Are God Concepts Incoherent?

[izzy88]

I take it you're referring to the way the term 'God' is used in (for example) anthropology and sociology?

Correct.

If that's right then all that the term God refers to in that context is a set of cultural concepts, not to beings with objective existence, entities that can be brought into the lab

Okay, this is the first problem. Even aside from the "god' question, if you are defining "objective existence" as only such things which are able to be empirically measured, you are already excluding things that we know exist, such as ideas, emotions, memories - everything that exists in the mind. If I sit here and imagine something, nothing you can possibly do will give you access to what I'm imagining. You can ask me, and I can tell you, but you have no way of testing if what I'm saying matches up with what I'm actually imagining because my word is your only access to it.

What I'm imagining doesn't have physical/material existence, and based on what you said later in your comment, it seems you would define it as being imaginary/conceptual, yes? But things in our imaginations do exist, concepts exist, they simply exist within our minds. What you seem to be saying is that a concept does not have real existence because it isn't empirically measurable, but don't you see how problematic that is? Our entire experience of the world is conceptual, because we can only view things through the filter of our own sensory abilities. We already know that objective reality contains all kinds of things that we cannot perceive with our senses, but some of them we've come to discover anyway through the use of special instruments. Yet all we really know about these, as well, is conceptual.

For example, we see chairs as physical/material objects because they are solid and we are solid and solid objects cannot pass through each other, so we can sit on them and they will hold us up. But we now know that this concept doesn't actually reflect objective reality; both our bodies and our chairs are made of point particles which have no size, no shape, and do not take up physical space. Obviously there are a large number of these particles contained within our bodies and our chairs, but no matter how many times you multiply zero, you're still going to get zero, so no matter how many of these particles which do not take up physical space you group together, they are still not going to take up any space. So then how does the chair "hold me up" - how do I not pass right through it? It's because these various particles are either attracted to or repel other particles. The particles in my body are attracted to each other, which is how they stay together, and the same goes for the particles in the chair, but the particles in the chair and the particles in my body repel each other. In fact, much like magnets, they never actually touch, which means that when I'm sitting in the chair (or standing on the ground, or lying in my bed) I am actually hovering, never touching the surface below me.

Now, my point with all of this is to draw your attention to the fact that what I just described is not how you see the world. When you see a man sitting in a chair, you do not see what's actually "out there" in the objective world. You do not see a cloud of shapeless point particles hovering above another cloud of shapeless point particles. Instead, your eyes pick up various waves coming from/bouncing off of these particles and elsewhere and convert them into a picture in your mind - a picture which does not match what's actually out there, but rather represents what's out there in a conceptual manner.

This is the case with every single perception we have of the outside world - whether we "measure" things with our senses or with other instruments we've invented, it's all coming through filters, and the end result is always going to be conceptual. Another good example to drive the point home would be our model of an atom. The thing we see in a model of an atom does not exist in objective reality; rather, it is a conceptual representation of something that exists.

Now we can move onto the "God" question.

And since that doesn't seem to bother many people, I take it that everyone sort of knows that God isn't real in any material sense

Are you saying here that the concept in my mind of "God" does not exist because it is merely a concept? I hope not, since as I just explained concepts are literally all we have in terms of perceiving objective reality. No, obviously the concept exists - I'm holding it in my mind right now (you'll just have to take my word for it). The question isn't whether the concept exists, but whether the concept represents something real, something in objective reality.

The problem with all of this is that you've already defined "objective reality" as excluding anything which isn't "physical/material." The reason this is a problem is that what you think of as physical/material doesn't actually exist in the sense that you're implying - you've set it in contrast to things that are conceptual, yet the fact is that everything we perceive is conceptual; it all exists in our minds, our imaginations.

Do these concepts in our minds represent something in reality? In truth, we cannot actually know. The way we've come up with to practically be able to exist and move throughout the world is, partly, to compare the concepts in our minds to the concepts in other people's minds. If I see something, I cannot be certain that it's really there unless I have another person with me to verify that they see the same thing. But the problem then arises; what if the person I'm seeing isn't really there either? What if both the object and the person exist only in my mind? Well, in a sense they do. Setting aside existential solipsism, what I see as the person and the object are not what's actually "out there" - they are my mind's conceptual representation of what's "out there", but it's simply impossible for me to ever directly experience anything outside of my mind. It's all perceived through filters and indirect perceptions.

and it doesn't worry them that the only thing God can be other than material is solely imaginary / conceptual.

So now we come to this; "God" is merely a concept in our minds, and therefore does not actually exist in objective reality. Hopefully all of my examples have now made it clear why your reasoning here is unsound. Our entire experience of existence is conceptual, so by stating that if something is conceptual it doesn't actually exist, you're thereby saying that what we perceive as existence doesn't actually exist. In truth, this concept you have of an "objective world" is - indeed - just a concept in your mind.

So how do we make sense of our existence? By recognizing that we do not actually exist in the kind of objective/material world that you're assuming we do; we exist in a phenomenological world, which although (we assume) it interacts with and is composed partially of things from what you call "objective reality", it does not entirely depend on it. It can't, since we can't directly experience objective reality. No, our experience of existence takes place entirely in our minds. The world in which we exist cannot accurately be called "objective reality" - rather, it's something we might call "Being."

This world of Being is what we see described in creation myths like the book of Genesis. For example, the sky is described as a dome over the earth. When Genesis was conceived, people were earthbound, so they had no access to the sky. At that time, the sky did indeed appear as a dome to them, and thinking of it as such allowed them to exist in the world. In their world of Being, the sky was a dome. Now that we've been able to leave the ground and fly, even leaving the planet and entering outer space, the sky as a dome no longer works conceptually, so we had to come up with a new concept which fit with the rest of our world, our Being.

We can say that the ancient people who viewed the sky as a dome were "wrong", but what does that mean? Their concept of the sky worked for them, it allowed them to move and exist in the world without issue. The only reason the concept changed is because our Being changed; we now live in a world where conceptualizing the sky as a dome no longer works, so we have to conceptualize it differently, in a way that works with our current existence. Is our concept of the sky objectively real? We cannot know, all we can know is that it currently works - but the ancients could have said the exact same thing about their concept of it, despite it being entirely different from ours.

I'll try to wrap this up, since I've gone on for a while now - though I hope it's been helpful, or at the very least thought-provoking.

Now, it should be clear at this point that concepts in our minds cannot ever be said to represent an "objective reality" as you have been describing; they can really only be said to be useful or not. If a concept helps us to be successful in our existence in this world, our Being, then we can safely say that it's "real."

What "God" (capital 'G') actually is, as a concept, is essentially the foundation of Being. It's not that we're thinking up some random idea and then looking for it out in the world to see if it's actually there. No, we're looking at the world we live in - our Being - and trying to describe how it operates, what it's like, and perhaps most of all what our relationship is to it. "God" is not an a priori concept ("before experience"), it's an a posteriori concept (after experience). We have formulated this idea of "God" based on our experience of existence, and it has happened over millennia. Throughout our existence, we've been observing our Being and noticing patterns, and we've gradually formed these patterns into a unified concept. The method we've used to conceptualize what we call "God" is actually very scientific, in the sense that it's the result of us examining and testing Being over time and seeing how it works and behaves.

Now, logic is a necessary aspect of all this, and even if we set aside everything I said up to this point, your original reasoning would still be logically unsound, and here's why. If "God" is the creator of the universe, then God cannot be part of the universe. But according to you, nothing exists outside the universe; the physical/material world is all that can be said to actually exist. So all you're doing is defining terms in such a way that excludes the possibility of God existing and then claiming to have proven that God cannot exist; you're begging the question.

Here's your argument in logical form:

1: If a creator God exists, he exists outside the physical/material universe (this isn't your premise, but it's a necessary one as I explained above)

2: Anything outside of the physical/material universe doesn't exist (the claim you are making)

3: A creator God exists (the claim you are examining; not making yourself)

Therefore, God does not exist.

Do you see why it doesn't work? You are simply defining "existence" in such a way that a creator God cannot possibly exist. You aren't actually proving anything.

In reality, this whole argument has nothing to do with God and everything to do with your illogical assumption that nothing can exist outside of the physical/material universe, which is a much more complex problem than you've recognized up to this point.

Anyway, hopefully I've been helpful.

 

[Tambourine]

The needs being fulfilled are of great importance to a vast majority of humans. Why should we ignore or seek to diminish this value and importance?

I never said we should ignore or diminish their importance. I am asking you why we should priviledge religion over every other form of coping with the fundamental problem of human existence, because that's what your argument seemed to imply.

EDIT: If you didn't mean that, then I apologize.

 

[Tambourine]

C'mon. You can do better then that.

No, you can do better.

You called God an energy that interacts with the physical world, knowing that "energy" is a scientific umbrella concept for factually existing physical phenomena here in the physical world. That wasn't a conceptualization of God, or even a reasonable approximation of it, just terms that sound profound to people who don't know their accepted meaning in the context of the natural sciences.

I've seen vastly higher quality arguments from you before in this very thread, so I know for a fact that you can do better than that.

 

[PureX]

I never said we should ignore or diminish their importance. I am asking you why we should priviledge religion over every other form of coping with the fundamental problem of human existence.

The 'God question' (the mystery of being) encompasses all the others. Even the atheist has to grapple with the question of God to become an atheist. And even as an atheist, that question (mystery) is still defining him. To be human, and to be self-aware, is to confront that question of the mystery of being. And how we respond to that confrontation will define how we respond to pretty much everything else in our lives. It will define 'us'.

 

[PureX]

You called God an energy that interacts with the physical world...

Please read more carefully. I said God is the source of the energy, and the possibilities and limitation within it, that manifests as the physical universe.

 

[Tambourine]

Please read more carefully. I said God is the source of the energy, and the possibilities and limitation within it, that manifests as the physical universe.

I thought we were talking about an unknowable mystery, and yet here we are with an knowable, well-defined God concept once again (specifically, one of the oldest in existence, the Unmoving Mover)

 

[PureX]

I thought we were talking about an unknowable mystery, and yet here we are with an knowable, well-defined God concept once again.

That source is an unknowable mystery, to us. It transcends existence, itself.

 

[Tambourine]

The 'God question' (the mystery of being) encompasses all the others. Even the atheist has to grapple with the question of God to become an atheist. And even as an atheist, that question (mystery) is still defining him. To be human, and to be self-aware, is to confront that question of the mystery of being. And how we respond to that confrontation will define how we respond to pretty much everything else in our lives. It will define 'us'.

I wouldn't call it a "God" question - it exists independently of any particular conception of God, including atheist conceptions of a godless universe.

EDIT: In fact it may well be more accurate to call it "the human question", since it centers around the purpose of human existence within the universe.

 

[Tambourine]

That source is an unknowable mystery, to us. It transcends existence, itself.

But it is not an unknowable mystery. It is a well-defined and well-worn trope and metaphysical construct that scholars have been using for millenia to explain the origin of the universe. These days, scientists prefer calling it "the Big Bang".

EDIT: Most importantly, however, it has nothing to do with your earlier characterization of God as the existential mystery of human purpose.
The reason we see the two as conjoined at all, I would argue, is due to the Abrahamic tradition of conflating both with their concept of God. But I see no other reason why the purpose of human existence and the origin of matter/energy and time/space should be conceptually linked.

 

[PureX]

But it is not an unknowable mystery. It is a well-defined and well-worn trope and metaphysical construct that scholars have been using for millenia to explain the origin of the universe. These days, scientists prefer calling it "the Big Bang".

The Big Bang does not explain the origin of the universe. Which is why it remains a mystery to both science and religion. The Big Bang is simply the first manifestation of the universe. While the religious myths are just some currently held artful representations of the mystery.

 

[Curious George]

All right... with inductive reasoning, please establish for us that no potatoes can jump.

Edit: if induction is enough to establish the non-existence of jumping potatoes, I trust you'll agree that it's also enough to establish the non-existence of gods, right?

Of course it is enough to establish the non existence of gods. Hence, i am an atheist.

 

[Curious George]

It's a problem if you want empirical verification to "prove" something definitely and finally.

If it good enough to prove the earth orbits the earth, then i think it will suffice

 

[Tambourine]

The Big Bang does not explain the origin of the universe. Which is why it remains a mystery to both science and religion. The Big Bang is simply the first manifestation of the universe. While the religious myths are just some currently held artful representations of the mystery.

What does this have to do with the mystery of human purpose? Or are we assuming two unknowably mysterious Gods?

 

[PureX]

What does this have to do with the mystery of human purpose? Or are we assuming two unknowably mysterious Gods?

The mystery is universal and existential: the source, sustenance, and purpose of all that is (including us).

 

[blü 2]

By means of noting that it is a potato. By what means would i note that a potato can't jump?

You assumed it wasn't God and didn't test it.

No, that won't do.

 

[Bird123]

I'm starting this thread as a jumping-off point from a discussion that @blü 2 and I have been having here:

Why are you an Atheist?

Blu said:



If I understand the point correctly, the argument is that anything real, anything that exists, has defining features that we can identify if we look out in the world for them - presumably physical features. Since God is generally proposed to be non-physical, it seems incoherent to say God(s) "exist(s)" as anything more than a concept in our minds.

So, if you believe in God(s), in what sense does he "exist?" What defining features could we identify her/him/it/they by? Is it coherent to say that something non-physical exists outside our minds?

Particularly interested in thoughts from @atanu, @PureX, and @Vouthon, but all are welcome to participate.

How about this: Your argument does not exist simply because it does not exist outside your mind either.

Clearly, being physical is not the limit to existence. If one narrows the view to just one thing, how much does one choose to ignore? By choosing to limit the possibilities, one is choosing not to seek the real truth.
Why would anyone choose to do that???

That's what I see. It's very clear!!

 

[blü 2]

Nevertheless, I do not have to assume that functionality defines truth. When humans believed the world was a flattened disc, that belief functioned for them very well for a very long time. And yet it appears, now, not to have been true. So, although I recognize the apparent function of presuming there is an "objective reality", I do not assume it to be the truth, as you appear to be doing.

In many places on these boards I've pointed out that there are no absolute statements, and included in my examples that it was once true that the earth is flat and the sun (&c) goes round it, and now it isn't true; and that thus truth is not absolute but it is retrospective. (Other examples are that Newton's gravity operated instantaneously, that fire was due to phlogiston, that light propagated in the lumeniferous ether, that the earth's crust was unitary and solid (&c) but now they're not so; and that the Higgs boson was hypothetical until 2012 and after that at least one variety of it was real.)

But it is not able, within itself, to determine when it's being "misapplied".

I'm not the only one to observe that science is constantly self-testing and self-correcting, and that religions are not ─ though it's true the Abrahamic God has changed [his] mind about slavery and, largely, divorce, and is presently confused about homosexuality.

Which is why it can be used to mislead us in the first place. Reason generates it's own bias, every time. And therefor cannot be reliably used to determine the presence of bias.

Reason doesn't generate gods or religion. The human instinct to devise an explanation when none is available is a survival tool of some value and may be relevant to gods. Or they arise from our acculturation and emotions, and, likely, from our evolved traits as gregarious primates benefiting from tribal solidarity and cooperation.

You can't see out of a room with no windows.

You can make your own windows by keeping an open mind and working honestly and transparently from examinable evidence and being willing to revisit your conclusions if the evidence requires. If you don't work from examinable evidence then you have no objective standard for truth.

What is "real"? You have taken your presumption of "objective reality" as the definition of what is real and what isn't (i.e., that closed room I referred to) so that no other possibilities can exist for you. Yet those parameters are too narrow for myself, and for many others to answer within. We cannot tell you what you cannot hear.

Set out for me your definition of 'real'. What test will tell you and me what's real and what isn't?

My answer is 'real compared to what?'

Compared to ideas that are purely conceptual or purely imaginary or both. Thus 'justice' and 'two' aren't real, only conceptual, but instantiations of them may be real ─ though both require judgments by the observer.

Since I do not presume to know the truth, I cannot logically presume to determine an untruth.

That can't be correct ─ you must be aware of untruths all day every day.

All I can do is determine the relative functionality of a proposed truth, and go with that.

'Relative functionality' for what, exactly?

 

[Curious George]

You assumed it wasn't God and didn't test it.

No, that won't do.

Categorical exclusions allow me to do that. Potatoes are not intelligent. Are you trying to argue that they are intelligent? Or that there is a good probability that they might be. If so, i think the onus is on you, to suggest why i need further testing.

 

[izzy88]

there are no absolute statements

Hmm...

 

[blü 2]

if you are defining "objective existence" as only such things which are able to be empirically measured, you are already excluding things that we know exist, such as ideas, emotions, memories - everything that exists in the mind.

This is the subjective-objective problem that won't go away. The world is material and ideas, emotions and memories are physical brainstates and brain processes. This is true of me and everyone else. Physical brainstates give rise to awareness and to the sense of self, the sources of our subjectivity. Reality (short for 'objective reality') is what exists in the world external to the self.

(I have to assume three things, because I can't demonstrate they're correct without having first assumed them ─ that a world exists external to me, that my senses are capable of informing me of that world, and that reason is a valid tool. I note that anyone who posts here demonstrates agreement with the first two and, touch wood, also with the third.)

If I sit here and imagine something, nothing you can possibly do will give you access to what I'm imagining.

Yes, that's presently true. Also, your brainstates are immensely complex by our present standards, so at present there isn't even a hypothetical method that I'm aware of for an outsider to access them. However I can't think of reason why they should ultimately be inaccessible in principle.

You can ask me, and I can tell you, but you have no way of testing if what I'm saying matches up with what I'm actually imagining because my word is your only access to it.

When we use this form of communication, that's certainly correct. It may be less certain under lab conditions eg there may be circumstances when we could detect a lie, detect your accessing memory, detect that you were calculating, or monitoring / editing your output, and so on, from the blood distribution pattern of your brain, which varies with particular areas of brain activity; but we couldn't get the details. We've observed in the lab that the brain makes particular types of decisions up to ten seconds before the conscious brain is aware of them, and may have already begun to implement them, but you no doubt read about that some years ago.

What I'm imagining doesn't have physical/material existence, and based on what you said later in your comment, it seems you would define it as being imaginary/conceptual, yes?

Just so. There's nothing else it could be.

But things in our imaginations do exist, concepts exist, they simply exist within our minds. What you seem to be saying is that a concept does not have real existence because it isn't empirically measurable, but don't you see how problematic that is?

As I said, concepts are brainstates and processes. The fact that I can think of a unicorn doesn't make unicorns real. The same is true of Sherlock Holmes and (as this thread is showing) of God.

Our entire experience of the world is conceptual, because we can only view things through the filter of our own sensory abilities.

I've already mentioned the three things I assume.

So you and I both assume that we can inform ourselves about reality, the world external to the self, using our senses; and we both know about optical and auditory illusions, and stage magic, and deceits and mistakes and so on. These are the problems that reasoned enquiry (eg scientific method, historical method &c) sets out to overcome as far as possible ─ it won't be perfect, but it will be the best we can do, and improving incrementally, good enough to put rovers on Mars, map the brain and begin to understand the internal relationships of its functions, devise medications for some mental illnesses, map the genome, overcome Covid with ordinary luck, make cars, miniturize computer memory, stop single photons in the lab, and a great deal more.

We already know that objective reality contains all kinds of things that we cannot perceive with our senses, but some of them we've come to discover anyway through the use of special instruments. Yet all we really know about these, as well, is conceptual.

I agree that all theoretical knowledge is conceptual. We form concepts ─ abstractions and generalizations ─ when our carer teaches us language in infancy, so we learni that this is a car and this is a car and this is a car until very soon the infant can see a different example and say CAR! Maths is conceptual throughout; nothing can be counted without a brain to decide what to count and the field in which it is to be counted eg count [chickens] that are [in the barn].

our bodies and our chairs are made of point particles which have no size, no shape, and do not take up physical space.

That's simply incorrect. Subatomic particles are packets of energy and subject to wave/particle duality but are capable of position, size and mass. They are not nothing ─ if they were, they wouldn't exist at all, not here, not anywhere.

When you see a man sitting in a chair, you do not see what's actually "out there" in the objective world. You do not see a cloud of shapeless point particles hovering above another cloud of shapeless point particles. Instead, your eyes pick up various waves coming from/bouncing off of these particles and elsewhere and convert them into a picture in your mind - a picture which does not match what's actually out there, but rather represents what's out there in a conceptual manner.

The details are still being worked on, but I think it's a rather ringing endorsement for science and scientific method, which has gone looking for, and found, these kinds of data, and is the source of our knowledge, both of the physics and the brain functions and biochemistry and biolelectricity involved.

Are you saying here that the concept in my mind of "God" does not exist because it is merely a concept?

I'm saying that it appears no one's mind has a concept of God that corresponds to a real God, a God with objective existence, one out there in nature. All this usual stuff about eternal, omnipotent, omniscience, perfect is wholly imaginary, not qualities of any real thing. If God is real then like any other real thing there's no reason why [he] doesn't have a physical description.

And if God is not real then God is purely imaginary / conceptual. There's no third option.