Musika:
The detail of you repeatedly framing the question in a political vacuum.
How should I be framing it, in your opinion? What politics should I be considering?
It's more that there is no space between willing and action ... much like the use of word "intervening" to describe your own consciousness .... under normal circumstances it becomes odd to suggest there is a "space" one is "filling". Under normal healthy conditions, you don't have to rigorously focus your will or undergo some democratic process . You just desire it, and your arm moves. The space between your will and action is practically instantaneous.
Yes, but there is something detectably going on when my consciousness is produced. It correlates with detectable patterns of activity in my brain, for example. But when a tree keeps existing there's no observation that can be made that points towards an underlying God, as far as I can tell.
Yet here you are, citing his lack of direct appearance in the sciences as some sort of conclusive basis for atheism.
Looking at it from the other side, his lack of direct appearance
in general seems to me to provide little in the way of a conclusive basis for theism.
The real question is what makes you think it is valid to cite science, since in this regard it cannot go further than suggestions.
What additional step do theists such as yourself make to go that extra step beyond the evidence?
Its more to the point that your grasp of botany is not anywhere complete enough to meaninfully talk about ultimate causes. No need to introduce God when one can just as easily cite the projected trajectory of the future of empirical botanical investigation to undercut whatever "completeness" you care to currently advocate.
If I have this right, you're saying that you believe that God is in the botany somewhere, but our collective ignorance of botany means that we can't detect God there right now. In other words, its just a faith you have that God is in there somewhere. How do you know that's not just wishful thinking on your part?
Note: I'm not asserting that God
isn't in there. It's just that I see no reason
now to assume that he is in there, based on what we know for sure. But you must have a reason for making that assumption. Can you tell me what your reason is?
Or is it a case of expecting atheists to have no better reasons for disbelieving than mere faith that their current level of knowledge about tweaking knobs is sufficient to excise God from the picture?
As a general principle, we tend not to assume that a thing or effect is present unless there is some positive indication of its presence (Occam's razor). There's no need to explain the
absence of something that does not appear to be required in light of all the available evidence. I would say that the onus is on those who assert
presence to justify their assertion.
If they can't abandon their faith in empiricism as the final last word in epistemology, I guess so. Its difficult to fathom how such people would have any other option before them.
What do you regard as the last word in epistemology?
The word "harmony" can be used both in and out of an id context. I imagine that even the staunchest advocate of scientific chaos appreciates, at the very least, some elements of harmony when it comes to determining their payroll slip.
Are you saying God intevenes to make the payroll harmonious? Where is God to be found in the payroll process? I know this is making light of your argument, but the point is that, as far as I can tell, your assumption that God is necessary to explain order of any kind is just that - an assumption - and unevidenced. On the other hand, you also seem to be arguing that evidence is not required, because empiricism is overrated. I think you might need to expand on that point.
Then it appears that you have determined that God, should he exist, must exist in a necessary relationship with the observable world of trees and what not.
IOW since one can examine a tree and not see a direct connection to God, this throws a grave doubt on the very existence of God (IYHO).
It throws grave doubt about God's necessary relationship to trees, I think. I take it that, lacking a direct connection between the tree and God, you somehow perceive an indirect connection. How do you come by that knowledge?
Evolution doesn't necessarily empower or discredit a theistic or atheistic world view beyond mere suggestions.
I agree. It does discredit various alternative theories, though, such as the theory of special creation of lifeforms by God in the Garden of Eden, as I'm sure you'll agree.
It means that if you study the effect, then by necessity, the cause must reveal itself.
Thanks for explaining that.
So as it pertains to this topic, you are suggesting that the activity of God should be necessarily observable by examining the phenomenal world (the effect).
It makes sense to me - especially if, as you claim, God is constantly active in the phenomenal world.
There are problems with this idea of yours, namely that it is common experience that persons can cover their agency as causes.
This can occur either through their own resourcefulness or the limitations of knowledge from those left to examine the effect. So, here we have God, a figure attributed with all resourcefulness, being pitted against the necessarily meager empirical investigative capacities of human society.
In that case, I wonder why God would want to hide his activity - indeed his very presence - from us. Do you have any thoughts on that?
For instance we may have an old painting with a sky rendered red by the artist. Obviously the painting is an effect of the artist, but we cannot adequately trace the necessary cause for the artist painting the sky in that particular manner (assuming they had access to a palette more varied than red). They could just have easily painted it blue or grey or white or green.
IOW it is the nature of free will that it is not governed by necessary relationships of cause and effect.
It's one thing to say that we can't trace the relationship between cause and effect; it's another to say that something it not governed by relationships of cause and effect.
I'm confident that there are causes of what you think of as your free will. If not, then free will must be quite unlike just about everything else in the universe, which is either caused or random (or a combination of the two).
So, in the absence of any information about the baker/cake owner, can you also determine why a cake was made and not a loaf of bread, or why anything was made at all?
Perhaps not, but at least I can be fairly confident, based on the existence of the cake, that there
was a baker.
If our free will is the one thing God doesn't mess with, existing in a world that required us to deduce His existence through observing it would defeat the purpose.
That sounds convenient for God.
So once again, we are back to what you estimate to be the necessary relationship between God (the cause) and the universe (the effect). If God is going to "bake a cake", it is impossible for him to do it in a manner that flies under the radar of an atheist, or so you would have us believe.
If it flies under the radar of atheists, then it also flies under the radar of theists, since atheists and theists have access to the same information. If there is no information available to atheists about what God is doing
now, then theists must also lack that information. It makes me wonder why theists like yourself believe God is doing something
now.
According to their resourcefulness, there is no (necessary) requirement for a person to act in a particular manner. This is why, for example, psychology remains markedly distinct from physics.
I see that distinction as a temporary state of affairs that has more to do with our lack of knowledge than with the lack of the necessary requirement.
