Schroedinger's God
- Thread starter Kibbles
- Start date
Prove it.
How's about we agree to use language purposefully?
If you have an issue with how or why I define God that way, be direct, tell me what you think.
Thanks
If you have an issue with how or why I define God that way, be direct, tell me what you think.
Thanks
I'm compelled to agree on perplexity's first point.
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To expound-
One can accept any definition contingently, even contextually- and probably should for accuracy's sake; when I first set out to try to understand what people meant by "God" I explored many definitions of Him (or whatever); the one thing that all monotheists could agree on was that "everybody else's God was "wrong" deductively because "Theirs" was either imaginary or mythological"- properties which I came to realize are quite useful at describing that very last deity, from an objectivist perspective.
It's borne out of the rhetorical question "If there is one God above all others what are the properties of those lesser Gods?" Unfortunately, the question has a flaw; the teleological axiom.
To demonstrate that my definition is "wrong" or "incomplete" one only needs a better definition of "other people's Gods"-- or a better definition of their own.
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It's faced numerous challenges over the years, but nothing serious:
"I don't have to define God, He just is!" -elementary assertion
"That's your God, but not My God..." -projection, equivocation
"I don't have to prove anything to you!" -sure; one can't, or won't try.
"Why don't you just believe?" -non sequitur, "Believe in what exactly?"
"Gods can also be 'small men, money, or anything that is worshipped' so yer wrong!" -equivocation, induction
"Every God but One and that Is My God" -circular
"Faith isn't mythology" -negative definition, "Pizza isn't a sandwhich, either"
"What do you mean by imaginary?" -interrogation
"You can't know what imaginary is" -infinite regress, denial
"You'd have to be God to know that" -best amphiboly ever
"God is Love" -most common equivocation ever
"God is Truth" -second most common
"Definitions don't prove anything" -sure, if language is meaningless
I realize it's unpleasant, but I'm not selling anything.
Consider it, make up your own mind.
...
To expound-
One can accept any definition contingently, even contextually- and probably should for accuracy's sake; when I first set out to try to understand what people meant by "God" I explored many definitions of Him (or whatever); the one thing that all monotheists could agree on was that "everybody else's God was "wrong" deductively because "Theirs" was either imaginary or mythological"- properties which I came to realize are quite useful at describing that very last deity, from an objectivist perspective.
It's borne out of the rhetorical question "If there is one God above all others what are the properties of those lesser Gods?" Unfortunately, the question has a flaw; the teleological axiom.
To demonstrate that my definition is "wrong" or "incomplete" one only needs a better definition of "other people's Gods"-- or a better definition of their own.
...
It's faced numerous challenges over the years, but nothing serious:
"I don't have to define God, He just is!" -elementary assertion
"That's your God, but not My God..." -projection, equivocation
"I don't have to prove anything to you!" -sure; one can't, or won't try.
"Why don't you just believe?" -non sequitur, "Believe in what exactly?"
"Gods can also be 'small men, money, or anything that is worshipped' so yer wrong!" -equivocation, induction
"Every God but One and that Is My God" -circular
"Faith isn't mythology" -negative definition, "Pizza isn't a sandwhich, either"
"What do you mean by imaginary?" -interrogation
"You can't know what imaginary is" -infinite regress, denial
"You'd have to be God to know that" -best amphiboly ever
"God is Love" -most common equivocation ever
"God is Truth" -second most common
"Definitions don't prove anything" -sure, if language is meaningless
I realize it's unpleasant, but I'm not selling anything.
Consider it, make up your own mind.
qwerty mob said:
Within your reference frame, within the context you chose to take into consideration, your definition of God is adequate.
But within some other reference frame, within some other context (like Christianity, for example), your definition of God is not adequate.
Such is the problem with definitions: They work only within a specific context, but outside of that, they become meaningless.
After that, it is a power struggle of whose context shall prevail. And then people go to wars for that.
* * *
perplexity said:
Surely, but the consideration itself is rarely stated in the definition itself. Often, the context of the definition is taken for granted or not mentioned.
Some people who believe in God do not think that God is an illusion or a myth. They believe that God is the one who created the Universe and them, and who also interacts with His creation.
But some atheists who define God as an illusion or a myth, thereby imply that it is pointless and pathological to believe in God.
Indeed, once we strip away context, we're left with relativism. That was my point.
It's objectively so, and remains for you to consider.water said:
Then consider what "other Gods" are to Monotheists...water said:
Do you think the definition of a circle is meaningless outside of mathematics? I assure you, a circle's a circle; linguistically, artistically, abstractly, culturally, naturally, [...] and by contrast, "Square Circles" are classic incoherencies; undefinable and illogical. There is no single context, even for relativists; quite the opposite in fact (that everyone's perspective is "truth"), and that is itself incoherent. If we all called a "circle" something else (triangle, polygon, duodecahedron, whatever) there'd be no common ground and no ideas could be communicated and it would be a diliberate abandonment of purpose, language and reason.water said:
Language is highly important; to survive and to thrive. We couldn't learn, know, understand and teach, otherwise.
Relativism is quite possibly the ultimate cop-out.
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But anyways, pardon my straw... *thread hug* Be well.
qwerty mob,
I'll tell you what my purpose here in talking to you is, and I know this is subversive of me:
To make you realize how futile it is to discuss about God.
In order to preserve your integrity, you'd have to be able to either agree or disagree with the claims atheists and theists make -- to either agree or disagree with qualification. But it is impossible, at least I have found it impossible, to come to that qualification without resorting to consider only a very limited context as valid. The choice of this context, however, is contingent, that's the problem with it.
So ... you're left with bewilderment.
After a couple of years of such bewilderment, I lost the desire to either agree or disagree with the claims theists and atheists make about God.
It's quite refreshing!
I'll tell you what my purpose here in talking to you is, and I know this is subversive of me:
To make you realize how futile it is to discuss about God.
In order to preserve your integrity, you'd have to be able to either agree or disagree with the claims atheists and theists make -- to either agree or disagree with qualification. But it is impossible, at least I have found it impossible, to come to that qualification without resorting to consider only a very limited context as valid. The choice of this context, however, is contingent, that's the problem with it.
So ... you're left with bewilderment.
After a couple of years of such bewilderment, I lost the desire to either agree or disagree with the claims theists and atheists make about God.
It's quite refreshing!
qwerty mob said:
How so?! We'd have to show that objective reality exists!
A circle of friends is hardly circular in the way a circle is circular in mathematics ...
But terms like "God", "goodness", "morality", "wrong", "right" are very much context-dependent -- as is shown by the multitude of definitions and understandings of these terms.
I agree. But absolutism, or objectivism, are cop-outs as well, with their complete disregard of context.
Yes, let's have a thread hug!
Good debate, qm, water, and perplexity....
I want to join in....but...work....must....do....work. Also I am still writing up my reply to qm in another thread.
Anyway, just want to say I have to agree with water in all of this.
And as with everything else, I think there is a middle ground between absolute objectivism and absolute relativism, and the best path lies in the middle ground.
Knowledge is contextual. And most if it is provisional. That is not a weakness, it is a strength.
I want to join in....but...work....must....do....work. Also I am still writing up my reply to qm in another thread.
Anyway, just want to say I have to agree with water in all of this.
And as with everything else, I think there is a middle ground between absolute objectivism and absolute relativism, and the best path lies in the middle ground.
Knowledge is contextual. And most if it is provisional. That is not a weakness, it is a strength.
If you say that everything needs a cause and so there must be a cause for the beginning of the universe, then what caused God? And if you say that God is the first cause and nothing caused Him, then why not just say that the universe itself is the first cause and nothing caused it? Postulating a God is both unhelpful and unnecessary
Mythbuster said:
I totally agree that it is unnecessary and unhelpful in this context.
The first cause argument is yet another one on the scrap heap of "arguments" for god that do not hold water at all.
Of course, this is merely to say that it cannot buttress up a positive belief in God. It doesn't conclusively tell me there is no God, simply that this argument for him is not persuasive.
Anytime my adversaries will address their issues with this definition directly, I'll be waiting.
"All Gods are imaginary, mythological beings."
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Specific rebuttals later, at my discretion, if necessary.
Cheers
"All Gods are imaginary, mythological beings."
...
Specific rebuttals later, at my discretion, if necessary.
Cheers
Hi
Name your criteria.
[Edit:]
(1) Do you agree that- [reality] is "that which one's senses tell them is so"
(2) Do you agree that- other beings [exist]
(3) Do you agree that- these other beings possess senses also
You've inferred that it can't be done; I'm guessing because you haven't considered any objectivist metaphysical or epistemological literature. I'm certainly willing to forgive your (and anyone else's) unwillingness to support solipsism and relativism, and have had to conduct these one-sided arguments many times before. After over ten years at this, I am quite honestly led to consider that some folks resent learning.
By whatever criteria you will identify that supports subjectivism, I can easily prove a reality exists outside of any individual subject... which is congruent, material, and characterizably coherent, logically, and consistent between sensory and logical forms.
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The more persuasive of which include the concepts of direct realism and the analytic-synthetic.
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I don't expect the weaker issues of counter-factualism or foundationalism to be drafted but if they are, I'll gladly dispose of them as so much straw that they are (essentially that objectivism is apt to disallow hypotheticals; but that argument is neither counter-factual to objectivism (because objectivism is flexible up to the point where hypotheticals dictate one's senses rather than one's senses dictate what is possible), nor is it supportive of any "better fit" than objectivism for the sensory-existence model of realism; also, foundationalism is a rather gross misnomer about what "material knowledge" is, and a strawman of objectivism because it reduces to equivocations of materiality and being. I'm open to disproof of these statements, of course.
Greetings
water said:
Name your criteria.
[Edit:]
(1) Do you agree that- [reality] is "that which one's senses tell them is so"
(2) Do you agree that- other beings [exist]
(3) Do you agree that- these other beings possess senses also
You've inferred that it can't be done; I'm guessing because you haven't considered any objectivist metaphysical or epistemological literature. I'm certainly willing to forgive your (and anyone else's) unwillingness to support solipsism and relativism, and have had to conduct these one-sided arguments many times before. After over ten years at this, I am quite honestly led to consider that some folks resent learning.
By whatever criteria you will identify that supports subjectivism, I can easily prove a reality exists outside of any individual subject... which is congruent, material, and characterizably coherent, logically, and consistent between sensory and logical forms.
...
The more persuasive of which include the concepts of direct realism and the analytic-synthetic.
...
I don't expect the weaker issues of counter-factualism or foundationalism to be drafted but if they are, I'll gladly dispose of them as so much straw that they are (essentially that objectivism is apt to disallow hypotheticals; but that argument is neither counter-factual to objectivism (because objectivism is flexible up to the point where hypotheticals dictate one's senses rather than one's senses dictate what is possible), nor is it supportive of any "better fit" than objectivism for the sensory-existence model of realism; also, foundationalism is a rather gross misnomer about what "material knowledge" is, and a strawman of objectivism because it reduces to equivocations of materiality and being. I'm open to disproof of these statements, of course.
Greetings
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qwerty mob said:
Most Christians, Muslims, Hindus and other theists don't have such a definition of God. They do not agree with such a definition of God, it is extraneous to them.
To define God irrespective of a particular religion,
is like defining a word irrespective of the language it is used in.
Better ask yourself why do you want to define God.
Mosheh Thezion
Registered Senior Member
ISNT THERE A RELIGION that worships cats????
so wouldnt he as high priest of the Schroedinger's GOD... carry around a box with a dead cat inside of it... cerimonially.... preaching and pondering the depths of the cat in the box....
shake it.... we can prove its in there... ahh... 'but is it alive'???
the mystery... and the religion.
-MT
so wouldnt he as high priest of the Schroedinger's GOD... carry around a box with a dead cat inside of it... cerimonially.... preaching and pondering the depths of the cat in the box....
shake it.... we can prove its in there... ahh... 'but is it alive'???
the mystery... and the religion.
-MT
Look, if you're not going to BEGIN to address the issue, and you show no signs of doing so (other than to assert how meaningless or irrelevant definitons are), then kindly take your own advice:
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As I've inquired before: WHAT GOD?
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If you don't understand this, then you'll just have to puzzle why I can't perfom any such errand.
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As I've inquired before: WHAT GOD?
...
If you don't understand this, then you'll just have to puzzle why I can't perfom any such errand.
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qwerty mob said:
What God? The only God that *you* seem to be capable of defining is the 'imaginary and mythological' God, as this seems to be the only God you know.
But theists may have a different experience of God than you.
And I'm telling you that their experience is not necessarily invalid. Taking for example the Calvinist view, one doesn't know God unless God decides to make Himself known to this person. Some say that whether a person believes in God is not this person's choice, but God's. So in this case, it is beyond people to define God.
It seems to me that the whole problem of defining God is that people try to define God without God's intervention.
If a definition of God is attempted that does not include God's intervention, it is likely to happen that God gets defined as an 'imaginary, mythological being'.
So if God is to be considered as the omnimax Creator, then one must leave the definition of God up to God.
qwerty mob said:
Sorry to jump in, but I'd answer "no" to that one. I think it is more reasonable to suppose some aspects of reality might be beyond our ken.
What is the old joke about the solipsist that said "I don't understand why more people are not solipsists?"
Sadly true. Not me, though!
I agree. But is everything about that reality in principle knowable by us?
On the one hand you've got complete subjectivism/solipsism and on the other you have Ayn Rand. I'm inclined to think that the truth is somewhere in between these two extremes. I think reality is real, outside of us, independent of us, but I don't think that means we are privy to all of it. And this is the crux of the issue between you and I, and between myself and any number of atheists, isn't it? And I do not think the question is an either-or: Either you are a total objectivist or a total subjectivist. There is a big fat excluded middle being ignored there.