Does God Exist?

Discuss philosophical questions regarding theism (and atheism), and discuss religion as it relates to philosophy. This includes any philosophical discussions that happen to be about god, gods, or a 'higher power' or the belief of them. This also generally includes philosophical topics about organized or ritualistic mysticism or about organized, common or ritualistic beliefs in the existence of supernatural phenomenon.
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Dark Matter
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Dark Matter »

Count Lucanor wrote:
Therefore, when asking "does god exist?", the particular god being talked about must be identified with its particular properties, both the essential and non-essential ones. Saying that you can work with a common factor among a set of gods only means that you're willing to accept that set of gods, not that you have identified and described a particular god, since this god could have features not present in the other gods.
"The particular god being talked about must be Identified with this particular properties"? That's idolatry, a ploy to setup a straw man either out of ignorance or deliberate. .
Chili
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Chili »

If refusing to speak of particular Gods and qualities is "idolatry", due to the presumption that there is only one God, this seems to be an earnest attempt to make presumption a fine art. One may almost be tempted to call this a worship of presumption itself, which *certainly* sounds like idolatry ! ;)
Londoner
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Londoner »

Count Lucanor wrote:
The above means, in terms of our god problem, that:

d) From a given set of gods and their common features, you cannot infer the sufficient and necessary conditions in all sets of gods.
But we do not have a set of gods, we do not even have one god. (If we did, then we could settle the question in the title of this thread).

What we have are ideas about 'god', from which we can infer the sort of things people mean when they use the word 'god'. That is no different from any other word we use; I cannot infer the sufficient and necessary condition for something being a 'car', I can only understand how people use the word 'car'.
e) Even after determining the essential features of ALL SETS of gods will not help anyone identify and verify the existence of a particular god in any given set of gods. At best, it will help identifying in a group of items as many instances as there can be of things belonging to the class "gods".
Again, there is no set of Gods. A set isn't a real object, such that we can examine it and see whether there is a Krishna, or a DeLorean is inside it. A set is an abstraction and we are free to create any sets we want; what we take to be essential or non-essential properties of members of that set is determined by us. No set is any more real than any other.
Therefore, when asking "does god exist?", the particular god being talked about must be identified with its particular properties, both the essential and non-essential ones. Saying that you can work with a common factor among a set of gods only means that you're willing to accept that set of gods, not that you have identified and described a particular god, since this god could have features not present in the other gods.
I do not think this describes what a belief in a god involves. People do not construct a list of properties, then decide 'I will believe in that'. Rather they have some sort of feeling, or experience, then infer the properties of god (or whatever) from that experience. For example, it might be that somebody brought up in Christianity prays to Jesus and feels their prayer was answered. Or they might have a generalised sense of some sort of universal spirit, in which case they might construct a theology that seems to follow from an essential 'oneness'. Or they might feel that the world is a struggle between two forces, in which case they might imagine two gods in conflict. Or that the universe is anarchic...

So rather than start with ideas of God, they start with ideas about the world. To state the obvious, gods are metaphysical. They do not have properties, rather they are behind properties.
Chili
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Chili »

Londoner wrote:So rather than start with ideas of God, they start with ideas about the world. To state the obvious, gods are metaphysical. They do not have properties, rather they are behind properties.
We have prescientific people who believed in Gods - and took tales passed down from their ancestors to be tales of true Gods - and we have real practices and real temples and real scriptures. We view them as metaphysical nowadays, but in other times and places, they were often taken to be lurking.
Londoner
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Londoner »

Chili wrote: We have prescientific people who believed in Gods - and took tales passed down from their ancestors to be tales of true Gods - and we have real practices and real temples and real scriptures. We view them as metaphysical nowadays, but in other times and places, they were often taken to be lurking.
I do not quite understand. Certainly the temples would be real, but the temples were not the gods. And I do not see why pre-scientific beliefs would not be metaphysical; quite the contrary. For example, if I think thunder is caused by the god, then I am differentiating the physical event - the thunder - from the cause of the event - the god.

What I would say is distinctive about religious belief is that the thing behind the physical event is not itself physical. The thunder-god causes thunder, but not in the same way that we might say 'electrical discharges' cause thunder (otherwise we would need a meta-god of 'electrical discharges'). Or the event we feel needs explaining may not be physical in that sense; the event may be a subjective experience.

As I wrote before, my point is that we do not start with a concept of god, then decide to believe in it. The start is an experience; the thunder, a sense of awe, whatever - then we try to explain it.

I am speaking here of people who really do believe. Not just those who might follow the cultural habit of religious worship, without really thinking about it.
Chili
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Chili »

The "we.." part gets tricky over history. Children are not generally intellectuals, and not generally brought up by intellectuals, and so literal belief in a literal deity or prophet who once lived and shall return is often intentionally believed and taught. Many believe their corpses will be resurrected to live with Jesus.

-- Updated October 21st, 2017, 10:09 am to add the following --

( should have said "honestly" believed and taught )
Dark Matter
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Atheists Are Right!

Post by Dark Matter »

Atheists are right! The god(s) they deny do(es) not exist.

-- Updated October 21st, 2017, 12:58 pm to add the following --
Chili wrote:If refusing to speak of particular Gods and qualities is "idolatry", due to the presumption that there is only one God, this seems to be an earnest attempt to make presumption a fine art. One may almost be tempted to call this a worship of presumption itself, which *certainly* sounds like idolatry ! ;)
God is without properties (parts). Why set up the straw man?
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Count Lucanor
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Count Lucanor »

Steve3007 wrote:I've spoken to some people on here who have taken solipsistic positions. I've never noticed anyone doing it to defend religion. It usually just seems to be a bit of fun. An intellectual exercise.
Steve3007 wrote: It would be solipsism if I had said:

"There is no horse. Only the sensations of a horse."

I didn't say that. Note: I said "know of the existence".
There are different levels of solipsism (corresponding to different versions of idealism) which go from epistemological skepticism ("we don't know or can't know) about a material reality independent of consciousness, to its complete denial ("we know there isn't"). And of course those positions come in handy at the hour of defending religion. Remember that among the common arguments proposed in its defense, there is the idea that the limits of human experience theoretically allow for the existence of things or domains of things out of our reach. Since the solipsists argue that there's no way to know, religion advocates place their gods in that realm of the unknown to shield them from any questioning. One would expect, after assuming their intellectual honesty, that they would conform to the inevitable inference provoked by this view and advocate for agnosticism, but what actually happens is that in the next sentence they are characterizing their gods, as if they did know and they could know. This unsolved paradox often gets them in trouble, obviously, so that's why they figured out a workaround with the tools of sophistry: maybe if you never really characterize your god, but keep it ambiguous, a flexible theoretical abstraction, you'll never get caught. As soon as your god's characterizations can't make sense, you can always resort to: "oh, well, we cannot know. Meanwhile I'll stick to the claim that it exists".
Steve3007 wrote: They are the experiences of subjects. So they are subjective. The only way I know about them is by my subjective experience of them. So during my lifetime I have learned through numerous subjective experiences of other people how best to interpret my subjective experience of hearing them talk and watching them move. If I have the experience of hearing one of them say "there is a horse" along with the experience of seeing them point a finger and if those experiences correlate with my own experiences of seeing a horse then I am putting together various experiences to conclude that a horse objectively exists.

So I don't think there's a contradiction. I think it should be clear that we gain evidence of other people's alleged subjective experiences by our own subjective experiences of them.

Note again: I am not denying the existence of an objective world in any of this. I am saying that we infer the existence of that world via various experiences. Obviously this involves memories of past experiences and the ability to spot patterns, make logical deductions and use logical Induction.
OK, I see what's happening here. A confusion stems from the different interpretation given to the term "subjective". It's now obvious that your use of it refers to the vehicle, the agent of the experience, rather than the nature of the experience itself, which is how I look at it. So, when you are saying:

"My subjective experience of the subjective experiences of others"

I should translate it to:

"My own experience of the experiences of other subjects".

But of course, this is not what I'm debating. My point is about the nature of subjective experiences (meaning the mental representations, as opposed to the things in themselves). I've been arguing that such mental representations are not detached from the thing being captured by the senses, that there's an implicit immediate relationship between the experience of the world and the world that causes that experience. The fact that it's a subjective experience (apprehended in consciousness) does not mean all of the elements involved are mental objects and that all I have access to are mental objects (subjectivism).
Steve3007 wrote: Also note: Some of our reactions to the world are not based on any experiences that we have had during our own lifetimes. They are due to the way we're made; our DNA; our instincts. For example, (I think I'm right in saying) babies are born with a built-in ability in the brain's visual system to fixate on pairs of eyes. But even this ability must have evolved due to the collective subjective experiences of numerous generations of our ancestors.
I don't think that's exactly how evolution works, having very little to do with the effect of individual experiences and more with changes in gene pools due to random mutations. In any case, it is agreed that some innate mechanisms shape our perceptual abilities and sort of apply "filters" to our experiences. Our eyes see, for example, but naturally, automatically and unconsciously, select the relevant information for the act of seeing.

-- Updated October 21st, 2017, 2:09 pm to add the following --
Steve3007 wrote: OK. Fair enough. All I can say is that it wasn't the message that I intended. "Ideal" would to me be associated with "Idealism". I certainly wouldn't call myself an idealist. If any label was appropriate, maybe it would be pragmatist.
Pragmatism is related to morality, what we ought to do, not to ontology (what is) or epistemology (what we can know). I must assume then that when you refer to idealism you mean practicing good will, having faith in humanity and so on. But I mean idealism in ontological terms, as the opposite of materialism and monism.
Steve3007 wrote: And "fresh and new". Well I don't know what that means, but it seems to imply that I'm claiming our sensations are experienced like a new-born baby, without the benefit of (many) memories of previous experiences in a brain shaped by experiences. Clearly I don't think that. I don't claim that we have no memories.
OK, annotated.
Steve3007 wrote: Yes, the thing that unifies them is the patterns in them, as interpreted by the capabilities of the brain. The patterns that link all of these present and past experiences causes our brains to conclude that by far the most likely explanation for those patterns is that the sensations are caused by an objectively existing world.
When I'm referring to the thing that unifies sense data in concepts, I'm referring to the process in our brain, to the cognitive or perceptual faculty . Patterns are at the end of that process, are already an abstraction of the concrete things perceived in the world.
Steve3007 wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote: ...their own senses functioning, these things will be occurring in a realm independent of one's own consciousness, for which they also will be part of one's assessment of the objective world
Which things will be happening in that realm? Not sure I understand what this part means.
The objective world, the real world, the world of things in themselves, the noumena...as you want to call it.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Dark Matter
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Dark Matter »

I am often bemused and sometimes frustrated at the insistence of atheists to argue against gods that in the minds of classical theists most assuredly do not exist. Even those atheists who insist they understand what is meant by classical theism limit themselves to theistic personalism. It reminds me of a video on YouTube where, in response to a video about classical theism, an overly self-assured slob spent the first few minutes redefining the classical theist God and attacking that.

I seethe same thing here all the time.

-- Updated October 21st, 2017, 2:41 pm to add the following --
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Count Lucanor
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Re: Does God Exist?

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This thing "classical theism" is laughable, just like Creationism when it came up, pretending to disguise religious superstition like serious scholarship. After being the laughing stock for a while, Creationists came up with a more sophisticated framework for relabeling these beliefs, which they called "Intelligent Design" and looked more "scientific", but for some reason their spokesmen couldn't ever manage to remove their cleric outfits.

This classical theism is a disguising label for some theological dogmas of prevailing religions nowadays. But if you ever expected to find under that label any consistent, coherent and systematized body of principles, you're in for a major disappointment. All you will find is a myriad of theologians battling for the imposition of their particular interpretations of previous doctrines and sacred texts as the new prevailing official dogmas. And as usual, one thing they cannot find agreement either is how their god is to be characterized.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Chili
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Chili »

Count Lucanor wrote:This thing "classical theism" is laughable, just like Creationism when it came up, pretending to disguise religious superstition like serious scholarship. After being the laughing stock for a while, Creationists came up with a more sophisticated framework for relabeling these beliefs, which they called "Intelligent Design" and looked more "scientific", but for some reason their spokesmen couldn't ever manage to remove their cleric outfits.

This classical theism is a disguising label for some theological dogmas of prevailing religions nowadays. But if you ever expected to find under that label any consistent, coherent and systematized body of principles, you're in for a major disappointment. All you will find is a myriad of theologians battling for the imposition of their particular interpretations of previous doctrines and sacred texts as the new prevailing official dogmas. And as usual, one thing they cannot find agreement either is how their god is to be characterized.
A man awakes and writes a poem. Has he created it? Is it some form of "creationism" to say so?
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Count Lucanor
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Re: Does God Exist?

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Chili wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote:This thing "classical theism" is laughable, just like Creationism when it came up, pretending to disguise religious superstition like serious scholarship. After being the laughing stock for a while, Creationists came up with a more sophisticated framework for relabeling these beliefs, which they called "Intelligent Design" and looked more "scientific", but for some reason their spokesmen couldn't ever manage to remove their cleric outfits.

This classical theism is a disguising label for some theological dogmas of prevailing religions nowadays. But if you ever expected to find under that label any consistent, coherent and systematized body of principles, you're in for a major disappointment. All you will find is a myriad of theologians battling for the imposition of their particular interpretations of previous doctrines and sacred texts as the new prevailing official dogmas. And as usual, one thing they cannot find agreement either is how their god is to be characterized.
A man awakes and writes a poem. Has he created it? Is it some form of "creationism" to say so?
The man could be a transcriber or copyist. You never said it was a new poem.

Also, if by "poem" you mean the particular literary composition he came up with, I guess he could be labeled his creator. But if by "poem" you mean literally the whole set of things necessary for its existence (i.e. paper, ink, letters and words) then no, he wouldn't be the creator.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Chili
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Chili »

I notice you didn't mention the physical particles and their momenta in the "things necessary for its existence".

Anyway, does any person truly create anything , in your view?

When creationists speak about God creating the universe, and you would like to scoff, do you scoff more at the God part or the creation part?
Dark Matter
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Dark Matter »

No argument, CL? People mock what they do not understand.
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Count Lucanor
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Count Lucanor »

Dark Matter wrote:No argument, CL? People mock what they do not understand.
What is there to argue against or for, DM? You're just saying where your bets are, and consequently, I'm just saying where mine aren't.

-- Updated October 22nd, 2017, 9:52 pm to add the following --
Chili wrote:I notice you didn't mention the physical particles and their momenta in the "things necessary for its existence".
Why should I? Mentioning the materials for writing the poem was enough.
Chili wrote:Anyway, does any person truly create anything , in your view?
It depends. Something could have a different shape or composition never seen before, but made with known available materials. Or the same thing could have a new function or use. They are usually called inventions, and yes, inventors could be called creators.
Chili wrote:When creationists speak about God creating the universe, and you would like to scoff, do you scoff more at the God part or the creation part?
That's a tough one. I don't think I can make up my mind.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
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