is it possible to find God by reason?

[Spectrum]

Querty mob, I like your logo. It reminds me of the Freemason conspiracy theory that links Egypt with the United States:

 

[Raithere]

me))))))again and again i hear your argument when its pointed ou how 'God' is consciously or subconsciously seen as male gender. i say that that is DENIAL. have you seen whati asked you to look at. ie., in te philosophy forum archives is a thread by me titled THE EVOLUTION OF DUALISM. seen it? unfortunately i cant give you direct route to it as my systm's too limited. but a bit of effort on your part will easily find it.
if and when you do you will see clealy how oever a long period of time--it starts with Zoroastrianism--the CONCEPT of 'GOD' as been M A L E. yeah? so whyyy deny it. if yo deny this, we cant explore proper can we?

What exactly do you think I am denying? Where do you get the idea that I'm in any way suggesting dualism? I'm a materialist, which would make the assertion quite impossible.

me))what you mean a 'bit more fundamental'. we are discussing 'GOd' for fuks sake. if you go out in te street now and aks people about 'God', they are gonn tink about how the donceptualize that term right. the Christian will believe their concept, the Muslim his. but BOTH share the idea of a male oriented God. a god who is commensurate with te male idea of REASON. look at how you duck tis FUNDAMENTAL point and then accuse ME of no being fundamental....hah!

Because we're discussing the ontology and epistemology of God. The details of any particular belief are irrelevant to the discussion except insofar as they pertain to God's existence and whether or not it can be known. Whether God has tits or a cock or is a big fucking amoeba will not alter any argument as to whether god exists and is knowable.

~Raithere

 

[Raithere]

And there is a fine point you are missing here, basically semantic, but the fact is an unknowable thing may still exist, but can not be shown to exist.

There's nothing semantic about it. As I stated earlier any hypothesis of such exists within an infinite set of unknowables.

~Raithere

 

[Lerxst]

I could have said that what you're saying is nothing but carrot-and-stick mentality, and discard it as such. .

Can you expand on that? I'm not sure what you mean.

 

[Lerxst]

It certainly is about self-discovery.
Presently, I don't embrace any type of theism. Neither do I qualify as an agnostic, nor atheist.

What else does that leave, then?

 

[leopold]

What else does that leave, then?

she probably feels like i do
there is more to me than what evolution can explain
plus a few other odds and ends which taken together sum up to waters reply.

 

[Lerxst]

she probably feels like i do
there is more to me than what evolution can explain
plus a few other odds and ends which taken together sum up to waters reply.

But you have to accept one of the following:

1. I believe there is a god(s).
2. I do not believe there is a god(s).
3. I don't know or it cannot be answered.

If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice....

 

[cole grey]

This is not good enough. How meaningful is it to set all one's hopes on someone who is unknowable?

First of all, God is not completely unknowable, at least in the experience of the human conscious mind, whether this is objective knowing or a subjective knowing is unclear, we'll know if we ever know what the truth about the subject is.
Second, take yourself as an example. You are not christian, yet in certain areas of male/female relationship you say it is best to act like one (actually more moral than most). If following the path which a person sees as leading to, or walking with, God doesn't make any sense to someone, they probably won't do it, that's just reality. So, most of the time, the idea of a person putting all hopes on God is just not realistic, other than a basic overarching belief that everything will work out. (I personally think the idea that christians have that everything will work out on earth for a christian is an obvious untruth, however on a metaphysical level, I believe this is the case, although that of course is unprovable.)

I'm sorry, but this is a poor argument. You can't call something wrong and substantiate your assertion with a "perhaps".

No. The argument that God cannot exist because satan exists, is wrong. There are multiple possibilities as to why this is the case. Those possibilities are just as valid as the possibility that satan is a mistake. The fact that there are many ways to describe the unprovable makes the statement, "therefore God doesn't exist", wrong. The statement, "therefore God might not exist", is quite reasonable, however.

 

[cole grey]

I've moved to another state, no god here! Fact is I live in Sin City

You will find God, or not, when you move to another state as well. There is no direct connection.

We can't change reality, reality is an axiom, it is as is. We can only identify objects, entities of reality, we can't change them, we only become aware of their existence.

I just changed reality when i turned my heater on. It got a lot warmer in my house. We don't change the whole (objective) system, that wasn't my point.

If there's no emperical proof of an existence, then more then likely it does not exist...

As lerxst said about xrays and humans, and i said about carbon dioxide and plants. It is really not that simple.

 

[cole grey]

I said, "an unknowable thing may still exist, but can not be shown to exist. "

The fact about this is that something being unknowable does not make it non-existent. If you want to say it makes the thing unimportant to our thinking process, unrelatable, unprovable, un-etc., fine, but not non-existent.

 

[water]

I could have said that what you're saying is nothing but carrot-and-stick mentality, and discard it as such.

Can you expand on that? I'm not sure what you mean.

Just reading what you said, it may come across no different than wishful thinking, as well.

A militant atheist would maul you for what you said. But I strive to recognize the value of experience.


* * *

First of all, God is not completely unknowable,

This means that God is partially knowable, and that you know that part of God. But how can you be sure of such a thing?!
How can you be sure that what you know is indeed about God??

Second, take yourself as an example. You are not christian, yet in certain areas of male/female relationship you say it is best to act like one (actually more moral than most). If following the path which a person sees as leading to, or walking with, God doesn't make any sense to someone, they probably won't do it, that's just reality.

I do not see my path having anything to do with God.
I do not live the way I do because I would believe in God.

So, most of the time, the idea of a person putting all hopes on God is just not realistic, other than a basic overarching belief that everything will work out.

Then one might as well not believe in God at all.

If God isn't the first and the last thought on your mind, then what's the point in believing in God at all??


* * *

What else does that leave, then?

After a lot of disappointment and despair, "I don't know, and presently, it doesn't seem to matter" became an acceptable answer.

 

[water]

I said, "an unknowable thing may still exist, but can not be shown to exist. "

But what good is this? Does it have any value beyond being a metaphysical squibble?

 

[leopold]

But you have to accept one of the following:

1. I believe there is a god(s).
2. I do not believe there is a god(s).
3. I don't know or it cannot be answered.

If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice....

my choice would be 3

 

[qwerty mob]

Querty mob, I like your logo. It reminds me of the Freemason conspiracy theory that links Egypt with the United States:

Thank You, Spectrum.

Would you believe that it is the seal of an actual United States Government Agency which has a giant black-budget and no public oversight?

The Information Awareness Office (IAO) is the mass surveillance branch of the US DOD, and chartered to be the largest eavesdropping project in the history of intelligence, tasked in fact with the dubious goal of "total information awareness."

...

I happen to be a "non believer" of sorts, so my avatar serves the dual function of poking fun of both classic teleological omniscience and nefarious government projects.

All the best to You.

 

[leopold]

from your link:

Congress passed legislation in February of 2003 halting activities of the IAO pending a Congressional report of the office's activities. Action in the US Congress to attempt to halt a specific internal Department of Defense project occurs extremely rarely, underscoring the grave threat to civil liberties and privacy that many lawmakers perceive in the Information Awareness Office.

DARPA changed the name of the "Total Information Awareness" program to "Terrorist Information Awareness" on May 20, 2003, emphasizing in its report to Congress that the program is not designed to compile dossiers on US citizens, but rather to gather information on terrorist networks. Despite this name change and reassurance, the description of the program's activities remained essentially the same in the report, and critics continue to see the system as prone to massive Orwellian abuses.

A Senate defense appropriations bill passed unanimously on July 18, 2003 explicitly denies any funding to Terrorist Information Awareness research, which will effectively kill the program if implemented.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_Awareness_Office

 

[Raithere]

I said, "an unknowable thing may still exist, but can not be shown to exist. "

The fact about this is that something being unknowable does not make it non-existent. If you want to say it makes the thing unimportant to our thinking process, unrelatable, unprovable, un-etc., fine, but not non-existent.

It depends upon the extent to which it is unknowable. If you mean unknowable to us, or some other limited being, then yes.

But can something that is unconditionally and in its essence unknowable be said to have existence? For to be essentially unknowable that object is incapable of any interaction at all. It must lack any property that we associate with being.

Let's say we have an unknowable baseball sitting on the table before us. In what way can it be said to exist? We cannot see it. If we reach out to touch it our hand passes though the space as if nothing were there. We cannot sense it in any way. Nor can we detect it though instruments or via its interaction with other things. Nor can anyone, ever, no matter what tests they bring to bear.

Isn't this what it means to be non-existent; to have no detectable properties what so ever? In what way would you argue that this baseball exists?

~Raithere

 

[Raithere]

First of all, God is not completely unknowable, at least in the experience of the human conscious mind, whether this is objective knowing or a subjective knowing is unclear, we'll know if we ever know what the truth about the subject is.

You'll have to argue for this point. It is, after all, the subject of the thread. How is God knowable?

~Raithere

 

[qwerty mob]

/nod Leo~ Former Home Page of the IAO URL dead link

EPIC's TIA page here. ACLU's page here.

CSO Essay, Interview with John Poindexter here.

"The defense appropriations bill, which is unclassified, says that we're going to close down the Information Awareness Office, we're going to close down TIA. But, oh, by the way, some of the parts of TIA are not controversial, [and] we're going to move them into the classified annex of the budget. And where they are moved is classified. Exactly what they do is classified."

-John Poindexter, August 2004

 

[Lerxst]

A militant atheist would maul you for what you said.

(Edited to be less combative.)

I'm right here. Let the mauling begin.

 

[Lerxst]

Let's say we have an unknowable baseball sitting on the table before us. In what way can it be said to exist? We cannot see it. If we reach out to touch it our hand passes though the space as if nothing were there. We cannot sense it in any way. Nor can we detect it though instruments or via its interaction with other things. Nor can anyone, ever, no matter what tests they bring to bear.

Isn't this what it means to be non-existent; to have no detectable properties what so ever? In what way would you argue that this baseball exists?

The problem I have with this example is that you already said it was a baseball. That differentiates it from footballs, socks, and cathedrals. Somehow, it has some "baseball-ness" to it, and it seems that the extent to which we would give it knowable qualities (it must be round, have stitiches, etc) and then give it unknowable qualities, is the extent to which you are creating something inherently nonsenical.

On the other hand, if I say that the number of stars in another universe in the multiverse is unknowable, I'm at least saying something that is not in principle nonsensical. There may be good theoretical reasons to expect a multiverse, along with practical limitations that would forbid us to know specific details of the other parts of it. I agree with you fully that the question of the number of stars is in a sense, a completely meaningless question to *us*. But it is possibly not a meaningless question to some other sentient being that possibly inhabits that universe.