How reasonable is monotheism, even hypothetically?

[Nakosis]

Eh. I wish I could agree.

Well in the past, numbers equaled safety. Not complete safety but the group should look out for the safety of it's own members.

In democracy, you need numbers to push forward whatever you you think the law should be.

As much as I like being a loner, and I really, really do, I have to acknowledge there's a limit to what I can accomplish alone.

Unless I can find a common purpose with my neighbor there's not much to motivate us to work together. I see religion as one way to create that common purpose.

Religion can be abused, Nationalism can be abused. Unfortunately if something can be abused usually someone will.

Some religious ideas are good, like making it an obligation to help the poor.

 

[Mister Silver]

Some religious ideas are good, like making it an obligation to help the poor.

I have beef with this because have you seen the houses in which church leaders live, the expensive cars they drive? I believe a religious leader should follow the example of Jesus if he was to truly help the poor. Was Jesus rich, did Jesus live in a mansion?

The problem is that religious people lost sight of the message Jesus taught.

Oh, they help the poor. That does not excuse them from hoarding wealth like a typical Republican.

 

[Nakosis]

I have beef with this because have you seen the houses in which church leaders live, the expensive cars they drive? I believe a religious leader should follow the example of Jesus if he was to truly help the poor. Was Jesus rich, did Jesus live in a mansion?

The problem is that religious people lost sight of the message Jesus taught.

Oh, they help the poor. That does not excuse them from hoarding wealth like a typical Republican.

I imagine greed is like an addition. Once you get a taste of it, it's hard to get clean again.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

So you're against family unity? Everyone out for themselves? Going it along is probably more dangerous.

My mother was raised to believe family was everything and that everyone should be together always. A personal triumph for her is shopping herself without needing her kids to drive her. She is completely codependent and I will never have true freedom until she dies of old age, which is a long time in our family. "Family unity" can easily turn into "pathological attachment issues".

 

[LukeS]

You tell me. @LukeS . I take it that you disagree?

Because, really, I do not see anything beyond amorphous disapproval in your post. There does not seem to be an actual disagreement or argument there.

Sorry about that I got little by way of attention, so I cant focus too neatly on threads.

The arguments are OK, so far as its context of assumptions go, but it reminds me of animal intelligence tests in a lab. The natural environment is the animals true home, where it adapted and learned its ways. The spirit of philosophy and scientism is to "lift out" one belief from its natural home, and analyse it using the instruction manual of analytic thought. Ok, in the lab your findings may be sound, but I am worried about the overall ethics and the generalisability of the conclusions. OTOH I love academic theology.

 

[Curious George]

1).
3)I'm saying humans created the concept of God for a reason and therefore will just create something else to replace it for the same reason.

This does not follow. Your argument should read that humans created god for a reason and therefore it is possible, or it is likely, that humans will just create something else to replace it.

In other words it is not necessary but it is possible. There is also the question regarding whether the reason still exists. Just because a reason to believe god exists is present does not mean humans without the concept of god would still have a reason to create god or a construct similar.

I am not saying they wouldn't, that there is no reason for god or no reason to create a god, I am only commenting on the logic.

 

[LuisDantas]

Sorry about that I got little by way of attention, so I cant focus too neatly on threads.

The arguments are OK, so far as its context of assumptions go, but it reminds me of animal intelligence tests in a lab. The natural environment is the animals true home, where it adapted and learned its ways. The spirit of philosophy and scientism is to "lift out" one belief from its natural home, and analyse it using the instruction manual of analytic thought. Ok, in the lab your findings may be sound, but I am worried about the overall ethics and the generalisability of the conclusions. OTOH I love academic theology.

It still sounds amorphous. If I may, it feels like you don't want to consider the implications of monotheism - or at least of the proselitist variety, which is what I really feel to be unhealthy - too much.

 

[Ponder This]

And that is now always, or even all that often, a worthy goal.

At the very least, we must acknowledge that a price is paid.

I don't think the goals of unity are necessarily worthy as people can unite to do unworthy things. But the utility and benefit to society is evident. In addition to striving for utility, people should also strive for worthy goals.

 

[Sanzbir]

somehow can only be correctly perceived as being one (as opposed to any other number, including none)?

Well logic tells us it cannot be more than one, at the very least.

Well first and most important to note: monotheists and polytheists typically have differing definitions of what the word "god" should mean. Most disagreement seems to boil down to those differing definitions.

But if we use the typical monotheist definition of what constitutes a god, because we are talking about the reasonability of monotheism, we can see that polytheism, or multiple gods using the monotheist definition of what a "god" is, is completely impossible.

This is because inherent in the definition of a "god" to a typical monotheist, a god is all-powerful by nature. A divine being with less than all-powerful power may exist, in the monotheist framework, but it does not fit the monotheist's definition of a "god" because it is not all-powerful (see: angels, saints, demigods).

Now imagine we have two All-Powerful Gods: God A and God B. God A wishes to do something simple, that any all-powerful being should be able to do. God A wishes to move a rock from point A from point B. God B similarly wants to do something that should be simple for an all-powerful being to do: God B wishes to prevent the same rock from being moved.

So does the rock move, or does it not?? If the rock moves, then God A is all-powerful, but God B is not. If the rock does not move, God B is all-powerful but God A is not. In both situations there is something a god cannot do, and one god is shown to be more powerful. When two all-powerful beings have differing desires: one wants something to happen, one does not want something to happen, then, logically, a thing cannot both happen and not happen, so one being will be proven to be more powerful than the other.

So there cannot be two all-powerful beings, for if two beings that can each "do anything", and each want to do something that the other one wishes to contradict, then one being cannot logically be said to be able to "do anything".

I'm sure someone might be tempted to be a Devil's advocate to this above thought experiment and logic by stating there might be two all-powerful gods, which never contradict one another. However if the gods cannot contradict one another, they cannot be said to be all powerful. And if the gods are all of one mind, then one could say there is just one god, with many bodies.

So, using the monotheist definition of a "god", there are only two possible numbers for the question "How many gods are there??" It either must be One or it must be Zero. Any more than one "all-powerful" being cannot, logically, exist. One or Zero. No other number of all-powerful beings is possible.

It seems to me that there is a core mistake in attempting to have a rigid, well-defined conception of deity and then building a doctrine that relies on the accuracy of that conception.

For one thing, that is not very useful. Human beings are simply not likely to hold very similar conceptions of deity - or as I personally prefer to call it, of the sacred - and insisting that we nevertheless should act as if we did will only lead to pointless anxiety, fear, even moral dishonesty or at least the temptation to fall into it.

I fail to see what the problem of different people holding different conceptions of a being is. Certainly, a Republican, a Democrat, and a Libertarian all have different conceptions of Donald Trump, but the diversity in conceptions of Trump does not change the fact that there does exist an objectively real Donald Trump who is independent of those conceptions.

And that leads to a far greater problem than simple inaccuracy of doctrine. Insistence on the claim of universal truth and significance of such a minor and deeply personal matter as conceptions of deity compromises the very worth of any doctrine. All too quickly it becomes too busy in defending itself from the fragility of its own premises and the unavoidable consequences, and the validity of the teachings of even its most skilled, best meaning adherents is put to waste.

There can be no truly accurate doctrine. A vessel cannot contain a quantity greater than itself. Thus, a finite mind cannot comprehend an infinite being, nor can a database store every single fact about the universe itself because no database could be big enough to store all that data (something that the people who like to posit the question "What if the world is just a simulation??" often overlook).

I don't see how the fact that absolute knowledge of things is impossible is a problem, though. It's a limitation, but man can still obtain knowledge in degrees, knowledge progressing towards the truth, even if the absolute truth is forever out of reach.

We all should be at peace with the simple contemplation that it is not for humans to act as wardens of specific, rigid, limited understandings of the sacred. Such an effort is both arrogant and demeaning, regardless of whatever some speculative truth about the nature of the sacred might be.

Surely, if even reasonably average human beings can easily be skilled enough to have various aspects according to the people that they interact with and the situations that they find themselves in, then there should be no doubt that a true deity (if such exists) can hardly be limited in its manifestations in ways that would be unreasonable even to humans?

Okay, sure. I definitely agree that such a being, if exists, is beyond total comprehension, eschews rigid definition, and is not limited in manifestation, but that does not change the fact that basic logic caps the potential number of all-powerful entities at one.

 

[Thief]

In fact, unity can be quite dangerous. It sets an "Us v.s Them" mentality.

but that's not unity

 

[LuisDantas]

@Sanzbir

I think you are taking an undemonstrated premise there, one that I have in fact directly challenged right there at the OP.

An all-powerful entity, even a hypothetical one, can't be conceivably constrained by our expectations of numerical conformance.

By a matter of logical coherence, it would pretty much have to be as many or as few as it pleased, even in contradictory ways at a given moment.

Even keyrings have that power, after all.

 

[Nakosis]

My mother was raised to believe family was everything and that everyone should be together always. A personal triumph for her is shopping herself without needing her kids to drive her. She is completely codependent and I will never have true freedom until she dies of old age, which is a long time in our family. "Family unity" can easily turn into "pathological attachment issues".

Ok, so you're against unity.

My wife is the same way as your mother about her kids and grandkids. She complains about it but at the same time it makes her happy so I leave her be. Some folks just don't want that kind of freedom.

 

[LuisDantas]

but that's not unity

For all practical purposes, it might as well be.

We humans are simply not very likely to respect the distinction.

 

[Thief]

For all practical purposes, it might as well be.

We humans are simply not very likely to respect the distinction.

if we stand divided.....it is not unity

 

[Sanzbir]

@Sanzbir

I think you are taking an undemonstrated premise there, one that I have in fact directly challenged right there at the OP.

An all-powerful entity, even a hypothetical one, can't be conceivably constrained by our expectations of numerical conformance.

By a matter of logical coherence, it would pretty much have to be as many or as few as it pleased, even in contradictory ways at a given moment.

Even keyrings have that power, after all.

My conclusion that there cannot be more than one all-powerful entity is built on pure logic.

Here's my axioms:
Variable X can either be True or False. Variable X represents a state that Being Y would prefer to be True, and Being Z would prefer to be False.
If Being Y is all-powerful it will make X True
If Being Z is all-powerful it will make X False

THEREFORE: Being Y and Being Z cannot both be all-powerful, or Being Y does not exist, or Being Z does not exist, or there is no variable X in which Y and Z can disagree (in which case both cannot be all-powerful)

This shows two beings that desire two opposing states cannot both be simultaneously all-powerful within the frame of logic.

So if logic exists then there can only be one being that is all-powerful. Monotheism and Atheism are the only two possibilities, using (again) the monotheist's conception of "god" and the laws of basic logic.

Now.

It occurs to me that you might be suggesting that a being such as a god is not constrained by logic. If you are doing so, then this might be true, but then we must abandon any hope of trying to use logic to discuss this, because this entity is beyond logic itself. It can exist in a contradictory state. It could create a variable that is true and false at the same time. In which case, we can't even begin to approach it with logic... not with my logic, and not with your logic. It is above and beyond contradiction itself, if this is the case.

So if you are not assuming that the sacred is beyond logic, then my logic holds up, and atheism and monotheism are the only logically possible states.

And if you are assuming that the sacred is beyond logic, then your "serious logical contradiction in the attempt to give it all three atributes (sic)" is completely invalid because the sacred is beyond logic, and therefore can exist in a contradictory state. Sure it may not make logical sense, but if you're saying the sacred is beyond the logical sense that makes my argument work, then it's also beyond the logical sense behind your post and the problems you raised!!

If the sacred is beyond logic, you might as well delete this thread. Your post is invalid because you're trying to discuss an illogical being free from logic... with logic. That just doesn't follow. We'll reach no conclusions without logic.

 

[LuisDantas]

So, you expect the ultimate exception to be subject to your axioms?

If the sacred is beyond logic, you might as well delete this thread. Your post is invalid because you're trying to discuss an illogical being free from logic... with logic. That just doesn't follow. We'll reach no conclusions without logic.

Logically, the sacred should not be confused with god-concepts, and particularly with monotheistic conceptions of same.

It is really that simple.

 

[Sanzbir]

So, you expect the ultimate exception to be subject to your axioms?

Well, I mean, you clearly do, so I don't know why you find it odd I might as well. Because the act of your logical argumentation in the original post does not make sense unless you believe "the ultimate conception" conforms to your axioms.

Ultimately I accept that there may exist a being beyond logic itself, but I don't see the point in pondering that idea too much, as we, as humans, cannot even hope to understand an entity that does not conform to the rules of logic.

So I will assume everything within my sphere of experience does conform to the rules of logic, as I have not experienced anything outside of logic, and I as a human being could not possibly comprehend something existing outside of those rules of logic anyway.

Logically, the sacred should not be confused with god-concepts, and particularly with monotheistic conceptions of same.

It is really that simple.

I really, simply do not understand how you can assert that an entity does not conform to the rules of logic when I am attempting to apply logical reasoning, but then you can go on to say things like "Logically, the sacred should not ect. ect."

Either logic does not apply for both of us, or logic applies for both of us.

Pick one. You can either acknowledge my points under the framework of logic, or you can stop trying to use logic as the basis of your own points. Or you can just ignore me. But you cannot, if you hope to have any consistency, insist logic does not apply to my points but somehow you can magically apply logic to yours.

It's really that simple.

(Oh, and you're the one that equated "the sacred" with god-concepts. I was merely trying to adopt the labels you chose for the concept. Your quote: "conceptions of deity - or as I personally prefer to call it, of the sacred". You literally equated "the sacred" with "conceptions of deity" my friend )

 

[YAW7911]

When I was a Christian I believed there was merit in monotheism in and of itself, there is merit in "oneness" because it unifies and it simplifies, something I've learned Muslims value very highly as well since joining RF. There can essentially only be one truth about reality, whatever you believe; in very blunt and crude terms atheists are right or theists are right (whatever flavour of theist you happen to be). Both can't be true, only one can be; a bit like the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy's "answer to life, the universe, and everything" (one answer which turned out to be 42!). So, at that time in my life I'd have said there is merit in oneness, we look for the true answer about reality, which can only be one. Polytheism did not make sense to me then because it begs the question "who made the gods?", you end up with an infinite regress unless there is a big daddy of all the gods, one who unifies everything.

Since then my thoughts have changed, I can see my thinking was heavily influenced by my cultural background, where monotheism has been king for many centuries. There is no reason why polytheism is less likely than theism, if the divine exists you have to concede that a pantheist view or a polytheistic view hold equal merit. Christianity itself describes god as a triune god, a "community" though one god at the same time. The best parallel to the trinity I have heard is how we have conversations with ourselves inside our minds, but it is still just one mind with more than one voice going on inside.

Whether you believe in one god or more, you eventually run into the philosophical problems you describe. The fact is god(s) asks more questions than they answer about reality. Every theist eventually has to retreat into the "mystery and hiddenness" of god(s) because you are talking about the invisible, the supernatural realm that cannot be explored (theists may disagree with that, but if it were really true we wouldn't have so many different religions would we?)

What if we say that everything is a sibgradient of something greater and that variation becomes less the more we know, until we realize at least all we know is part of one thing.

 

[The Holy Bottom Burp]

What if we say that everything is a sibgradient of something greater and that variation becomes less the more we know, until we realize at least all we know is part of one thing.

Not sure what you mean mate, ("sibgradient"?) , I prefer plain language. I have noticed the propensity of some members of the forum to engage in poetic riddles rather than say what they mean, perhaps to appear "super spiritual"? There is no shame in plain language, perhaps you can rephrase?

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Ok, so you're against unity.

I think diversity can BE our unity.