Define: God

[warpus]

I dont see where would that leads us. You than have to ask how this natural phenomenon come to existence and keep asking till you "hit the wall" of some Absolute reality or come to some kind of pure Nothingness.

It doesn't lead us anywhere, really, it's just an interesting thought experiment. I mean, as of now, all we can say about the universe is that it exists. Did it come into existence from nothing? Did it always exist? We don't know. My thought experiment doesn't alter that - it only presumes to assume that some phenomenon was responsible for the big bang and/or the universe coming into existence. The same questions that we have now are the same questions that remain. (how, why, where from, etc.)

Why? They can just be natural outcomes of behaviour. To the best of my knowledge, no one is 'directly traffic' and deciding that me stabbing my friends will result in me being lonely as a consequence. The physics of knives and hearts doesn't care about our opinions. It just happens that way, because the universe causes natural outcomes to occur.

You feeling lonely as a result of something you did is one thing - but someone punishing or rewarding you for it is another.

I looked into Maat and there is judging going on - the judging of someone's actions. This needs to be done by some sort of an intelligent agent or entity or a mechanism set up by someone/something like that.

Heaven could easily be the destination of those who live according to the moral codes that are evident in the universe.

But there is no such thing as objective morality, so any moral mechanism that's set up needs to be set up by an intelligent agent of some sort.

Either way, there would need to be a "Judge", who ascertains whether you go to A or B. There also needs to be a mechanism in place to send you to A or B, and this needs an intelligent agent as a designer, director, and/or coordinator as well.

No natural process is going to determine whether you go to A or B depending on which action you performed in the past. Intelligence is needed to either build a system to accommodate this - or to deal with it directly.

 

[El_Machinae]

No natural process is going to determine whether you go to A or B depending on which action you performed in the past. Intelligence is needed to either build a system to accommodate this - or to deal with it directly.

Why?

All of life has future consequences utterly dependent upon my previous actions. There's no need for an intelligence to build those consequences. If I'm walking along a cliff-face, then my location in five minutes utterly depends on what I do now. There's no presumption that an intelligence built an 'idiot test' along that cliff face. It's just there. The idea that the universe naturally sorts souls doesn't need an intelligence either.

You'll note that in the story of Maat, it wasn't the god that was doing the judging. The scale was doing the judging and the god was merely enforcing the judgement. There was no need for any intelligence at all. Plop your soul onto the scale, if it tips, you go to Hell. If it doesn't tip, you can walk over to Heaven. No one needs to design a scale, we already have a universe that has consequences.

The entire universe depends upon the future being causally linked to the past. Nature sorts our future outcomes all the time based on what we did previously entirely without an intelligent intervener.

 

[warpus]

Why?All of life has future consequences utterly dependent upon my previous actions. There's no need for an intelligence to build those consequences. If I'm walking along a cliff-face, then my location in five minutes utterly depends on what I do now. There's no presumption that an intelligence built an 'idiot test' along that cliff face. It's just there. The idea that the universe naturally sorts souls doesn't need an intelligence either.

How best to answer your question of "why"....

Some more reasons:

- Because if there was a natural process that judged our moral actions and sent us to hell or heaven.. we'd know about it, in some capacity.

- Because information of our moral acts would need to be stored somewhere, by some process, which needs to be designed by an intelligent entity.

- Because natural phenomena act and react on the present, not on the past. When you mix two chemicals, what's important is the state of both chemincals now, not at any previous time.

- Because there exists no natural phenomena that would be capable of what you describe, that we know of.

Essentially.. if this is possible, it'd be possible to draw it out. How would it work? Sketch it out and we'll look at it.

You'll note that in the story of Maat, it wasn't the god that was doing the judging. The scale was doing the judging and the god was merely enforcing the judgement. There was no need for any intelligence at all. Plop your soul onto the scale, if it tips, you go to Hell. If it doesn't tip, you can walk over to Heaven. No one needs to design a scale, we already have a universe that has consequences.

Yeah, but in this case the scale is the intelligent agent. It couldn't be a natural process - since it doesn't just act and react - it judges.

 

[El_Machinae]

- Because information of our moral acts would need to be stored somewhere, by some process, which needs to be designed by an intelligent entity.

Wait, now information storage needs to be intelligently designed? Warpus, this is weird. You're basically using Creationist arguments now.

All information is encoded in the universe, already. The information of reproductive acts are encoded in the genomes of offspring. The information of the health benefits of your last meal is encoded in your future health.

- Because natural phenomena act and react on the present, not on the past. When you mix two chemicals, what's important is the state of both chemincals now, not at any previous time.

Er, which two chemicals are in that vial is utterly dependent upon which two chemicals were in that vial one picosecond earlier. There's no way for those two chemicals to be there now without having first been there previously.

All present states are determined based on what happened previously

Yeah, but in this case the scale is the intelligent agent. It couldn't be a natural process - since it doesn't just act and react - it judges.

No, the scale is clearly insentient. It's literally a scale. The 'judge' is responding machine-like to what the scale measures.

When I'm stalking a deer and step on a twig, there's no intelligent process that determines whether or not that twig snaps and scares the deer away. My future is utterly dependent upon my past, whether I'd eaten too much or not, etc. There's no intelligent judge 'punishing' me for previous gluttony by scaring the deer away, it happens. My punishment for being a fatty is just cause that's the way it is.

Now, granted, there's no real evidence for an afterlife. But, the idea of an afterlife that naturally sorts your fate according to your behaviour is perfectly fine without the idea of a god. That's the way the universe works, your future is determined heavily by what you do next.

You might want to go upthread to where we started. My point is that an afterlife fate that 'judges' based on moral criteria doesn't need a God to exist. The universe already naturally sorts your outcomes based on your previous behaviour. We don't need a sentient god to have most of the attributes of a god.

This is a weird disagreement. It's basically the idea of Karma and many reincarnation theories. The only difference is that souls are put into a permanent place instead of the next transitory phase.

- Because if there was a natural process that judged our moral actions and sent us to hell or heaven.. we'd know about it, in some capacity.

I don't see how that follows. I don't think it does follow, so I'm not really going to address it.

 

[warpus]

Wait, now information storage needs to be intelligently designed?

No no, I'm just saying that natural processes never reference historical data - only what exists in the present, or in whichever frame of reference the phenomenon is occurring. It's basically a snapshot of the situation as it exists, and never an analysis how it used to be at various different points in time.

And in order to reference historical data you need an information storage system designed to understand and process chronological order.

Er, which two chemicals are in that vial is utterly dependent upon which two chemicals were in that vial one picosecond earlier. There's no way for those two chemicals to be there now without having first been there previously.

All present states are determined based on what happened previously

Yes, a picosecond earlier, but not years earlier Only the present matters. That's how chemical reactions work - based on what the thing is now - not what it used to be last year, or last week, or a decade ago. That's all I mean.

No, the scale is clearly insentient. It's literally a scale. The 'judge' is responding machine-like to what the scale measures.

Seems like a scale that would not be possible to build, then. And so we can discard it as a potential solution to the "how do you build a non-sentient judge of moral actions?" problem.

That's the way the universe works, your future is determined heavily by what you do next.

Causality exists in our universe, yes, and that's how things work. But that's not to say that it'd be possible to build such a non-sentient judge of moral actions. I mean, you could, I suppose, by making it respond with random answers - but then it wouldn't be very usable.

My point is that an afterlife fate that 'judges' based on moral criteria doesn't need a God to exist. The universe already naturally sorts your outcomes based on your previous behaviour.

The thing with causality is that the reaction is always instantaneous. Something happens -> there is a reaction -> something else happens. Sure, sometimes there is a distance problem, so you don't see the result until later, but the reality of causality is that it wouldn't allow for the non-sentient judging of moral actions.

I mean, first of all morality is something sentient creatures (us) invented. It is not a property of the universe. Things happen in the universe based on how particles interact, and various laws, and none of them have anything to do with morality.

Secondly, getting back to the whole "storing information" bit, in order for an entity to judge your moral actions, it needs to store that information somewhere - so that it can look at your life of moral actions, as opposed to just what you're doing right this second. No non-sentient process in the universe would be capable of such a thing - someone needs to design and build a storage system, describe what desirable morality is in the first place, and how to quantify the morality of actions.

This is a weird disagreement. It's basically the idea of Karma and many reincarnation theories. The only difference is that souls are put into a permanent place instead of the next transitory phase.

Yeah, karma wouldn't work unless you have some sentient entity making judgement calls. If nobody is, then it can't work. It requires an "operator"/judge type entity.

 

[Borachio]

What if karma had some measurable effect on some kind of electrical field (representing your disembodied consciousness)? Would that still require an operator?

Suppose good deeds had a "lightening" effect, and bad deeds had a "dulling" effect?

 

[warpus]

Suppose good deeds had a "lightening" effect, and bad deeds had a "dulling" effect?

Since morality is not an inherent property of any part of the Universe, you would need someone to sit there and judge each action to have been "good" or "bad" or assign some sort of a "morality quotient". (so for example, stealing a car under certain conditions might be 2.18756/10, while helping an old lady across the street in the winter might be a 7.1567/10 - or whatever - point is that an action needs to be converted to a quotient somehow)

In theory it might be possible to build a machine to do this, but then the machine either needs to be sentient itself - or have been built by a sentient entity which is able to direct the machine to properly assign morality quotient values.

In the end somebody needs to figure out whether an action was good or bad - and by how much. And since morality is subjective, you need a sentient operator/judge to make those judgement calls.

 

[Borachio]

Well, I don't understand.

Why couldn't "good" actions have a naturally beneficial on the organism itself? If I help an old woman across the road, I might get a boost to my immune system that enables me to live 10 minutes longer.

(Especially if it's a wicked old woman who didn't want to cross the road at all.)

 

[El_Machinae]

Causality exists in our universe, yes, and that's how things work. But that's not to say that it'd be possible to build such a non-sentient judge of moral actions. I mean, you could, I suppose, by making it respond with random answers - but then it wouldn't be very usable

"Build"? Maybe this is the hiccup.
There's no need for anything to be built. It merely needs to exist, fundamentally. No one needs to build a system that weighs my tread in order to determine if I'm too fat to sneak up on a deer. The judgement of my fatness, the punishment for my previous gluttony, already exists.

I mean, first of all morality is something sentient creatures (us) invented. It is not a property of the universe. Things happen in the universe based on how particles interact, and various laws, and none of them have anything to do with morality.

Is it something we invented? Or is it something we perceived? Everyone who thinks morality is relativistic seems to fall for this trap. We live in a cause-and-effect universe people by sentients. Morality exists as soon as you have sapient organisms capable of interacting with sentient organisms. We merely notice that there are moral outcomes, we don't invent them.

But, this doesn't matter. You're just denying the premise. You were saying before that God needed to be conscious, and I'm saying that an afterlife that sorts souls based on their moral stain doesn't need a conscious sorting entity. If you want to deny that souls exist or that they can be stained, that's fine. But it's a distraction from the original question, of whether God needs to be conscious.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, karma wouldn't work unless you have some sentient entity making judgement calls. If nobody is, then it can't work. It requires an "operator"/judge type entity.

That's wild, Warpus! You're basically saying that thousands of years of Eastern theology is stupid, because Karma would require a sentient judge. Think about the hubris of this statement!

The atheistic argument, that they have no evidence, is a totally different objection.

But really, if karma can't work without a sentient judge, how can gravity? Karma is envisioned as a force. Just like all your past meals and exercise are encoded in your body, your historical moral behaviour is encoded on your soul. Chemical bonds don't need a sentient observer in order to affect your mass, to decide whether something you ate makes you heavier or not.

 

[warpus]

"Build"? Maybe this is the hiccup.
There's no need for anything to be built. It merely needs to exist, fundamentally. No one needs to build a system that weighs my tread in order to determine if I'm too fat to sneak up on a deer. The judgement of my fatness, the punishment for my previous gluttony, already exists.

It punishes you according to the laws of the universe - which do not include morality in any way.

(The punishment you're talking about is in part biological in nature, right?)

Is it something we invented? Or is it something we perceived? Everyone who thinks morality is relativistic seems to fall for this trap. We live in a cause-and-effect universe people by sentients. Morality exists as soon as you have sapient organisms capable of interacting with sentient organisms. We merely notice that there are moral outcomes, we don't invent them.

What's invented by us is the moral framework in which we operate. It allows us to say "action A is moral" and "action B is immoral".

This is not inherent in any way to the universe, it needs to be put together/designed/etc.

But, this doesn't matter. You're just denying the premise. You were saying before that God needed to be conscious, and I'm saying that an afterlife that sorts souls based on their moral stain doesn't need a conscious sorting entity. If you want to deny that souls exist or that they can be stained, that's fine. But it's a distraction from the original question, of whether God needs to be conscious.

I think there is some confusion how this conversation started. I accepted that God could be non-conscious.

What we're disagreeing about here is whether you can have a heaven, hell, and people being sorted based on their moral actions and being thrown into one or the other - without a judge sitting there, making decisions. I say that you can't - you say that you can.

That's the crux of our disagreement, right?

That's wild, Warpus! You're basically saying that thousands of years of Eastern theology is stupid, because Karma would require a sentient judge. Think about the hubris of this statement!

I... didn't say it's stupid.

I just said that without a sentient judge/operator type entity, it wouldn't be possible to set something like that up. It just wouldn't be possible. Plenty of things in religions aren't technically possible. I have no problem with that.

But really, if karma can't work without a sentient judge, how can gravity?

Gravity works the way it does due to the curvature of space-time not being flat, I believe. It doesn't require a person sitting there, making decisions on which way things fly. All of that is inherent in the structure and makeup of the universe. An apple falls to the ground due to a force acting on it - you don't need a sentient operator to decide that this happens. It happens due to the laws of the universe.

We have models of gravity - they do not include sentient operators calling the shots. No such model of morality or karma is possible - you need a sentient entity somewhere, making decisions.

There are no laws of the universe that have anything to do with morality - that is one of the main differences. Someone needs to convert actions to morality quotients. With gravity that isn't required.

One way to convince me that I'm wrong would be to present a model that would allow what you suggest to occur - to sketch it out, explain all the parts, and present it to me. Then I'd have to look at it, and if your model works, I'd have to concede that I'm wrong. But such a model is not possible.

 

[El_Machinae]

Okay, every time you do something that's good, your soul gets "lighter". Everytime you do something bad, your soul gets "heavier". When you die, your soul floats or sinks. You float to Heaven and sink to Hell.

Just like, every time you eat something good for you, your body gets healthier. Everytime you eat something bad for you, your body gets less healthy. When you get the flu as a senior citizen, whether you spiral into dementia or shake it off is determined by whether you were healthy enough

 

[warpus]

Okay, every time you do something that's good, your soul gets "lighter". Everytime you do something bad, your soul gets "heavier". When you die, your soul floats or sinks. You float to Heaven and sink to Hell.

Just like, every time you eat something good for you, your body gets healthier. Everytime you eat something bad for you, your body gets less healthy. When you get the flu as a senior citizen, whether you spiral into dementia or shake it off is determined by whether you were healthy enough

But who decides what is good and what is bad? Somebody has to. That's the catch.

Nobody has to decide whether an action will make you more or less healthy - it is determined by your physiology and the various circumstances and elements involved. You could say it is deterministic, the various elements involved and laws of the universe, your physiology, the type of action it is, the chemicals involved, etc. - that all contributes to the outcome of the action being "healthy" or "not healthy". Comparing to what I was talking about before, I would call it this the "health quotient" or "healthiness quotient" or whatever.

And it doesn't require a sentient judge/organizer to determine healthiness. Whether an action is "good" or "bad" does.

In my eyes, that is the crucial difference.

 

[Borachio]

It may just be a circular thing. If you do something good your soul gets lighter. Your soul getting lighter means you've just done something good.

Who decides what is heavier and what is lighter in physical terms? Who decided that helium floating up in the air meant it was lighter?

I've a feeling you'll say no one decided these characteristics of gravity.

In which case, why has someone had to decide what's good and bad?

 

[El_Machinae]

But who decides what is good and what is bad? Somebody has to. That's the catch.

Nobody has to decide whether an action will make you more or less healthy - it is determined by your physiology and the various circumstances and elements involved. You could say it is deterministic, the various elements involved and laws of the universe, your physiology, the type of action it is, the chemicals involved, etc. - that all contributes to the outcome of the action being "healthy" or "not healthy". Comparing to what I was talking about before, I would call it this the "health quotient" or "healthiness quotient" or whatever.

And it doesn't require a sentient judge/organizer to determine healthiness. Whether an action is "good" or "bad" does.

In my eyes, that is the crucial difference.

No one had to judge. I know that there are whole portions of our moral codes that seem to be invented. But, they're fundamentally built on principles that we didn't invent, but inherited. We've moral instincts that existed long before we could speak.

Look, 'healthiness' is also subjective. I can run a 4 minute mile. You can do 200 pushups. Who's healthier? We could have angry debates all day. But, come the virus, and suddenly you know you were healthy enough. We also knew apples were healthier than cyanide the entire time. We thought of healthiness as subjective, but, there was an objective standard as well. Just because some people 'invented' the idea that a 4 minute mile was a marker of good health, the virus doesn't care, it still 'decides'.

You seem to get this. You don't need a sentient judge. But the fate of your 71st year has been utterly determined by your previous choices. Your 71st year is either happy with your family or the null of non-existence. These choices that we encoded (in the information sense) into the very cells of your body.

Same with the hypothetical afterlife. Each moral choice affects your soul the same way each snack affects your body. And, like with our bodies, we can mostly tell which choices are moral and which are immoral. Sure, there's nuanced debate around fuzzy cases, where we're not smart enough. But, in this hypothetical, it doesn't matter. No one needs to have decided that skinning women alive would weigh down your soul, it just needs to be true. No one needs to decide that abstaining from holiday flights and donating to malaria research lightens the souls, it just needs to be true.

You seem to be fixated on the idea that we invent morality. Get past that. The soul-filter doesn't need to have anyone making any decisions to function. And, in this make-up of the universe, we're not so much inventing moral laws but perceiving them. This would be why our consciences bother us, why we give credence to these instincts that we didn't invent, but inherited. It becomes a detector of what is, in basically the same way an upset belly lets you know if something was safe to eat.

edit: okay, how about this. When you die, your conscience acts like a balloon. It needs to be large and light to lift your soul, or your soul is hellbound. Every time a person hardens their heart, their conscience shrinks. Every time they do something that violates their conscience, it gets heavier. People with empathic consciences that also refrained from violating it float to Heaven.

And, it doesn't need to be your conscience specifically. Your conscience can actually be a detector for the state of your soul. In the same way, your tongue tells you if something is healthy, but it's your body the food actually affects.

edit2: here's the other way it can work. Each action stains or lightens your soul. No one decided the mechanism, it just happens, but it's a perfectly coherent system (just like nutrition is, objectively). And, it also just so happens that our consciences are imperfect detectors of this outcome. Imperfect detectors. So, you can have raging debates, but the system doesn't care if you're wrong. And, as a result of our consciences, we're able to instinctively start calling things 'good' and 'evil'. And, because we're logical, we start noticing patterns and try to extrapolate from that. But, like with the virus, it doesn't matter what you thought. If you were wrong, you're wrong. Because we have this detector of what is, it's not at all a co-incidence that we then have the ability to label behaviours into categories.

 

[Borachio]

I like the way you argue, Mr Machinae.

But at times you're talking like this thing is actually true! If it is true, I'm in BIG trouble.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

Well, I don't understand.

Why couldn't "good" actions have a naturally beneficial on the organism itself? If I help an old woman across the road, I might get a boost to my immune system that enables me to live 10 minutes longer.

(Especially if it's a wicked old woman who didn't want to cross the road at all.)

This is a great idea for video game! Lets call it Karma univeralis. I can already see how people are like "just one more turn please. I just need to boost my immune system..."

More seriouly I think there is such a mechanism only not on physical level and that why the physical science had not discovered it. However I believe if apropriate psychological studies are done we would be able to collect some seriously revealing data.

 

[Farm Boy]

edit2: here's the other way it can work. Each action stains or lightens your soul. No one decided the mechanism, it just happens, but it's a perfectly coherent system (just like nutrition is, objectively). And, it also just so happens that our consciences are imperfect detectors of this outcome. Imperfect detectors. So, you can have raging debates, but the system doesn't care if you're wrong. And, as a result of our consciences, we're able to instinctively start calling things 'good' and 'evil'. And, because we're logical, we start noticing patterns and try to extrapolate from that. But, like with the virus, it doesn't matter what you thought. If you were wrong, you're wrong. Because we have this detector of what is, it's not at all a co-incidence that we then have the ability to label behaviours into categories.

Ah hah. Finally the heart of why when big E and I disagree. It makes better sense now.

 

[El_Machinae]

Well, keep in mind, I don't believe in an afterlife. I don't see anything about reality that necessitates its existence. That said, I also don't know how consciousness arises either. I mean, given that consciousness exists, I can understand why natural selection can cause it to be selected for, but that's not the same thing. Given the assumption that consciousness can occur, all you need to do to explain us is the anthropic principle and natural selection and an idea of how big the universe really is.

But, there's nothing in the anthropic principle, natural selection, or even the size of the universe that suggests that there's an afterlife to me.

But, I view morality as an objective thing, something that we perceive and discover. Sure, parts of it are our subjective opinions, but they're subjective opinions that are trying to discover something that objectively exists. The parallels with health are strong. Health objectively exists. There are certain dimensions of health that seem to be at odds with each other (e.g., a normal person has to choose between a 200 lb bench press, the ability to run a 10 second 100m, or the ability to hike for hours), and morality can be that way too. The universe prevents us from being 'perfectly healthy', can't be done. And perfect morality cannot be achieved either. And, like the virus, objective morality doesn't care about your opinion. You can be right, you can be wrong. The moral standard exists regardless.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

But, I view morality as an objective thing, something that we perceive and discover. Sure, parts of it are our subjective opinions, but they're subjective opinions that are trying to discover something that objectively exists. The parallels with health are strong. Health objectively exists. There are certain dimensions of health that seem to be at odds with each other (e.g., a normal person has to choose between a 200 lb bench press, the ability to run a 10 second 100m, or the ability to hike for hours), and morality can be that way too. The universe prevents us from being 'perfectly healthy', can't be done. And perfect morality cannot be achieved either. And, like the virus, objective morality doesn't care about your opinion. You can be right, you can be wrong. The moral standard exists regardless.

What you describe as health is actually physical fitness. I can see how the simmilar rules applies to morality which could be termed at least a part of our mental-psychic health. But while in physique fitness(material world) there is not much of a unifying principle the subtler the consciousness/acting agent is (mental, psychic) the more unity you can achieve.

 

[El_Machinae]

Yeah, I'm describing physical fitness. It's tough to capture the je ne sais quoi of "health" in words. We recognize it when we see it. We know what causes it and we know what harms it. Me comparing 200 pushups to 50 chinups doesn't really capture the vibe, but I think it gets the gist across.