had its mishaps too after all ;)
True. I always think that the saddest thing is that this is us thousands of years down the road of spiritual study. I suppose there is a funny condition, that to study the spirit we have to wait for science to create the tools, which given how some people like to philosophically divide the two is an odd situation for the investigation of spirituality.
If we think that spirituality research hits a brick wall with dogmatic materialism, which I honestly think will just fade away once strong enough research is presented (after all, even with all the evidence, there is still a large amount of umming and arring and stepping around presenting any of it as solid - even here). I cannot for a second imagine how spiritual researchers are going to tackle concepts like revelation. Science can change to reflect the spirit - even if it looks like a fixed construct, it isn't, but faith based ideas like revelation seem impervious even to spiritual research. After all, mediumship reflects on ideas like hell. I have heard of mediums contacting serial killers who by all rights should not be contactable. Hell appears to be on the end of the telephone as well as heaven.
Not even Bacon, Descartes or Newton; but the modern scientists who lay the foundations of quantum mechanics ended up with a pretty Eastern-like mystic way to look at things —obviously, something some of their successors are not too comfortable with nowadays.
Newton was a trinitarian wasn't he? Anyway, your comment is fair enough. I may end up heading that way and carving out my own notions (though hopefully updating them as time goes on, rather than fixing them on my own preferences). I just think that the eastern view is a little nicer and more open to modern concepts than what conquered, fined, and imprisoned our cultures (and way then spread over to yours). How different the world might have been if Europe had been given more legal freedom of belief without persecution over the past 1000 years. I was impressed when the Dalai Lama said that whatever the evidence shows, that is what religion must reflect. So much nicer than head in the sand philosophies more local to me. They are religion-light and much easier for scientists to enjoy. They also have the concept of atheistic religions, which the culture I grew up in doesn't even talk about. In fact when I worked in Saudi I mentioned that some religions have multiple God's. They laughed as hard as when I mentioned that DNA evidence linked us to a common ancestor with apes. When I mentioned that some religions do not even have God's in them they were stunned. They had never even imagined such a thing. I like the eastern religions compared to our own, so it is easy for me to see why they are easier for some big named scientists. Equally it is easy to see why big named monotheisms can have a harder time pulling us in if we are not born into them.
No. The problem with Theology is the same problem Sheldon had in The Big Bang Theory: they urge you to be content with reading about how to swim; they predicate all about the back stroke and the flip, but they never truly coax you to get into the water.
They themselves are afraid of the water! :)
I like that alot.
22 November 2004
4 weeks 6 days
Quite a few engineers are driven by emotions in some of their designs. For example, a lot of engineers hate inefficient designs. I'm pretty sure this has to do with "mirror neurons" and the expectation of pain.
These efficiency-oriented engineers exhibit natural laziness, and they also anthropomorphise their machines. So the expectation that their machines will have to do unnecessary work causes them emotional distress, just as if they (the engineers) themselves would have to do it. This ironically causes the lazy engineers to work very hard to avoid their machines having to work very hard.
----
We are the cat.
21 February 2009
1 day 12 hours
Yeah, mirror neurons create some strange possibilities in understanding how we create our model of the world and interact with it.
They give me a headache. It would be nice to know whether i am 'anthropomorphising' everything, whether it is impossible neurologically not to. It would be nice to have the boundaries of mirror neuron activity laid out so we would know what we were debating. To know where my mirror neurons end and my soul might begin for example, or if we can even separate the two.
12 April 2007
4 min 16 sec
It might seem odd at first, but actually I have no problem with science lending an (unwitting) helping hand to spirituality :)
These are the kind of discussions that might keep me brain away from Alzheimer's. Thanks for that, amigo ^_^
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
1 day 12 hours
Talking of which if consciousness is occurring in nano-tubules inside special cells in the brain has anyone given any consideration to the possibility that Alzheimer's or getting shot in the head might really bugger up your chances of transcending?
12 April 2007
4 min 16 sec
But what about poor people who are unfortunate enough to lack the proper nutrition their brains need during their early years of development?
I think about that constantly :-/
Obviously the solution would be if the brain is merely a receptor, as it has been often suggested on several other threads. So the better the brain the louder the reception, and the more number of "channels" or frequencies it would pick. But that's a thing for another time, methinks :)
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
21 February 2009
1 day 12 hours
And biology inevitably produces variation. I have wondered in the past if we are all equally conscious. Is there a minimum level to consciousness and we all achieve it unless we are asleep, or are there shades of grey while we are awake. I am not referring here to different types of consciousness or different experiences of it, but whether we all have a basic amount of it equally - much like you say, but put a little differently. I guess its up to theoretical biologists to create more experiments now.
Another day perhaps.
14 July 2008
3 days 4 hours
Maybe something as simple as - I think, therefore He (God) is?
Or perhaps - I think He is, therefore I am?
The whole thing hinges on whether one is comfortable with God existing as God, or not existing at all, as a truth or fact. And if you really want to bounce a few neurons off your skullcap, try that there are no halfway rest stops. No ET as God or man as God.
God is either God, in all His mystery and indescribableness... or he doesn't exist at all.
Speaking for myself, I find both of those possibilities quite stirring.
"The power of accurate observation is frequently called cynicism by those who don't have it."
12 April 2007
4 min 16 sec
The comment I just wrote above shows that we are kind of in the same wavelength with this.
But I think 'thinking' God is not enough. That feels like just a right-brain process. I think the mystical experience must involve every neuron, and maybe even every single cell in our entire body.
It's not the depth of the rabbit hole that bugs me...
It's all the rabbit SH*T you stumble over on your way down!!!
Red Pill Junkie
22 November 2004
4 weeks 6 days
Reality is the stuff that doesn't go away when you stop believing it.
Now, you can argue this both ways in the case of God. On the one hand, there have always been plenty of believers. On the other hand, the God idea has been around for a really long time.
What, you wanted an answer that makes sense? Those are more expensive.
----
We are the cat.
21 February 2009
1 day 12 hours
I like that point. You could equally expand it though. Reality is the stuff that you can exactly rediscover once it is lost.
Lets say every book way disastrously lost. Reality would be those books that were perfectly rediscovered.
Good for stuff like the maths of general relativity, pythagoras etc.
But would we get the Bible again, or the Koran?
I think history says no. Maths has been precisely 'discovered' again and again in different places, but while there is a tendency towards religions across the world evidence that they arrive at the same conclusions without communication is lacking (accepting some traits that may be common psychology rather than something more profound).
Presumably though mistakes can still be rediscovered - though maybe not precisely in their narrative, which in theory should be the opposite of reality.
9 February 2009
8 weeks 3 days
were honest with themselves, they'd admit that science is largely story telling, too...