Since there is nothing supernatural, that's no escape from the burden of making sense.
Concept of God arising in multiple, different cultures
- Thread starter rodereve
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Since there is nothing supernatural, that's no escape from the burden of making sense.
on the contrary, as far as investigating explicit terms (ie, something about the essential/fundamental state of the macro/micro cosm .. or even statements that draw from this such as your infamous "there is nothing super-natural")) , empiricism is nothing but speculation
on the contrary, any statement on an explicit term on the strength of empiricism is non-sensical and irrelevant.
And if an entity contextualizes our empirical investigations (and so much more of our existence), our interactions with it (or more precisely, its interactions with us) are anything but an article of no significance ....
I have no idea what you mean by an entity "contextualizing empiricism". It's theoretically possible that we are all brains in jars, but without evidence, such ideas are useless and irrelevant.
elte
Valued Senior Member
Why would they necessarily have to be the same?
elte
Valued Senior Member
what on earth () makes you say that?
I guess I'm just trying to draw conclusions from hypothetical conditions. I don't think it was divinely inspired or anything like that, and I'm sorry to take away any good feeling that you might have felt, but I feel that I don't want to leave you with an impression that I'm anything other than agnostic.
it means the strength, function and object of your senses are enclosed within a the paradigm of a greater force.
For instance you can twist a stick that an ant is walking around on so that it stays on it all day. The ant will never get off the stick due to its own powers of walking. It will get off when you stop twisting the stick around.
what is actually useless is expecting empiricism to somehow be capable of elucidating fundamental aspects of the macro/micro-cosm and giving statements that draw off such a supposed authority (eg : "there is nothing supernatural")
actually I was trying to understand what makes you say that, with the hint that I suspect you are simply extrapolating your conditioned existence (ie someone who is not omnimax) to the situation of someone who is claimed to be omnimax
And that paradigm might be contained within another context, and so on and so on.... LOL, it's turtles all the way down!
You don't have anything better.
incorrect
an omnimax entity is necessarily singular (or has identities that borrow from the same sense of being, if you want to get technical)
On the contrary, given that what you have is as useless as an ant trying to walk its way off a twisting stick, you can only really say "whatever you have is just as useless as what I have"
Not if that entity were imbedded in the context of another kind of reality, like another universe or being. We can continue multiplying assumptions unnecessarily but someone wise said the simplest answers that are sufficient to explain the observation are the best.
In reality, ants are like scientists, they leave a trail of evidence wherever they go, so they don't have to retrace their steps if they don't want to. Somehow they don't get lost in forests.
which means you aren't talking about an omnimax entity for a start ....
on the contrary, you are simply multiplying scenarios without even paying attention to the definition of the term omnimax atm
with or without a trail, the ant is not getting off that stick for as long as you are twirling it around.
In the same manner, empiricism is a totally useless tool for using as a platform to launch statements like you have done in the past few posts
What entity could be able control and maintain the Universe, other than the one that caused it?
Ie. an/the entity that makes it possible for you to see, hear, smell, breathe, move your hands, digest, think etc. etc.
elte
Valued Senior Member
How can we even say the one that caused it could control it, or even exists any longer? The one that caused it could even have passed the job of maintaining it on to someone else.
To cause is to control.
At this point, we observe that the Universe exists, therefore, it is maintained and controlled.
That someone else would have to be equally potent then; as such, we couldn't distinguish between the two, and would think it is still the same entity. So this point is moot.
LG - feel free to poke holes into my reasoning.
elte
Valued Senior Member
What do you mean?
Either we suppose that this Universe is unconditioned, uncaused, self-existent; or we suppose that it is conditioned, caused, maintained.
A universe that would function automatically would have to be unconditioned, uncaused, self-existent, or it couldn't function automatically.
A universe that would function automatically would not be caused by God; as it would be uncaused.
Perhaps you are working out of the analogy of a wound-up clock: one winds up a clock and after that, the clock seems to run automatically. But to say it runs automatically is incomplete: the person's input is present in the potential energy stored in the mechanism of the clock. Sooner or later, as the clock works, that energy is used up and the clock stops.
Anything that is wound up eventually stops.
Anything that is begun, eventually ceases.
A universe that would be wound up, begun could not continue existing indefinitely, automatically.
Like I said, the one who would take over would have to be equally potent as the one who created it; otherwise he couldn't take over.
Well there's a lot of theories on impersonal Gods, a God who created the universe and then left it, God that IS the universe, and a God that created the universe but just does not interact with humans at all. But most cultures had come up with a concept of a personal God, and thats most of the popular religions today. Would people care as much if there WAS a God, but he didn't interact with humanity? I guess just as much as people would care if there was some aether element all around us, but we'd never be able to measure it or describe it.
And I think that leads to the next topic of empiricism and God. If a God existed that we would not be able to measure or discover empirically (I guess this connects to my agnosticism thread), does it really matter. In terms of physics and science and the pursuit of truth, YES. In terms of religion and what most people flock to God for, as a source of their purpose and how to live their lives, then NO.
elte
Valued Senior Member
Why say causation is the same as maintenance? So the dog breeder who developed the German Shepherd is still alive and keeping his breed alive?
A child has taken over rule of a country that was ruled by a parent who was more effective than the child. The devil could have taken over if God were not perfect, and I'm not saying God is or was, if God even ever existed in the first place. A less able competitor can beat a more skilled one, depending on circumstances, maybe even by what we call luck.
That entity is called me.