Are God Concepts Incoherent?

[izzy88]

How does it work?

You cannot assume that something is true in order to prove that it's true - it's still an assumption, question-begging.

X is true
Therefore X is true

What have I proven here? Absolutely nothing.

 

[blü 2]

The irony, how do you know the cow or potato you see in the real world is actually a cow or potato?

Living creatures have evolved to be pretty good with real and relevant things. A crossover between memory and concept and, where needed, language, will do the trick most of the time.

Not so with real gods. Imaginary gods, you can have as many as you like, whether you're a believer or not. Real gods don't even have a sufficient identification to distinguish them from a potato, or anything else.

 

[Curious George]

Living creatures have evolved to be pretty good with real and relevant things. A crossover between memory and concept and, where needed, language, will do the trick most of the time.

Not so with real gods. Imaginary gods, you can have as many as you like, whether you're a believer or not. Real gods don't even have a sufficient identification to distinguish them from a potato, or anything else.

Now you are simply contradicting yourself.

 

[blü 2]

But do you honestly recognize that the Earth may not be a sphere, as we all currently believe?

One reason why no statement can be absolute is that we can propose alternative explanations of our existence that negate all our understandings. Examples are strict solipsism, or that we don't live, we dream, or that we and reality are dreams in the mind of a superbeing, or elements in a superbeing's Tron game, and so on. Because they're unfalsifiable they're not subject to science, but for the same reason they're still part of the philosophy of existence.

And of course the earth is not a true sphere but an oblate sphere.

Self-correcting is not the issue. The issue is that no matter how many times we 'self-correct' we remain just as likely to be wrong as we were without self-correcting. And I don't think you honestly understand or agree with this.

I think our scientific progress is sufficient to encourage the idea that we can and do make progress, that our explorations and reasoned conclusions are not in vain, that they're often enough steps forward.

I also think we're capable of moral progress. You may be aware of Pinker's book The Better Angels of our Nature on aspects of the subject. At the same time, I know we continue to do a lot of things wrong. For example, I'm a democrat, but I thing populism is to be feared, Cambridge Analytica is to be feared, ignorance is to be feared, lies and dishonesty in public affairs are to be feared, and so on.

Of course it does. It just wasn't your current course of reasoning.

But you don't even know what a real god is, such that if we found a candidate we could tell whether it were God or not. You don't know what godness is, the quality that would distinguish God from a superscientist who could create universes, raise the dead, travel in time, and so on. Perhaps belief in imaginary gods serves, or in our history has served, purposes that promote survival and breeding, perhaps not.

That's what reason says.

The same instincts that developed religion, developed science. They both have the same ultimate goal, and they both follow a very similar process.

No, they don't follow a very similar process. Scientific method applied to religion has proved consistently destructive, and the churches don't go near it when it comes to themselves. Otherwise there'd be religious institutions studying how miracles are done, and departments of the armed services preparing against supernatural attack. They don't even take their own stories seriously.

The only real difference is that science limits itself to the realm of physical interaction, and practices falsification. This may make it somewhat more accurate, but unfortunately it's also frustratingly narrow in scope.

It's the discipline that deals with reality. It's as wide as reality in scope.

Which is why science cannot replace philosophy, art, and religion.

The impact of science on all of those is large and ongoing. With philosophy, arguably some of the trade is two-way. Perhaps science has an aesthetic sense, like the quest for a Grand Unified Theory of Everything. But what, specifically, do you say science takes from religion?

 

[blü 2]

You cannot assume that something is true in order to prove that it's true - it's still an assumption, question-begging.

X is true
Therefore X is true

What have I proven here? Absolutely nothing.

That's not what I do. The justification for my assumptions is that they work. Thus ─ Let's assume X is true and see if we can get consistent results. If we don't, we can backtrack.

So far so good.

And you should know that already, since you share my assumptions. Or at least two of them ─ I assume you assume reason is a valid tool. Let me know if that's wrong.

 

[blü 2]

Now you are simply contradicting yourself.

Really? Pinpoint the contradiction for me, please.

 

[Curious George]

Really? Pinpoint the contradiction for me, please.

That you would be able to ascertain whether something is a potato while insisting others could not.

 

[blü 2]

That you would be able to ascertain whether something is a potato while insisting others could not.

I'm the one who knows he has no idea what a real god is. You're the one who's running the real God line here. If there's a real God then until someone can bring us a video or better still invite [him] into the lab for a checkup, you and I have no idea what we might be talking about. Nothing therefore stops God from being a potato, or indistinguishable from a potato ─ or being anything else or being indistinguishable from anything else.

Why? Because no one has a coherent concept of a God with objective existence, no meaningful description that we could use to make a positive identification of [him] if we found [him]. And the obvious explanation for that is that God is imaginary/conceptual, with no real counterpart, no real referent for that concept.

 

[izzy88]

That's not what I do. The justification for my assumptions is that they work. Thus ─ Let's assume X is true and see if we can get consistent results. If we don't, we can backtrack.

So far so good.

And you should know that already, since you share my assumptions. Or at least two of them ─ I assume you assume reason is a valid tool. Let me know if that's wrong.

I'm sorry, but as I said I've already covered everything you're trying to argue in the long reply I wrote to you - the one that you ignored the bulk of. You don't get to dismiss someone's refutation of your position and then simply continue asserting that your position is correct; you can either respond to what I said, or we can end the conversation here. I'm not going to continue taking the time to write responses to someone who's going to ignore anything that conflicts with their preconceived notions.

 

[blü 2]

I'm sorry, but as I said I've already covered everything you're trying to argue in the long reply I wrote to you - the one that you ignored the bulk of.

Perhaps it would help if next time, you cut to the chase. I don't always have time to read War and Peace again.

You don't get to dismiss someone's refutation of your position and then simply continue asserting that your position is correct

Do you have that definition of a real God handy such that if we find a real candidate we can tell it's God or not?

Do you have a definition of 'godness', the quality a real God would have and a real superscientist would not?

If you do, and they pass scrutiny, that will refute my suggestion that the concept of a real God is incoherent.

If you don't, then it will remain unrefuted.

 

[izzy88]

Perhaps it would help if next time, you cut to the chase. I don't always have time to read War and Peace again.

A ridiculous excuse for someone who clearly spends hours a day on this forum already, when reading my full comment wouldn't take more than a few minutes.

Do you have that definition of a real God handy such that if we find a real candidate we can tell it's God or not?

Do you have a definition of 'godness', the quality a real God would have and a real superscientist would not?

If you do, and they pass scrutiny, that will refute my suggestion that the concept of a real God is incoherent.

If you don't, then it will remain unrefuted.

It's borderline childish that you're still demanding I play by your rules, when I've already explained why the entire game you're playing is nonsense.

If you decide you want to take your fingers out of your ears and engage in an actual discussion, let me know. Otherwise, it's clear we're done here.

All the best.

 

[blü 2]

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.

I explained why your statement is wrong in my earlier post'

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.

I make no such claim. I say that things exist external to the self independently of my concept of them; and that I have some concepts that have a referent with objective existence eg 'this chair' and some that don't eg 'a chair'. I point out that the concept 'God' has no objective referent. It doesn't have one because God does not exist in reality, only as a concept, or something imagined, in a brain.

In truth, this concept you have of an "objective world" is - indeed - just a concept in your mind.

You take its existence seriously enough to post here, and you believe that your senses can inform you about it, and you think, as I do, that they in fact do.

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.

You experience objective reality all the time, by touch, by the tension in your muscles due to gravity, to the dentist's drill that fixes your teeth, to the sight of the labels on the bottles, and which one says Romanée Conti, and which one says H2O2. That is, you do not act as you say, and you do not believe as you say.

No, our experience of existence takes place entirely in our minds.

And our bodies. Your heart and your gut operate largely independently of the mind, for example. Your reflexes are triggered before the nerve signals get anywhere near your consciousness. And so on.

The world in which we exist cannot accurately be called "objective reality" - rather, it's something we might call "Being."

Again, you're saying one thing and acting out another.

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.

No argument. It was true back then that the earth was flat and at the center of creation; and now it's not true.

We can say that the ancient people who viewed the sky as a dome were "wrong"

They weren't wrong. Back then it was true. Only later was it untrue, but the new truth is retrospective, and like the old one, not absolute.

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.

As I said, I assume that a world exists external to me and I assume my senses are capable of informing me of it, and I assume reason is a valid tool. I then proceed on the basis of those assumptions unless and until something happens to demonstrate that the assumption is wrong. No such something has come my way.

And since you share those assumptions, as your posting here demonstrates and as your presenting your arguments in reasoned form also demonstrates, I take it no such something has come your way either.

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."

We can safely say it's useful. It may be real, like my keyboard, or it may be conceptual, like justice, but they're both useful for the purpose you mention.

What "God" (capital 'G') actually is, as a concept, is essentially the foundation of Being.

What objective qualities does a "foundation of Being" have?

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.

So, you say, even if our shared assumption is correct that a world exists external to the self and our senses can inform us about it, we will not find God in that world.

Since that was the starting point of this thread, I simply confirm my agreement with that part of what you say.

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.

. Bear in mind that I have no idea what a real God is, and you think God is a concept with no objective counterpart, so God is not the creator of any real universe, simply the ones in folklore.

But according to you, nothing exists outside the universe;

Reality is the world external to the self. It extends as far as physics can take it, and it can be hypothesized / imagined to extend further if that's consistent with what we know at this time.

the physical/material world is all that can be said to actually exist.

Yes indeed. Our thoughts, memories, appetites, instincts, all arise physically from our brainstates, chemistry, biochemistry, bioelectricity and all.

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;

I'm not simply pointing out that God does not have objective existence, I'm pointing out that believers in God don't think [he] has objective existence either, and get along happily with no concept of a real God.

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.

No, that's not my argument. It looks more like this:
1a. I assume that a world exists external to the self ('objective reality', often 'reality' for short), that the senses are capable of informing us of this world, and that reason is a valid tool.
1b. I have never met anyone who acts like they don't share, at the least, the first two of these assumptions.
2. From our point of view, things may exist in two ways ─ first as entities and processes that exist in reality, and second as concepts (let that term include things imagined) which have no real referent. (The case of concepts of real things is not relevant here.)
3a. There is no necessity at any point to hypothesize that the universe was created by one or more sentient beings. If the universe is part of a metaverse, the same applies.
3b. No evidence suggests that one or more sentient beings were involved, nor is there any credible hypothesis as to the origins, nature or purposes of such beings nor the methods it or they might have employed.
4. Therefore we have no reason to think that any such being or beings exists in reality.

I hope that's helpful.

 

[atanu]

I make no such claim. I say that things exist external to the self independently of my concept of them; and that I have some concepts that have a referent with objective existence eg 'this chair' and some that don't eg 'a chair'. I point out that the concept 'God' has no objective referent. It doesn't have one because God does not exist in reality, only as a concept, or something imagined, in a brain......

Reality is the world external to the self. It extends as far as physics can take it, and it can be hypothesized / imagined to extend further if that's consistent with what we know at this time.

That is actually a joke, dear friend @blü 2 .

According to materialism, what we experience in our lives every day is not the world as such, but a brain-constructed ‘copy’ of the world. The outside, ‘real world’ of materialism is supposedly an amorphous, colourless, odourless, soundless, tasteless dance of abstract electromagnetic fields devoid of all qualities of experience. It’s more akin to a mathematical equation than to anything real. If all that exists is the matter, and if consciousness is somehow produced by the suitable arrangement of matter represented by the brain, then it must be the case that all subjective perception resides in the brain; and in the brain only.

Therefore, asper materialistic worldview, our whole life – all reality we can ever know directly – is but an internal ‘copy’ of the ‘real reality.’ Materialism, thus, presupposes an abstract and unprovable ‘external’ universe next to the known, concrete, and undeniable universe of direct experience. Matter outside the mind is actually not an empirical observation. It is rather an explanatory model to support a realism framework. Furthermore, physicalism cannot account how as the mechanical movements of particles that are colourless, tasteless etc., are accompanied by inner life? That the mental states are correlated with brain states does not necessarily imply that brain states cause mind states. Assuming so is a known fallacy in science and philosophy called the ‘cum hoc ergo propter hoc’ fallacy. the voices one hears coming out of an analogue radio receiver correlate very tightly with the electromagnetic oscillations in the radio’s circuitry, but that does not mean that the radio circuitry synthesizes the voices.

...

Therefore your presumption of 'realism' is baseless and wrong from the very beginning.

 

[Curious George]

I'm the one who knows he has no idea what a real god is. You're the one who's running the real God line here. If there's a real God then until someone can bring us a video or better still invite [him] into the lab for a checkup, you and I have no idea what we might be talking about. Nothing therefore stops God from being a potato, or indistinguishable from a potato ─ or being anything else or being indistinguishable from anything else.

Not sure that i can walk you through this but i will try:

If you see a what appears to be a potato you have suggested that you could discern such. No god needed here just you and you apparent potato. Yet how do you know it is a potato have you looked at it, examined it? Still it could be something of which you were previously unaware that simply appears to be a potato. This is your special pleading: you are allowing yourself inductive reasoning in order to make categorical judgements, yet seem absolutely baffled when i suggested doing the same. I would urge you to take time a reflect on this. Consider, perhaps your bias was interfering with your understanding earlier since you now have employed the very same reasoning i explained earlier.

Why? Because no one has a coherent concept of a God with objective existence, no meaningful description that we could use to make a positive identification of [him] if we found [him]. And the obvious explanation for that is that God is imaginary/conceptual, with no real counterpart, no real referent for that concept.

Except i have provided you with precisely a coherent definition and you have chosen to deny reason and push some brand of solipsism suggesting i can never know that what appears to be a potato is just that.

 

[blü 2]

If you see a what appears to be a potato you have suggested that you could discern such.

Only if it were an ordinary example. But as I said, you're not looking for a potato, you're looking for God AND you don't know what God looks like SO you don't know whether God looks like a potato or is a potato.

So you can't just look at your spud and say, That's a spud. Because for all you know it could be God.

But how to tell? This great gap where essential descriptions should be.

Except i have provided you with precisely a coherent definition and you have chosen to deny reason and push some brand of solipsism suggesting i can never know that what appears to be a potato is just that.

But when I asked you to use it to determine whether the potato was God or not, the best you could do was say it looks like a potato so I'll assume it is.

That won't do.

 

[blü 2]

Therefore, as per materialistic worldview, our whole life – all reality we can ever know directly – is but an internal ‘copy’ of the ‘real reality.’ Materialism, thus, presupposes an abstract and unprovable ‘external’ universe next to the known, concrete, and undeniable universe of direct experience.

I accept that it's unprovable ─ I address that by my assumption that it exists.

Matter outside the mind is actually not an empirical observation. It is rather an explanatory model to support a realism framework. Furthermore, physicalism cannot account how as the mechanical movements of particles that are colourless, tasteless etc., are accompanied by inner life?

Do you mean qualia? If so, I've never seen what the fuss was about. If you remember Arnie's Terminator I, in one or two scenes we had a through-his-eyes shot in which the data about his environment streamed in a printed list down the LHS of the screen. Well, instead of having to read that this wavelength is in the green band, this is hot, this is Mozart, this is frying bacon, we've evolved sensation, which is much more efficient; and is also linked to perceptual memory, so it denotes, connotes, warns or warms, all at once.

That the mental states are correlated with brain states does not necessarily imply that brain states cause mind states.

Doesn't it? I'd say there was nothing else it could be, What do you have in mind other than the argument from incredulity? Magic?

 

[PureX]

One reason why no statement can be absolute is that we can propose alternative explanations of our existence that negate all our understandings. Examples are strict solipsism, or that we don't live, we dream, or that we and reality are dreams in the mind of a superbeing, or elements in a superbeing's Tron game, and so on. Because they're unfalsifiable they're not subject to science, but for the same reason they're still part of the philosophy of existence.

And of course the earth is not a true sphere but an oblate sphere.

That didn't answer my question, though, did it.

I think our scientific progress is sufficient to encourage the idea that we can and do make progress, that our explorations and reasoned conclusions are not in vain, that they're often enough steps forward.

But that progress is only in the area of physical manipulation. Science helps us to get better at manipulating our circumstances to our own advantage. (Yet even in this, the "better" is a debatable assessment, as we seem to create as many problems for ourselves as we 'solve'.)

I also think we're capable of moral progress.

No thanks to science. Which is determinedly amoral.

But you don't even know what a real god is, such that if we found a candidate we could tell whether it were God or not. You don't know what godness is, the quality that would distinguish God from a superscientist who could create universes, raise the dead, travel in time, and so on. Perhaps belief in imaginary gods serves, or in our history has served, purposes that promote survival and breeding, perhaps not.

Clearly, it has and still does serve humanity in it's need to confront the mystery of it's own being, individually and collectively. A need that is fundamental, and of great importance to a huge number of humans.

Scientific method applied to religion has proved consistently destructive,...

And logically pointless. Proving religious mythology to be mythological is a colossal waste of time and energy. Anyone with a working brain already knows that it is, and anyone who doesn't has already determined not to be swayed by any proof. The whole 'debate' (debacle) is an exercise in human stupidity and egotism.

It's the discipline that deals with reality. It's as wide as reality in scope.

That's simply untrue. You're letting your materialist bias blind you.

 

[Curious George]

Only if it were an ordinary example. But as I said, you're not looking for a potato, you're looking for God AND you don't know what God looks like SO you don't know whether God looks like a potato or is a potato.

So you can't just look at your spud and say, That's a spud. Because for all you know it could be God.

I disagree; in fact i think it would be unreasonable to think, without reason, that what appears to be a potato is anything more.

But how to tell? This great gap where essential descriptions should be.
But when I asked you to use it to determine whether the potato was God or not, the best you could do was say it looks like a potato so I'll assume it is.

That won't do.

Yes, if the only reasons i have point to x being y, then it is reasonable to assume that x is y. If y is categorically not z, then the only reasons i have point to x being categorically not z.

 

[blü 2]

That's simply untrue. You're letting your materialist bias blind you.

What bias should I adopt instead, would you say?

 

[PureX]

What bias should I adopt instead, would you say?

I can only observe, not direct. Sorry.