We can make scientifically valid God arguments. we don't need to because bleief in God is a personal issue. It's existential it's phenomenological. It's not science. I don't have to have the same kind of proof. Atheists get into the fortress of facts, which si not science, but they pretend it is. Its' their ideolgoical template. So you are so used to that that you start thinking everything has to be proved scientifically. Science can't prove everything. most things can't be proved and there is no guarantee they can or will be. Since rational warrant is the best we can do on God talk that's the standard we don't need a bigger one. Belief in God makes my life work. that's all I need. I don't need scinece I don't need atheists corn ball special pleading. I only need my little search for truth by myself without your permission.
got it?
Demand for empirical evidence of God is unfair and misplaced
God is beyond our understanding. God is not given in sense data and thus the demand for sense data proving God is silly and useless.
In one of their typically hypocritical moves those who claim they don't believe in the fortress of facts concept will turn around and take a page right off the heart of the fortress concept and demand empirical proof of God and when it doesn't come they will say "this is proof there's no God." But they have arleady been told "God is not amenable to this kind of evidence.
We know form scinece that there are many thing in scinece, whole knowledge levels above the scientific that are not given backed by any direct evidence and yet scientists assume they are real or that they could be real.
*big bang
*singularity
*string membranes
*dark matter (getting close)
*direct observation of *neutrinos (were historically *accepted as real long before any direct evidence, still don't have direct observation of them).
*Hawking's no singularity thing, (although that's pretty much set aside but it was accepted up front on the premise that we can't have direct proof).
Multivese (no direct proof, mathematical doesn't count).
that means not having direct evdience is not any kind of proof that they are not real.
The facts are just that we have to use other means of understanding God. that's all there is to it and theology has met that challenge by developing with scientific thinking, as with process theology.
Several reasons why it's not fair to expect direct evidence:
(1) God is not a thing in creation.
He's not on a par with objects in the world. he's the basis of all reality. that would be like expecting to find a piece of the laws of physics or the door to the unified field.
(2) God is not a big man in the sky but is being itself.
God is in everything. He's too big and too basic to be seen.
(3) God is the mind that thinks reality
we re figments of God's imagination. That means we can't get outside the thought and see what's thinking it. How could we possibility do that? I hate the film "the Matrix" no one bring it up. I prefer the holodeck on Star Trek TNG. how could a character of the Holodeck never know the truth?
(4) God's wants the search.
God doesn't' want ot make it obvious. He makes it possible for us to find him but we have to seek. the reasons are laid out in my thing on soeteriological drama.
http://religiousapriori.blogspot.com...cal-drama.html
Atheists might say God could make it obvious if he wanted to. Yes, but he doesn't want to because that would frustrate the process of interlinking values. Its' not unfair because the possibility is there. you only have to let go of your ego and seek God though the means that he may be found.
11 comments:
The Holodeck character cannot know the truth unless the Holodeck creator reveals him/herself. I remember CS Lewis framing this analogy in terms of a novel being written. If God is writing a story and we are characters in that story, it is impossible for us to get outside the book in order to find God. The only way, Lewis said, for Sherlock Holmes to meet Arthur Conan Doyle is if Doyle wrote himself into the story as a character. This is, then, the idea behind the Incarnation of Christ.
You're probably familiar with this. The Holodeck is a more up-to-date picture, of course.
I agree, good points. thanks for using Holodeck and not Matrix.
Liking TNG and not Matrix is what separates from the animals ;-)
I'm not a Matrix fan-- but what is it that you hate about it?
Well first of all it doesn't do anything withe epistemology that it raises. It's just an adventure deal. If they are getting at any higher point it does a bad job of it.
It just goes on and on and on and on and on.
the Martial arts is too stylized.
when it first came out people on the net made over it like this was this great philosophical thing, the greatest film since the seventh seal.
I agree about the overemphasis on the adventure. Maybe they thought it was a big philosophical deal because they'd never seen the point raised quite so dramatically before.
It's not a great movie, but if it gets people thinking about epistemology, it's worth something. :)
Metacroc,
Hello again. Had to have a name change due to copy right laws. But any way, there is a slight problem with your logic. You say, "God is beyond our understanding." In the third paragraph yet later you go on to say, "God wants the search". Which one is it? Since you are bringing up epistemology, this question is directly towards the subject. If your God is "beyond you understanding", then how can u state what he/it wants? The whole concept of being in gods mind directly states that he is non material (how you get to a mind that does not have a brain based in matter is another story). Since by your standards he is non material there is no seperating what he is from that he is. If one aspect of your God is unknowable, then all aspects are unknowable. So to claim to know anything about your God, i. e. He wants u to search, is to claim knowledge of the unknowable. This negates its unknowable status. If its known then your God should be quantifiable. How do you reconcile this glaring contridiction?
I may answer this with a main article on the blog tomorrow.
Stwped monkey:
"Metacroc,
Hello again. Had to have a name change due to copy right laws. But any way, there is a slight problem with your logic. You say, "God is beyond our understanding." In the third paragraph yet later you go on to say, "God wants the search". Which one is it?
That is no contradiction. One can always move toward the infinite even if one never adhesives it. Besides that's not counting what happens after death. Once we are with God face to face (so to speak) we might told everything.
"Since you are bringing up epistemology, this question is directly towards the subject. If your God is "beyond you understanding", then how can u state what he/it wants?"
He can tell us.All talk of God is analogical. Even if we don't really know it works to follow the course of the saints and mystics.It's empirically proven by psychology studies to work in that it produces a better life.
"The whole concept of being in gods mind directly states that he is non material (how you get to a mind that does not have a brain based in matter is another story). Since by your standards he is non material there is no seperating what he is from that he is."
that is not adding anything to what I have already answered.
"If one aspect of your God is unknowable, then all aspects are unknowable."
that is doesn't follow. Not even a logical statement. That's like saying "If we don't know what started the big bang expansion then we can't know anything about big bang." There are lots of things we know something about even though we don't know all.
"So to claim to know anything about your God, i. e. He wants u to search, is to claim knowledge of the unknowable."
Know its not. I said I was talking about knowledge that can be passed on in words. We can experience what we don't understand and we can know things intuitively As a result of that experience. The point of knowing God is to know God first hand, by experience, not just by words on paper.
"This negates its unknowable status. If its known then your God should be quantifiable. How do you reconcile this glaring contridiction? "
You are confused. You can know something about a thing and not know all about it. You can know it experimentally and not know it intellectually.
Metacrock, I will answer your answers point by point.
1. "That is no contradiction. One can always move toward the infinite even if one never adhesives it. Besides that's not counting what happens after death. Once we are with God face to face (so to speak) we might told everything."
--First of all, I don't get your first sentence. Or rather I understand the spirit of what your saying, I don'think you have the proper verbage. Second, you answer is a non answer. You still haven't proven an "after life".
2. "He can tell us.All talk of God is analogical. Even if we don't really know it works to follow the course of the saints and mystics.It's empirically proven by psychology studies to work in that it produces a better life."
---WHAT? You make no sense here. My question was how do you know what an unknowable (beyond your understand) diety wants. Your statement doesn't answer that. And what has been proven by psychological studies? Patients given sugar pills for diseases have worked as well. It's called a placebo effect. This does nothing to strengthen your stance.
3. Your third and fourth answers to my comments run hand in hand. you state, "that is doesn't follow. Not even a logical statement. That's like saying "If we don't know what started the big bang expansion then we can't know anything about big bang." There are lots of things we know something about even though we don't know all.
---The big difference between your big bang anology and god are horribly incorrect. I will sum up the rest of your answers to my questions simply because they run together. Your example is incorrect simply becasue at no point have I said that the universe is a sentient being. So yes, in that sense, we can know somethings about something but not everything. When it comes to the xian god (or any god for that matter), you are talking about a living thinking being. They problem that presents itself is that your gods who it is and what it is are tied together. As a being made of matter, I have my physical self and my abstract self that is based on the physical aspect. I.e. my mind is a product of my brain. What you are trying to pass off as truth is a mind existing without any physical entity. This is impossible. I say impossible not with absolute knowledge, but functional practical knowledge. Ever see a disembodied mind? I don't think so. You said my statement is illocical, ( if one part of god is unknowable, then all of him is). This is a valid and logical argument. You are just sidestepping the question by saying I am wrong or don't understand. Once again, god's what he is is the same as who he is. There is no difference. You cannot claim knowledge of one and non knowledge of the other.
Your last sentence has no bearing. We cannot conduct experiments on your supposed god. As far as observations and knowing something intellectually; most people believed that more heat escapes from your uncovered head during winter months. Hell, it sounds intellectually viable and is sound in common sense. It's absolutely false.
Stewpid Monkey:
1. "That is no contradiction. One can always move toward the infinite even if one never adhesives it. Besides that's not counting what happens after death. Once we are with God face to face (so to speak) we might told everything."
--First of all, I don't get your first sentence. Or rather I understand the spirit of what your saying, I don'think you have the proper verbage. Second, you answer is a non answer. You still haven't proven an "after life".
That's what "architect" thing in my spell check that rewrites posts. I don't always catch it.Instead of "adhesives" it should say "advances." We can advance toward an infinitely distant goal and never achieve it.
2. "He can tell us.All talk of God is analogical. Even if we don't really know it works to follow the course of the saints and mystics.It's empirically proven by psychology studies to work in that it produces a better life."
---WHAT? You make no sense here.
what I said makes perfect sense. If we don't know for sure that X is true of God but it works to follow it then it's ratioanl to follow it. It makes sense to do what works. Many empirical psychological studies show that having religious experiences, if one is blessed to have them, do affect people in ways that make their lives better than the lives of those who don't have them.
SM: "My question was how do you know what an unknowable (beyond your understand) diety wants. Your statement doesn't answer that."
Yes it does:
(1) We now by special revelation. God tells us so through the prophets and Apostles..
(2) People have experiences that are taken to be experiences f the divine. there are various reason to take them s such. I can go into that but I wont now. Given those reasons, look at what became of them as a result we see those experiences are very good for us. So ti works to follow the assumption that such experiences are those of the divine.
(3) The claims to underestimating are place holders. That's what we are saying when we say "they are analogical." They are analogy to the divine by comparing we know to what we don't know.
(4) obviously we can know somethings of the divine but not exhaustively. I've made this analogy before. Nuclear physics is beyond my understanding; but I do it exits and basically what its about. what I know about it is so elementary it's not false to say it's beyond my understanding.
what are the freaked out by this concept?
SM:"And what has been proven by psychological studies? Patients given sugar pills for diseases have worked as well. It's called a placebo effect. This does nothing to strengthen your stance."
that is hardly the summum bonum of psychology of religion.Placebo requires expectation; religious experiences are often totally unexpected. so that doesn't explain them away.
what they prove is that experiences of a type historically associated with God, aka "Mystical" are good for you and the result of having is it radically transforms one's life.
3. Your third and fourth answers to my comments run hand in hand. you state, "that is doesn't follow. Not even a logical statement. That's like saying "If we don't know what started the big bang expansion then we can't know anything about big bang." There are lots of things we know something about even though we don't know all.
that part that you don't put in quotes was the gist of my comment. you said: "If one aspect of your God is unknowable, then all aspects are unknowable."that is what I'm saying is BS. If one aspect is unknowable that certainly doesn't mean the whole is unknowable and did not say that.
SM:"---The big difference between your big bang anology and god are horribly incorrect."
why?
I'm posting this whole exchange in tomorrows' blog post.
SM: "I will sum up the rest of your answers to my questions simply because they run together. Your example is incorrect simply becasue at no point have I said that the universe is a sentient being."
come on screw your head on straight. that has to do with an analogy. no analogy has to be totally correspondent in every single way with the thing it analogizes.
SM:"So yes, in that sense, we can know somethings about something but not everything. When it comes to the xian god (or any god for that matter), you are talking about a living thinking being. They problem that presents itself is that your gods who it is and what it is are tied together. As a being made of matter, I have my physical self and my abstract self that is based on the physical aspect. I.e. my mind is a product of my brain. What you are trying to pass off as truth is a mind existing without any physical entity."
that's a totally different matter. that's a totally separate issue form the analogies above. Now you have backpedaled dropping the assertion that to fail to know one this is to fail to know the anything.
SM:"This is impossible. I say impossible not with absolute knowledge, but functional practical knowledge."
what is? your statement is unclear. Are now back to saying that if we don't know everything single thing about something we can't know everything? that's ludicrously wrong. I've illustrated in many ways that it's wrong.
I do not know much about physicist but I do what it is that it exits.
ditto theory of m1 and m2
ditto string theory, ect ect
SM:"Ever see a disembodied mind? I don't think so. You said my statement is illocical, ( if one part of god is unknowable, then all of him is). This is a valid and logical argument."
No it's not. It's what atheists call "arguemnt from ignorance." I've answered in previous blog pieces.
(1) you are basing that entirely upon our sample of reality. Our sample of reality is based upon this plant and a bit of the moon and finds from long distances done by different types of telescopes. In other all scheme of things we are totally ignorant.
the rest of reality is huge evne if it' just our space/time. If it also consists of a multiverse infinite space/time continuum each one separate from the others we can never know what's out there. To then say that our little limited perspective is all here can be is absurd.
(2) you are begging the question to assume that just becuase biological life is that way that all forms fo thought would be that way too.
(3) God is not a biological life form so why expect him to be that way?
(4) there is evident of universal mind in panpsychism and the problem of temporal beginning and other areas.
SM:"You are just sidestepping the question by saying I am wrong or don't understand."
LOL. Saying your wrong is not side stepping it's direct clash. Try to learn something about argumentation!
SM: "Once again, god's what he is is the same as who he is. There is no difference. You cannot claim knowledge of one and non knowledge of the other."
that's a meaningless atheist propaganda phrase. All you are really saying is 'let me do my reductionism thing so my straw man idea of God is the only valid one so I can have something to attack.
Your assertion of God as "what he is and who he is" comes from an understanding of Thomism, Thomas Ananias, the idea that God's existence is his essence. Nothing about that the puts God under the microscope and means that we have to have exhaustive knowledge about him or we can't know a single thing including his existence. that's a just a ridiculous notion.
anytime you say "Xi s beyond my understanding' you are saying "I know X exists." That's part of knowing it's beyond your understanding. That phrase does not and cannot mean 'I don't a know a single thing about it including its' existence."
one must know at least that one doesn't know.
You are also overlooking compete the other half of the equation. The full statement is that left brain collapses in on itself when you try to make that the only form knowledge.We need both left and right and experience of God is right brain that's what we need for understanding God.
from that we construct place holders which are analogies that bridge the gap somewhat by comparing what we don't know to what we do know.
the kind of knowledge of God that we have directly is inactive right brain thinking, experience first hand. Intellect, book knowledge, things that can be quantified, as people said in the oughts "not so much."
SM:"Your last sentence has no bearing. We cannot conduct experiments on your supposed god."
We don't have to. That's not the only form of knowledge
SM: "As far as observations and knowing something intellectually; most people believed that more heat escapes from your uncovered head during winter months. Hell, it sounds intellectually viable and is sound in common sense. It's absolutely false."
that is argument from analogy. arguemnt from analogies is not proof.
here's what I said last that confuses you so deeply:
Meta:You are confused. You can know something about a thing and not know all about it. You can know it experimentally and not know it intellectually."
that is absolutely true. We know that's the case because we can do it all the all the time. Left brain right brain kind of stuff. There is a right brain. I know atheists are scared to death of feelings and experiences but that is a valid from of knowledge. For examples that's the only way we know we are loved. mot atheist don't like love and think it's BS. that's because they are afraid of right brain knowledge.
I've been told by a neurologist that there is no evidence that left brain brain thing applies to all forms of thinking. Yet it's a good metaphor for these types of knowledge.
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