ParkCungHee
Deity
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There is a grave difference between "no way to know" and "no way...to have a shot at what is like how a potential god is."
Simple laws of probability says that I have a shot at it.
An intellctual challange about one of the key issues of mankind
- Thread starter Terxpahseyton
- Start date
Simple laws of probability says that I have a shot at it.
Berzerker
Deity
Light wasn't 3rd, it was first... and God called the light "Day" and God called the darkness "Night". Thats describing a spinning world near a star - the very first "result" of creation imparted spin to a water covered world and moved it closer to the Sun. Of course Heaven and Earth dont actually show up in the story until the 2nd or 3rd day, so Heaven is not the universe and the Earth is not this planet - and both were preceded by the water covered proto-Earth (tehom/tiamat). Heaven is some kind of barrier or dividing line in the sky separating the waters, and the Earth is the dry land that appeared when the waters receded... Sounds like whatever caused all that commotion also created plate tectonics. Thats my take on it anyway
Reasoning is probably not the best path to take if one is looking for a meaningful god. Observation, when coupled with rational thought, limits what one can discover.
I hesitated to address you, because I fail to observe a clear cause/consequence relation in your ideas. Your proposals seens random, a term someone already used but I repeat because it's fitting.
Anyway, that excerpt here I gotta answer.
"Science" comes from the latim world scientia, which means "to know". Ergo, it demands that anything regarding science reflects knowledge we can profess. Today, parameter for a scientific knowledge is that laid down by Karl Popper with his falsiability answer to Hume's problem of induction - meaning that we accept the results of any experiment that can sustain repetition of it's findings as a benchmark until we find at least one stance in wich, whitout changing the circunstances, the same result fails to follow.
That laid down, if anything the common knowledge understand as God (a sentient being, able to agency and to change things) "is" energy, that would effectivelly ruin science because it would be a random and inescrutable factor that could (even if wouldn't), in theory, make that two equal experiments (same factors and conditions) involving any form of energy have arbitrarily different results.
Unless you are here defending some form of pantheism (which is quite incompatible with your bible quotes), than indeed yeah, science is a goner in your worldview.
Regards
.
Attriction limits movement, but without it, we also have no way to trigger impulse or to control direction. Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Pure Reason, points out that reason (and induction - ergo, observation) are the anchors that prevents imagination from becaming lunacy.
Regards
.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
That would depend on what you actually mean by that. At present it's not at all clear.
What reason do we have to believe that God is light?
Mise
isle of lucy
It's amazing how one person with patently incomprehensible posts can derail a thread so quickly 
Yes, it's akin, but it's just a limited subset. I recognise that a LOT of my senses are being falsely interpreted, but that doesn't matter, because we have the ability to describe our universe in ways that transcend the illusion of our senses. We can describe heat and blue as electromagnetic cousins, etc.
It's limited mostly to the 'god' question, merely because the delusion is so common in society. Now, I've disproportionately interacted with schizophrenics, so my opinions are swayed by that experience, but a terrific number of them hold the unswayable delusion that they're communing with God.
So, my conclusion is drawn from that observation. What kind of god creates people that cannot tell if they're interacting with him? The only answer is that it's a god that doesn't care about 'spiritual' honesty.
Yes, it does. But you and I have a greatly different conception of the subconscious. As far as I can tell, our subconscious is also trained by observation & rationality. It's just that we don't interpret the signals from our emotional centers well. When I explain the neuroanatomy of the emotional centers, I point out that emotions are a sensory experience, they 'flavor' the percepts. Emotional computation, much like gut computation, is not completely integrated with our consciousness and thus interacts with incomplete signalling. The neuroanatomy of the emotional centers were designed by evolution and trained in the same rational universe that the rest of my senses were. You CAN use the subconscious to augment your perceived intelligence, but you have to be aware that it can be deceived just as easily as your primary senses.
timtofly
One Day
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What reason do we have to believe that a hundred nuclear bombs going off over 100 strategic cities would not cause a noticable disturbance just based on two that went off in Japan over 50 years ago? Would people not even remember those two 1500 years from now? Reason is observable (in the now). Education is reason being embedded in the psyche to continue a reason that has become common knowledge, but could easily be "forgotten".
It's amazing how one person with patently incomprehensible posts can derail a thread so quickly
FredLC quotes people from the past that have changed the course of knowledge and science, yet my post are dismissed with a polite wave of the hand, because they threaten that knowledge? How can science advance without new information if that information is just dismissed instead of reasoned out? I am not here to prove anything, but to reason. At least a couple have tried to do that and I am thankful.
Light wasn't 3rd, it was first... and God called the light "Day" and God called the darkness "Night". Thats describing a spinning world near a star - the very first "result" of creation imparted spin to a water covered world and moved it closer to the Sun. Of course Heaven and Earth dont actually show up in the story until the 2nd or 3rd day, so Heaven is not the universe and the Earth is not this planet - and both were preceded by the water covered proto-Earth (tehom/tiamat). Heaven is some kind of barrier or dividing line in the sky separating the waters, and the Earth is the dry land that appeared when the waters receded... Sounds like whatever caused all that commotion also created plate tectonics. Thats my take on it anyway
God created the heavens (1st) and the earth (2nd). You interpret this as a universe and a spinning world. I just say that it happened. Then God said let there be light. For those of you who think that this was a story from a stone age perspective, how else would they pass along the notion that this light was day and night? Would it have made sense or just forced people to know God without a choice if God had said: let myself be the universal energy that seperates the light from the darkness? There is no need for a spinning world to cause light and darkness if there is no sun sending that light to begin with. The first day was not light from the sun and probably not even a reference to a spinning earth. The earth spinning did not result in night and day. The earth was just spinning in the darkness of space. Seems to me that if a bright flash of energy (the big bang) that caused the universe to form and that formation was God, that if it started to make sense to people that those who reject God would start to discredit the Big Bang theory. That may be conspiratorial, and crazy, but if I could prove (which I can't) (it happened a long time ago), and started to sway man's psyche toward a rationalization of God, it would destroy both religion and science. Who would want to study physics, if it were just the study of God? Science is not just about getting rid of God. Science is how to make life easier and more enjoyable and even in that "enlightenment" men still abuse it and use it for their own destruction and not to help those in need.
TL,DR If Energy was actually God it would not destroy anything, except ruin human psyche on making God an everday common knowledge and sour free will.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I'm being quite sincere when I say that I have no idea what you're talking about.
timtofly said:
I have a different answer than the ones stated above. I don't think it would ruin science at all. In fact, I can't even conceive of a reformulation of current knowledge that would explain all existing observations and *not* be science / scientific.
If, somehow, it were to be found that God and Energy are the same phenomenon, then I think the conclusion would be inescapable: God is weak, god is less than 25% of the stuff in the universe, God is restricted in its actions by the equations that describe possible interactions between fields and mass, God would be, in a word, just another variable in an equation.
Science would not be destroyed at all - science would continue on as if nothing changed. The rules that determine how things behave in this universe don't care if you call energy by the name god. Go right ahead! It changes nothing as far as science is concerned. :yawn:
Wrong. Science is not at all about getting rid of God. Not even in the slightest little bit. Science is a method for finding out how things work. If there were gods at work here, science would have found them, described them, and tried to make predictions about them. But there is no evidence that gods affect the universe; science can't get rid of something that isn't there
Back on topic:
If the only way to have a shot at knowing what gods are like is represented by the current direction of this thread, then I agree with the OP that it's not possible to have a rational discussion about it.
Somehow, I feel this was quasi-addressed to me. And it's kinda fair; perhaps I allowed god too much power (such lovely ironic words!), but quite frankly, your answer, while correct, handles an issue of linguistic... I tried to answer considering god to be as much as the person I was answering would possibly think of him...
That's why I mentioned pantheism at all, something that pretty much suns up your own response as well...
Of course (and playing devil's advocate), if we found out that indeed god equals energy, and instantly upon the coming of such knowledge energy begins working miracles, forgiving sins, and we have the son of energy (a bolt of lightning?) crucified, than your position sinks...
Wrong. Science is not at all about getting rid of God. Not even in the slightest little bit. Science is a method for finding out how things work. If there were gods at work here, science would have found them, described them, and tried to make predictions about them. But there is no evidence that gods affect the universe; science can't get rid of something that isn't there
True enough.
Regards
.It would ruin God, as energy is the consequence of the invariance of time translations. Therefore without time there is no concept of energy. Therefore if God was energy He could not be the creator as He would be a product of the universe and not the reason.
Terxpahseyton
Nobody
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Yeah the title is an attention whore
Great
On what you wrote after that: I must agree with others that it is hard to see what your actual point is and but I doubt that it will be productive for the point of the thread to wholly engage in it, so I'll try to take a new direction.
You seemed to be concerned with the relation of science and the divine. Well I think the relation is pretty clear. The divine and science are not contradictory in principle (which you seemed to ask). I.e. assuming that there is a God does not need to hold back any kind of scientific understanding, as long as one does not use such a believe to formulate hypothesizes in fields science can give use better answers and by better I mean objectively more likely answers. I.e. we can't say why time exists in the first place. So claiming that God created time is absolutely fine and not unscientific in itself. Claiming one knows God created time is though, because how would one know?
The common ground I see between atheists and believers is the probability of the explanation of God by objective measures. So do you believe God is a likely explanation for existence in general, the existence of energy including its causes as demonstrated by science? I would assume so. So if yes, why do you do that?
Keep in mind that "likely" means that God as a source of all those phenomenas has better grounds to stand on than other potential explanations. Others would be (to randomly name two): There is no reason, it just happens to be so. Or: Everything we experience is only a simulation of some alien race and the "real" universe is entirely different.
Yes, but I said a likely shot. Naturally "likely" is based on what we can observe.
I.e. I see a chair and based on previous experiences it is likely that there really is a chair. If I don't see a chair based on previous experiences it is not likely that there is one.
Likewise, the question shouldn't be if there is a god. But if it is likely that there is a god. And by likely I mean God is not just one of infinite possible explanations for say the existence of certain forms of energy, but we have observable grounds on which to assume that God is a likely explanation - more likely than others - because it has certain observable things going for it other explanations don't.
But of course, assuming God is not particular likely as an explanation, one can still choose to follow one's feeling and have faith anyway. And that is something I would not take any issue with, as long as one accepted the objective probability of it.
@peter grimes
As my post already says in at least some areas - you are absolutely correct.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
Eh? Observation, when coupled with rational thought, has lead to all discoveries and inventions that humans have ever made.
warpus said:
Precisely. If gods exist the effects of their actions will be observable and not explainable by any natural means. This leads to two possibilities:
1. If no effects of possible gods are observed, perhaps we're haven't found them yet. Perhaps, indeed. This is a called the God Of The Gaps reasoning. Many atheists consider this to be the last refuge of religious reasoning. I reject this idea as reasonable. It's like what happens when you turn off an old TV screen: At first the whole screen is alive and interesting, but then the only light is confined to a fast-retreating glow at the center of the screen, lingering for a half-minute, then finally gone. For good.
2. If an effect is observed but not yet explainable within the current framework of scientific understanding this does not automatically mean that gods exist. It simply means that we don't yet know why something happens. We now have a half-millenium (at least!) of experience with this situation. Given enough time, effort, and imagination, we eventually find a natural explanation for observed phenomena.
timtofly
One Day
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If a person puts his thoughts in this thread, I assume they have some knowledge on the ideas they put forward. These ideas fall into common knowledge, learned knowledge, and observed knowledge. Observed knowledge is actually subjective, unless one can prove otherwise and then it is up to repeated testing (if availble) to make it common.
Observed knowledge is not really usable here, since most here tend to follow the scientific principle of the accepted norms. Thus I agree that anecdotal can not really be considered as "knowing".
We have left common knowledge and learned knowledge. It is common knowledge that there are many books in circulation. It is less common knowledge that one of the most sold books is the Bible. Most people do not converse "about" common knowledge items, since it is not really news worthy.
Next we have "learned" knowledge. This is what we learn in school, by reading, by peer review. The next step is determining what is fact and what is not real. People want honesty, but people do not like the hard "truth". There is helpful knowledge and there is knowledge that most can survive without knowing, since it does not effect their bubble of existance. We have also entered the world of specialized knowledge.
My point being: why is it hard to say "I know something"? We would rather have knowledge "about", instead of directly knowing. Has science ruined our reason to the point where belief has replaced knowledge? If a mathematician said I "know" this for a fact, would we believe he does and not let it bother us? Why would knowledge of God, be relegated to a belief system? It is true that there is no current revelation, but can we honestly say, that there was never a knowledge ever where one could truly know?
People use the Bible all the time to discredit even a belief in God. The Bible also points out that people would not even have knowledge of God, even if He appeared and was observable. I can say that if I believed the Bible, it is quite possible that God will never reveal Himself to the vast majority of people and that it is a waste of time to even try talking to others about it. Then one would argue back then there is no God, because of that very fact, that He does not choose to reveal Himself to all.
It seems to be a solid fact that knowledge about something will never convince others to have a direct knowledge. Science is the only way for others to obtain a peer reviewed knowledge that is objective to all. The only other way is brain washing and only allowing humans to obtain certain knowledge. The only catch is sometimes people just "know" by a thought placed in their head that cannot be explained. If it can be repeatedly peer reviewed and proven, then it is accepted. If not, then that person is just crazy.
It is ok to hypothesize, but why is it wrong to come across as an authority? Seems the only reason being, it is not scientific and cannot be proven by observable means.
@ Peter Grimes
What if God, only communicated through imagination, would that limit our knowledge of Him?
Observed knowledge is not really usable here, since most here tend to follow the scientific principle of the accepted norms. Thus I agree that anecdotal can not really be considered as "knowing".
We have left common knowledge and learned knowledge. It is common knowledge that there are many books in circulation. It is less common knowledge that one of the most sold books is the Bible. Most people do not converse "about" common knowledge items, since it is not really news worthy.
Next we have "learned" knowledge. This is what we learn in school, by reading, by peer review. The next step is determining what is fact and what is not real. People want honesty, but people do not like the hard "truth". There is helpful knowledge and there is knowledge that most can survive without knowing, since it does not effect their bubble of existance. We have also entered the world of specialized knowledge.
My point being: why is it hard to say "I know something"? We would rather have knowledge "about", instead of directly knowing. Has science ruined our reason to the point where belief has replaced knowledge? If a mathematician said I "know" this for a fact, would we believe he does and not let it bother us? Why would knowledge of God, be relegated to a belief system? It is true that there is no current revelation, but can we honestly say, that there was never a knowledge ever where one could truly know?
People use the Bible all the time to discredit even a belief in God. The Bible also points out that people would not even have knowledge of God, even if He appeared and was observable. I can say that if I believed the Bible, it is quite possible that God will never reveal Himself to the vast majority of people and that it is a waste of time to even try talking to others about it. Then one would argue back then there is no God, because of that very fact, that He does not choose to reveal Himself to all.
It seems to be a solid fact that knowledge about something will never convince others to have a direct knowledge. Science is the only way for others to obtain a peer reviewed knowledge that is objective to all. The only other way is brain washing and only allowing humans to obtain certain knowledge. The only catch is sometimes people just "know" by a thought placed in their head that cannot be explained. If it can be repeatedly peer reviewed and proven, then it is accepted. If not, then that person is just crazy.
It is ok to hypothesize, but why is it wrong to come across as an authority? Seems the only reason being, it is not scientific and cannot be proven by observable means.
@ Peter Grimes
What if God, only communicated through imagination, would that limit our knowledge of Him?
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
It's wrong to come across as an authority when you aren't one. Not anyone can be an authority on a subject - you need tons of experience, usually a degree in the field.. probably a lot more. I'm not sure how this relates to anything else in the thread though.
To summarize: You can't just say "I'm a chemistry expert!" unless you also have a chemistry degree, maybe some publications, and a proven track-record that you know what the hell you're talking about when it comes to chemistry.
timtofly
One Day
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In other word's you are only an authority if you have enough peers behind you to back you up?
Sort of, but not really. In my opinion you're an expert on a subject when other people with a great degree of skill, training, and expertise in that same subject treat you as an expert.timtofly said:
I could be considered close to an expert in my field - I could teach a college level class, I could advise a graduate student. But I don't consider myself an absolute authority. Compared to the man on the street I'm an expert. Compared to my peers I'm at least average.
Yes, that would severely limit not only our knowledge, but also our *potential* knowledge and - most importantly - gods' potential powers. If gods are only capable of perturbing our neuronal firing patterns, then that fundamentally limits a god's freedom of action. In other words, that's not at all a god anything like the ones talked about in the bible.
speaking of which...
EDIT: just re-read what you wrote.
Brain washing is decidedly not a way to gain knowledge. It's a method for imparting propaganda - which is pretty much defined as a skewed view of reality. So I don't think this counts. And if someone came up to me and said that they know something because the thought just popped into their head I'd be very skeptical of it. If, however, they said they believed something, well, that's fine. Go right ahead. You can believe anything you want. It may or may not be right, and you belief won't make a difference.
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