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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Londoner
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Londoner »

Present awareness wrote:
Londoner claims that God is unknowable, and yet many claim that they know God. If you can imagine a coin with only one side, or the sound of one hand clapping, then you will know God, I suppose.
There is 'know' in the sense of 'be aware of' and 'know' in the sense of 'comprehend'.

If you look at those who say they have had a religious experience, it tends to be of something overwhelming, rather than one of comprehension.

I say this both from looking at accounts in scripture but also having read the book 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' (James). For those that don't know it, James is a psychologist (but also a pragmatist philosopher). It is descriptive; he describes what people say, and how they say the experience affected them. (He does not assume these experiences to be religious in the sense that they originate from God.)

I think this is different from those who say they 'know' things about God based on logic; for example that if God created the world, then it follows he must be outside time, and so on. You can follow that sort of logic without ever having had any religious feelings.
Dark Matter
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Dark Matter »

Genuine religious experience can also be subtle and logical, conditioned, of course, by culture and other external conditions. People can call the interpretative ideas it generates a bunch of hooey, but that does not diminish the fact that the experience can actually be empirically correlated with activity in the brain. The absence of religious experience can therefore be viewed as a privation; on the other hand, such experience can also be viewed as a malfunction of the brain that can be spontaneous or be deliberately induced by prayerful meditation.
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Count Lucanor
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Count Lucanor »

Dark Matter wrote:Rules forbid me from calling you “mentally deficient,” CL, so I’ll let Schopenhauer do it for me: "Those who don't wonder about the contingency of the world's existence are mentally deficient.“
Well, as I said, after the embarrassment that you went through, I somehow understand how you might feel and why you would need calling me bad names. I can only dismiss such statements, of course. They would mean something if they came from someone who's opinion I had in high esteem or at least thought-provoking. Not the case with you, and let us be reminded that it's nothing to do with disagreements in any topic, which is anyway the basic assumption of any debate. It has to do with the minimum competence to support one's own argument coherently, as it might be expected from whoever submits him/hersel to the scrutiny of a philosophical forum. I mean, imagine that someone went around bragging about owning the ultimate, unquestionable, atheist argument, and then to prove it this person posted a video of the Archbishop of Milan talking about the miracles of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Everyone would think this person did what an idiot would do. And that's precisely what you did.
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 »

And this coming from someone who insists that he knows more about the teachings of Aquinas that scholars who've studied him all their lives.
Fanman
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Fanman »

Excellent post Londoner.
Theists believe, agnostics ponder and atheists analyse. A little bit of each should get us the right answer.
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Count Lucanor
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Count Lucanor »

Dark Matter wrote:
Count Lucanor wrote:I mean, imagine that someone went around bragging about owning the ultimate, unquestionable, atheist argument, and then to prove it this person posted a video of the Archbishop of Milan talking about the miracles of Christ and the Virgin Mary. Everyone would think this person did what an idiot would do. And that's precisely what you did.
And this coming from someone who insists that he knows more about the teachings of Aquinas that scholars who've studied him all their lives.
And then imagine that this person, after his foolish mistake has been pointed out, kept saying (as an argument from atheism) something like "don't pretend that you know better than the Archbishop of Milan on the matters of Christ miracles and the Virgin Mary".
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 »

It makes no sense to respond to CL. Since he hasn't the intellectual honesty to admit to himself he doesn't know what he's talking about, what's the point?

-- Updated October 28th, 2017, 5:31 pm to add the following --

Fanman:
This in in regards to you signature:

St Thomas’s position differs from that of modern agnostics because while modern agnosticism says simply, ‘We do not know, and the universe is a mysterious riddle’, a Thomist says, ‘We do not know what the answer is, but we do know that there is a mystery behind it all which we do not know, and if there were not, there would not even be a riddle. This Unknown we call God. If there were no God, there would be no universe to be mysterious, and nobody to be mystified.’ (quote from Victor White in Brian Davies' book The Thought of Thomas Aquinas)

Thomists and theologians go the extra step. If life is a mystery, and if in our experience mysteries have origins and (eventually) resolutions, then let's put that same framework on the mystery of why there is not nothing. And let's give that framework's origin and (eventual) resolution a name (i.e., God) and try and figure out some things about it. If agnostics did this simple framing of the mystery of existence, they'd turn into theologians.
Spectrum
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Spectrum »

Dark Matter wrote:Thomists and theologians go the extra step.
If life is a mystery, and if in our experience mysteries have origins and (eventually) resolutions, then let's put that same framework on the mystery of why there is not nothing.
And let's give that framework's origin and (eventual) resolution a name (i.e., God) and try and figure out some things about it.
If agnostics did this simple framing of the mystery of existence, they'd turn into theologians.
You are jumping into conclusion that ALL mysteries have origins and (eventually) resolutions. This is false. Note,

ALL mysteries should be categorized as follows;
  • 1. Empirically possible
    2. Empirically impossible
    3. Non-empirical possible [theoretical] and
    4. Non-empirical impossible
Many 'mysteries' that has been resolved are empirically based, e.g. raining fishes from the sky, etc.

In the above you are conflating and equivocating the idea of God [ultimate and ontological] which is non-empirical with empirical events. This is a fallacy and bad thinking.

The idea of God as an absolutely perfect being cannot have empirical possibility and thus is an impossibility in reality. As such there is no sense of being agnostic about it.

I had argued, the clinging to a belief in God and the compulsion to reify something out of nothing is driven by subliminal psychological desperation which generate angst and trembling. A belief in God provide almost immediate relief to such angst for a theist in various degrees.
The agnostic has a very low degree subliminal impulses to reify [psychologically] something out of nothing, i.e. God or some Being.

A belief in God [an illusion and impossibility] is an double-edged blade. Because the other negative edge cut VERY deep into humanity, it is better off for humanity to neutralize theism and replace with more efficient net-positive non-theistic alternatives [non-theistic spirituality, psychology, self-development techniques, and the likes].
Not-a-theist. Religion is a critical necessity for humanity now, but not the FUTURE.
Dark Matter
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Dark Matter »

Still clinging to the non sequiturs, eh Spectrum?

-- Updated October 28th, 2017, 11:53 pm to add the following --

Read this. You might learn something.
Georgeanna
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Georgeanna »

Londoner wrote:
Present awareness wrote:
Londoner claims that God is unknowable, and yet many claim that they know God. If you can imagine a coin with only one side, or the sound of one hand clapping, then you will know God, I suppose.
There is 'know' in the sense of 'be aware of' and 'know' in the sense of 'comprehend'.

If you look at those who say they have had a religious experience, it tends to be of something overwhelming, rather than one of comprehension.

I say this both from looking at accounts in scripture but also having read the book 'The Varieties of Religious Experience' (James). For those that don't know it, James is a psychologist (but also a pragmatist philosopher). It is descriptive; he describes what people say, and how they say the experience affected them. (He does not assume these experiences to be religious in the sense that they originate from God.)

I think this is different from those who say they 'know' things about God based on logic; for example that if God created the world, then it follows he must be outside time, and so on. You can follow that sort of logic without ever having had any religious feelings.
Thanks for this careful and considered post, making useful distinctions and introducing William James.
Your description of his viewpoint is, for me, an attractive one.
Will investigate further...
Fanman
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Fanman »

DM:

I think it's difficult to theorise and impossible to be certain of why or even how there's something rather than nothing, but I think the existence of something means that there's a cause or causes. The major problem with initial cause or causes is infinite regression, since if we reason by way of cause and effect every cause for the existence of something must have been caused by something else. The way I understand things, which is of course limited, is that something cannot come from nothing, so because there is something, it is not possible that there was ever nothing. However, the fact that there may not have ever been nothing, does not automatically imply that God or a God-like being is the cause of something, as there's a knowledge gap between something existing and God being the cause of something that requires a leap of faith to bridge.

I agree that the origins of the universe are a mystery, but for someone who doesn't believe in God the mystery is one that can be solved through continued empirical observation, rather than conceptions of an intelligent universal agent. So whilst I think that having God or a framework about God in one's considerations may be useful for personal development and perhaps in the purist sense even be enlightening in terms of realising human potential, I don't think that conceptions of God are useful in discovering the origins or mystery behind the origins universe.

If they are useful when applied on that scale why and how are they useful? If the cause of something rather than nothing is God, what knowledge apart from that fact would be imparted to us? How would we even know which God it was?
Theists believe, agnostics ponder and atheists analyse. A little bit of each should get us the right answer.
Dark Matter
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Dark Matter »

Fanman wrote:DM:

I think it's difficult to theorise and impossible to be certain of why or even how there's something rather than nothing, but I think the existence of something means that there's a cause or causes. The major problem with initial cause or causes is infinite regression, since if we reason by way of cause and effect every cause for the existence of something must have been caused by something else. The way I understand things, which is of course limited, is that something cannot come from nothing, so because there is something, it is not possible that there was ever nothing. However, the fact that there may not have ever been nothing, does not automatically imply that God or a God-like being is the cause of something, as there's a knowledge gap between something existing and God being the cause of something that requires a leap of faith to bridge.
I agree.
I agree that the origins of the universe are a mystery, but for someone who doesn't believe in God the mystery is one that can be solved through continued empirical observation, rather than conceptions of an intelligent universal agent. So whilst I think that having God or a framework about God in one's considerations may be useful for personal development and perhaps in the purist sense even be enlightening in terms of realising human potential, I don't think that conceptions of God are useful in discovering the origins or mystery behind the origins universe.
It depends on what you mean by the word "God." In another thread I said:
Why is there something rather than nothing? What must be in order for what is to be as it is? The universe does not and cannot, even in principle, explain its own existence. Only the power of Being itself – which is itself not a being – can explain and determine all the contingent things of our ordinary experience. This is what serious theists of all of the great religious traditions mean by the word “God.” Used in this sense, "God" is not just different than the universe, but radically different.
Understood this way, it is ludicrous to deny "God."

We cannot know what the Power to Be is, but through the power of reason we can know what it is not and, in a limited way, surmise what must be in order for what is to be as it is through observation. "Religion is not some subjective preference, like whether you like red wine or white wine; it is a reflection of our most basic understanding of the nature of reality. Therefore to engage it with anything less than full intellectual rigor is, well, illogical. In between the sloppiness of fundamentalism and the cluelessness of relativism lies the straight skinny on reality, which includes an engagement with the phenomenon of the sacred." (From AquinasBlog)
If they are useful when applied on that scale why and how are they useful? If the cause of something rather than nothing is God, what knowledge apart from that fact would be imparted to us? How would we even know which God it was?
It very difficult to unlearn the 'big man in the sky' idea of God if that's all we're familiar with. The question 'which God' is incoherent when it is understood that "God" does not refer to a being alongside other beings, but to the sheer Power of Being itself.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Sy Borg »

Dark Matter wrote:
Fanman wrote:DM:

I think it's difficult to theorise and impossible to be certain of why or even how there's something rather than nothing, but I think the existence of something means that there's a cause or causes. The major problem with initial cause or causes is infinite regression, since if we reason by way of cause and effect every cause for the existence of something must have been caused by something else. The way I understand things, which is of course limited, is that something cannot come from nothing, so because there is something, it is not possible that there was ever nothing. However, the fact that there may not have ever been nothing, does not automatically imply that God or a God-like being is the cause of something, as there's a knowledge gap between something existing and God being the cause of something that requires a leap of faith to bridge.
I agree.
Not necessarily. A fairly well accepted hypothesis is that the nothingness that preceded the BB was only "nothing" as to our perception, but was in fact sheer chaos, with constant perturbations/fluctuations appearing and dissipating immediately, aka "virtual particles". It's postulated that one of these fluctuations didn't dissipate immediately, was not annihilated by its anti-version (or whatever). Instead it inflated. So it is possible that there was a first universe - the first time that order (aka "something") appeared via sheer probabilities out of the chaos (aka "nothingness"). In that case, if a godlike entity exists, it may have evolved and continues to evolve.

Or there may be multiple gods, remnants of prior universes. Or none. Or maybe none yet. Watch this space for the next 900 billion years :)
Dark Matter
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Dark Matter »

Greta wrote:
Dark Matter wrote: (Nested quote removed.)


I agree.
Not necessarily. A fairly well accepted hypothesis is that the nothingness that preceded the BB was only "nothing" as to our perception, but was in fact sheer chaos, with constant perturbations/fluctuations appearing and dissipating immediately, aka "virtual particles". It's postulated that one of these fluctuations didn't dissipate immediately, was not annihilated by its anti-version (or whatever). Instead it inflated. So it is possible that there was a first universe - the first time that order (aka "something") appeared via sheer probabilities out of the chaos (aka "nothingness"). In that case, if a godlike entity exists, it may have evolved and continues to evolve.

Or there may be multiple gods, remnants of prior universes. Or none. Or maybe none yet. Watch this space for the next 900 billion years :)
Lawrence Krauss wrote Something Fom Nothing based on that idea and was soundly criticized for its misleading title, and recent experiments at CERN casts doubt on the theory and has scientists saying the universe shouldn't exist. And although this complicates things for vocal atheists like Krauss, it doesn't effect what I said at all.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Does God Exist?

Post by Sy Borg »

Dark Matter wrote:
Greta wrote: (Nested quote removed.)

Not necessarily. A fairly well accepted hypothesis is that the nothingness that preceded the BB was only "nothing" as to our perception, but was in fact sheer chaos, with constant perturbations/fluctuations appearing and dissipating immediately, aka "virtual particles". It's postulated that one of these fluctuations didn't dissipate immediately, was not annihilated by its anti-version (or whatever). Instead it inflated. So it is possible that there was a first universe - the first time that order (aka "something") appeared via sheer probabilities out of the chaos (aka "nothingness"). In that case, if a godlike entity exists, it may have evolved and continues to evolve.

Or there may be multiple gods, remnants of prior universes. Or none. Or maybe none yet. Watch this space for the next 900 billion years :)
Lawrence Krauss wrote Something Fom Nothing based on that idea and was soundly criticized for its misleading title, and recent experiments at CERN casts doubt on the theory and has scientists saying the universe shouldn't exist. And although this complicates things for vocal atheists like Krauss, it doesn't effect what I said at all.
Don't knock the idea because just because you don't like the most well known proponent. The title, as LK explained, was basically just marketing. I also doubt that Krauss would want to be associated with my later speculations so, if I am annoying to both sides then I probably have the balance about right :)

Seriously, my point was that nothingness is not nothingness, rather it is a chaos of subatomic perturbations. "Something" requires order to emerge from the chaos. This theoretically can occur due to probabilities, and is one possible answer for infinite regression.

Why didn't antimatter and matter annihilate each other exactly equally? That's one for the physicists, but generally in nature nothing happens quite perfectly, eg. genetics. About 999,999,999 out of every billion particles annihilated, and we are amongst the one part in a billion matter particles that has not (yet) been annihilated by antimatter particles. Who knows? Maybe the span of universes takes as long as it takes for all the particle opposites to meet and destroy each other? Or maybe the antimatter is condensed in voids and isolated by magnetic fields?

Like "a universe from nothing", the "should not be here" byline quoted by media was, again, largely just marketing. They are basically saying that aspects of the CERN findings (amongst many other things in reality) are a mystery at this stage.
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