If God exists, how can we reliably know anything about him?

[serp777]

Ok now a bit thin skinned we are. All I said was wow wierd people outside religion want to engage in some debate on a topic that even the vast majority in religion don't even understAnd. I mean really look at the question in this thread does the question even understand the topic? " if experience exists, how can we reliably know anything about experience". Seems like its extremely confused about the topic!!

No, I just pointed out the amusing irony of your post. It doesn't bother me at all.

I mean really look at the question in this thread does the question even understand the topic?

Your sentence isn't really coherent or logically written. Questions don't have the capability of understanding, so why are you asking: "does the question even understand the topic"? I would also recommend punctuation to make your sentence more readable. Furthermore, instead of claiming a lack of understanding or asserting my alleged confusion, why don't you actually demonstrate it? Finally, my post is perfectly consistent. It essentially asks how, based on 5 points, we can actually know anything about the mind or parameters of God.

 

[serp777]

I know my true Self, and that is all I said, its up to you to experience your own inner Self, I cannot and no one else can do it for you, if you are happy knowing what you believe about god, then stay there, that is your level.

I know my true Self,

How do you know you know your true self? You know you know your true self because you know? That's circular logic sir.

 

[serp777]

No, I believe in non-dual (God and creation are not-two) pantheism and Advaita philosophy. I believe strongly that my beliefs make the most sense without claiming proof.

There is a position in-between proof and just believing whatever you want to believe in, and it involves rational analysis of the evidence and argumentation from all sides. I am comfortable with my analysis and beliefs as being the most reasonable theory I know of without claiming proof.

Well unfortunately you said "I can't demonstrate anything. I can't even prove to myself that I am not the only conscious being in existence", which is a fair and reasonable statement. But now you go on to saying you believe in non dual pantheism, which is such a huge quantum philosophical leap . Its just not consistent with what you said earlier. It would be like if I said: "Well I don't know if my sprained ankle can handle walking yet", and then moments later claiming: "I know I can run a full marathon since I have evidence!". You couldn't possible involve a rational analysis when you can't even demonstrate that hard solipsism is false considering non dual pantheism is completely inconsistent with hard solipsism. Perhaps you can explain this rather large inconsistency?

 

[Quintessence]

It seems that its probably impossible to know anything about the mind of God. Personal revelations, right off the bat, are no good because you don't have a basis to assume that:

How did you determine that other people don't have the basis to "assume" things? It sounds to me like you are expecting people to distrust themselves. That strikes me as a very unhealthy path that only those who lack self-confidence would walk. If you trust yourself to make your own decisions, and if those decisions serve you reasonably well in your life path, is that not sufficient?

You're going to say no. Of course you are going to say no. You can nitpick and naysay any position ad nauseum, and that is what you will do, I wager. The rest of us will move past such analysis paralysis and get on with living our lives (which may or may not include developing relationships with the gods, as this is a matter of personal preference).

 

[George-ananda]

Well unfortunately you said "I can't demonstrate anything. I can't even prove to myself that I am not the only conscious being in existence", which is a fair and reasonable statement. But now you go on to saying you believe in non dual pantheism, which is such a huge quantum philosophical leap . Its just not consistent with what you said earlier. It would be like if I said: "Well I don't know if my sprained ankle can handle walking yet", and then moments later claiming: "I know I can run a full marathon since I have evidence!". You couldn't possible involve a rational analysis when you can't even demonstrate that hard solipsism is false considering non dual pantheism is completely inconsistent with hard solipsism. Perhaps you can explain this rather large inconsistency?

What was wrong with the explanation I provided?

There is a position in-between proof and just believing whatever you want to believe in, and it involves rational analysis of the evidence and argumentation from all sides.

Human beliefs don't often come with scientific proof. I accept that.

 

[rusra02]

I believe it is God's "will is that all sorts of people should be saved and come to an accurate knowledge of truth." (1 Timothy 2:4) He has revealed this truth in the Bible, the world's runaway best seller, and available to virtually everyone in their native language. IMO, it is often a person's arrogance, haughtiness, and bias that prevents them from coming to know God.

 

[Nakosis]

It seems that its probably impossible to know anything about the mind of God. Personal revelations, right off the bat, are no good because you don't have a basis to assume that:

1. Your experience was real and was from God/wasn't a hallucination.

2. You interpreted your experience correctly.

3. It wasn't the result of an alternative explanation such as aliens running an experiment on you.

4. God wasn't lying to you or trying to deceive you.

5. Its not a trick from the devil.

Agree, this is why I'm an atheist. It's not that I want to be an atheist. I've tried to accept a number of different religions and have had a number of religious experiences. Experiences that I think would justify continued belief. What seemed to be the same is a personal willingness to accept the truth of each religion. I came to suspect that my mind was able to provide at least the perception of the experience I was looking for.

Whatever I wanted to believe, my mind was able to create the experience I was looking for. Don't need aliens running some experiment on you. Once I realized this, I had to stop looking for the "Truth" because the mind can take this desire and create an experience to support what you want to believe. I had to stop wanting to believe. As I look at it, to have any chance of knowing the truth about something, you can't have a belief about it because our mind, subconsciously, will find ways to support that belief.

 

[psychoslice]

How do you know you know your true self? You know you know your true self because you know? That's circular logic sir.

Its not really knowing through the mind, its a knowing beyond the mind, its having the experience of Oneness, this is called Awakening, or Enlightenment. It cannot be put into words or conceptualized, so I usually keep it to myself, so what I share is my own experience, and all I say to others is to have your own inner experience. Its the same as Paul's experience on the road to Damascus, he conceptualized he's own experience and hence his writings, there is no right or wrong way, there is only your way, as long as it brings you to Oneness with the Source, or God.

 

[David T]

No, I just pointed out the amusing irony of your post. It doesn't bother me at all.



Your sentence isn't really coherent or logically written. Questions don't have the capability of understanding, so why are you asking: "does the question even understand the topic"? I would also recommend punctuation to make your sentence more readable. Furthermore, instead of claiming a lack of understanding or asserting my alleged confusion, why don't you actually demonstrate it? Finally, my post is perfectly consistent. It essentially asks how, based on 5 points, we can actually know anything about the mind or parameters of God.

Ken, Questions are framed on understanding. I could talk astrology i suppose in this case. . Your question has extreme built in reductive bias in context to hyper reductive bias in religion. It makes assumptions in that framework and it actually makes sense in that framework.
Example: Two astrologers are arguing about next week's horoscope which astrologer is correct? They both agree that reductionism is foundational which they hilaeously call "Reasoning". the only difference is they just disagree on the details is all. You dont understand the topic God but that's normal reductionism. What you do understAnd is reductionism in secular drag that it. You are arguing with who you are, over there in religious drag and thats all they are reductionists in religious drag. Sharp group you all are and the sharp "reasoning". going on Ken.

 

[Bird123]

We have thousands of examples of people designing cars and producing them. We don't determine if things are created because they are complex, we determine if things are created based on previous examples and evidence with respect to nature. You wouldn't say a snowflake is designed, nor would you say a solar system is designed, so what reason do you have to assume the universe is designed? we have no other universes to compare it to and we don't know what an undesigned universe would look like compared to a designed universe. The car analogy is a category error.

The system that generated the snowflake was designed. The system that generated the solar system was designed.

A statistical scientist calculated that the universe was too young to have formed out of random chance. He did figure out that if the universe ran like a giant computer program that there would be enough time. Add the evidence of fractals along with quantum entanglement and a new picture should start to form in your mind. There is genius behind it all.

Study what happens. Figure out why. See where that leads you. Discover about the system and one will acquire knowledge about it's Creator.

 

[Falvlun]

SO what other methods could we use? It couldnt be science since science has no way of investigating God's mind as far as we can tell.

I'm holding out for science or some empirical method. Sure, currently, there's not an objective way to locate God, but that doesn't preclude future break-throughs.

I also assume that this would rely on God. If God doesn't want to be found, then he won't be. If he does, then he has the ability to make his existence known in a measurable fashion.

God, should he exists, created my mind and knows what it would require for me to believe. I am not interested in playing hide and seek. So I assume a God that has not revealed himself is not interested in me knowing him either. Or simply doesn't exist.

 

[Losin]

This is tricky, but i think that apophatic approach is valid since we can show what God is not, and in some cases we do not have much things left. Like God is not a body, so he must be spirit etc.

 

[serp777]

How did you determine that other people don't have the basis to "assume" things? It sounds to me like you are expecting people to distrust themselves. That strikes me as a very unhealthy path that only those who lack self-confidence would walk. If you trust yourself to make your own decisions, and if those decisions serve you reasonably well in your life path, is that not sufficient?

You're going to say no. Of course you are going to say no. You can nitpick and naysay any position ad nauseum, and that is what you will do, I wager. The rest of us will move past such analysis paralysis and get on with living our lives (which may or may not include developing relationships with the gods, as this is a matter of personal preference).

How did you determine that other people don't have the basis to "assume" things? It sounds to me like you are expecting people to distrust themselves.

Yes, I am expecting people to distrust certain unlikely events. Should people trust all of their hallucinations, or trust all of their feelings, or trust everything they experience? You can trust yourself on mundane and common things, but once something supernatural or beyond this world has occurred, its time to evaluate your experience with skepticism and doubt. It seems incredibly unhealthy to just believe in everything you think and experience. Should you believe that optical illusions are representative of reality, for example, or should you distrust yourself and the image your brain is producing? Yes, obviously you should. Or if people take mushrooms should they accept everything they experience as the truth? We know humans are often extremely fallible and subject to deception as well as misinterpretation, so being somewhat critical of yourself is important. I have been wrong before obviously, so questioning my assumptions and beliefs and facts is important to self improvement. There's a healthy balance between doubting your experiences and accepting them/

You're going to say no. Of course you are going to say no. You can nitpick and naysay any position ad nauseum, and that is what you will do, I wager.

oh wow, so predictable; you predicted that I would disagree with you after you made a post in complete contradiction with mine. amazing! What's next? Do you predict the sun will rise tomorrow? of course making obvious predictions isn't an argument. Furthermore, you cannot nitpick and naysay any position effectively, for example mine, which is that its very unlikely to prove that you can know the mind of God.

The rest of us will move past such analysis paralysis and get on with living our lives (which may or may not include developing relationships with the gods, as this is a matter of personal preference).

And they are free to do as they choose. I was never suggesting that you be consumed with self doubt on every single thing in your life; that's simply a massive strawman argument on your part.

 

[serp777]

The system that generated the snowflake was designed. The system that generated the solar system was designed.

A statistical scientist calculated that the universe was too young to have formed out of random chance. He did figure out that if the universe ran like a giant computer program that there would be enough time. Add the evidence of fractals along with quantum entanglement and a new picture should start to form in your mind. There is genius behind it all.

Study what happens. Figure out why. See where that leads you. Discover about the system and one will acquire knowledge about it's Creator.

The system that generated the snowflake was designed

Not only is there no evidence for that, but that's besides the point--the point was that just because there's complexity doesn't mean there's design.

A statistical scientist calculated that the universe was too young to have formed out of random chance.

Calculating the probability of our universe is currently impossible to do accurately. For example, how would you disprove an infinite multiverse? If there's an infinite multiverse is completely certain, in fact our universe would occur an infinite number of times with an infinite number of variations. Any kind of probability calculations would need to take that into account. Furthermore, nobody is necesserily saying its random change. It could be a form of cosmic natural selection in black hole universes. That's an actualy theory, but you can't prove or disprove it.

 

[serp777]

Ken, Questions are framed on understanding. I could talk astrology i suppose in this case. . Your question has extreme built in reductive bias in context to hyper reductive bias in religion. It makes assumptions in that framework and it actually makes sense in that framework.
Example: Two astrologers are arguing about next week's horoscope which astrologer is correct? They both agree that reductionism is foundational which they hilaeously call "Reasoning". the only difference is they just disagree on the details is all. You dont understand the topic God but that's normal reductionism. What you do understAnd is reductionism in secular drag that it. You are arguing with who you are, over there in religious drag and thats all they are reductionists in religious drag. Sharp group you all are and the sharp "reasoning". going on Ken.

It makes assumptions in that framework and it actually makes sense in that framework.

False. My "framework" actually rejects assumptions and claims. I haven't made any definitive claims. I've given a lot of possibilities to sow the seeds of doubt. Pointing out that there are other explanations that haven't been disproven is hardly an assumption.

What you do understAnd is reductionism in secular drag that it. You are arguing with who you are, over there in religious drag and thats all they are reductionists in religious drag. Sharp group you all are and the sharp "reasoning". going on Ken

This is mostly meaningless. First you need to define reductionism because there are several different schools of reductionism like methodoligical reductionism, and also demonstrate how what i'm saying is consistent with reductionism. I haven't made the claim, for example, that everything can be explained by material--i'm willing to consider it but I don't know if its true or not.

Furthermore, I'm not arguing with who I am, whatever that means. I am expressing doubt in certain propositions that you can know the mind of God. I have not absorbed a burden of proof anywhere because I haven't been making claims about the nature of God--i've simply been including the different possibilities that make it inherently unlikely that you'd be able to determine if an experience of God was real, accurate and not deceptive.

Also who is Ken? Do you play with ken dolls or something?

 

[serp777]

What was wrong with the explanation I provided?

There is a position in-between proof and just believing whatever you want to believe in, and it involves rational analysis of the evidence and argumentation from all sides.

Human beliefs don't often come with scientific proof. I accept that.

One of the first steps of a rational analysis to justify non dual pantheism would be to include the assumption, among MANY MANY others things, that you're not the only sentient being in the universe. If you're just going to assume that, then your presuppositions are already on unjustified grounds. You can make anything rationally justifiable as long as you setup the correct assumptions that lead to an outcome. For instance if I assume that I am the only sentient being, then it is logically impossible for non dual pantheism to be true--a totally valid rational argument based on an incredibly shaky presupposition. In other words your rational argument is unsound and therefore invalid becaue you already admitted to the unsoundness of it by saying that you can't even demonstrate to yourself that hard solipsism is false. Furthermore, I'm sure you've made assumptions about the validity of the experiences you've had and the assumptions that you're not in the matrix, and the assumptions that yahweh isn't playing a trick on you. All of these possibilities undermine the foundation, or the soundness of your rational analysis. I also doubt you have scientific evidence that could be demonstrated. if you did have evidence that non dual pantheism was true, then that would mean that you have evidence against hard solipsism--but you already admitted that you can't disprove hard solipsism in any sense.

 

[Quintessence]

Yes, I am expecting people to distrust certain unlikely events. Should people trust all of their hallucinations, or trust all of their feelings, or trust everything they experience?

A follow-up question for you - what percentage of our day-to-day experiences would you say we should trust, on average? Fifty per-cent? Seventy? Ninety-nine?

What distinguishes the small percent of "don't trust this" from the rest? What are your criteria? Do you expect others' criteria to be the same? Should everyone have the same criteria as you? Why or why not?

 

[idav]

It seems that its probably impossible to know anything about the mind of God. Personal revelations, right off the bat, are no good because you don't have a basis to assume that:

1. Your experience was real and was from God/wasn't a hallucination.

2. You interpreted your experience correctly.

3. It wasn't the result of an alternative explanation such as aliens running an experiment on you.

4. God wasn't lying to you or trying to deceive you.

5. Its not a trick from the devil.

Obviously there are probably other problems that have to do with the fallibility of humans. So we really can't use revelation to find anything about God. The same list could also apply to revelations in a holy books except that new problems arise because we have to make assumptions about the mental health and truthfulness of those writers or the fact that it isn't just an exaggerated legend.

SO what other methods could we use? It couldnt be science since science has no way of investigating God's mind as far as we can tell. It couldn't be from the nature of the universe since we have no way of knowing how or what God would convey through the nature of the universe. It couldn't be through our moral conscience because human moral conscience is probably just a by product of human evolution and can often be extremely erratic or questionable.

Ultimately, we're left with no way we can reliably know anything about God, which makes me wonder how anyone can think that they reasonably know anything in God's mind. Therefore, I see no reason why everyone isn't just an agnostic, or at the very least an agnostic deist who thinks God exists but doesn't know his mind or his role in the world.

The nature of the world and universe should indicate something about the source of all those things. We can easily get glimpses this way just the same way as art is a glimpse into the world of an artist.

 

[George-ananda]

One of the first steps of a rational analysis to justify non dual pantheism would be to include the assumption, among MANY MANY others things, that you're not the only sentient being in the universe. If you're just going to assume that, then your presuppositions are already on unjustified grounds. You can make anything rationally justifiable as long as you setup the correct assumptions that lead to an outcome. For instance if I assume that I am the only sentient being, then it is logically impossible for non dual pantheism to be true--a totally valid rational argument based on an incredibly shaky presupposition. In other words your rational argument is unsound and therefore invalid becaue you already admitted to the unsoundness of it by saying that you can't even demonstrate to yourself that hard solipsism is false. Furthermore, I'm sure you've made assumptions about the validity of the experiences you've had and the assumptions that you're not in the matrix, and the assumptions that yahweh isn't playing a trick on you. All of these possibilities undermine the foundation, or the soundness of your rational analysis. I also doubt you have scientific evidence that could be demonstrated. if you did have evidence that non dual pantheism was true, then that would mean that you have evidence against hard solipsism--but you already admitted that you can't disprove hard solipsism in any sense.

I actually understand all the above but I am not even attempting a logical argument that Advaita (non-dual pantheism) is the one correct belief. My beliefs are based on the experiences and teachings of those who I have come to believe have reached the deepest into the nature of reality. Can I prove logically that my beliefs are the correct ones? No.

 

[serp777]

I actually understand all the above but I am not even attempting a logical argument that Advaita (non-dual pantheism) is the one correct belief. My beliefs are based on the experiences and teachings of those who I have come to believe have reached the deepest into the nature of reality. Can I prove logically that my beliefs are the correct ones? No.

Sorry, but how could you have a rational analysis without including logical arguments? Furthermore, this kind of goes back to the initial point of doubting your experiences and questioning not only the validity of those experiences but also whether you have interpreted them correctly and considering if other explanations are equally viable. The topic was centered around how you would personally know whether you could know that these experiences were legitimate, or as I specifically framed it, how you could reliably know the mind of God based on personal experiences. For instance, how did you determine that an alien psychological experiment to see what you'll believe is less likely than Advaita being the one correct belief. Both of these would produce exactly the same experiences you've had and convince you of the supposed truth.