To: Mentat Monkey
From: Phenomenal Graffiti
As God is naturally imperceptible, it is impossible to “prove” whether or not God exists. But this is a far cry from saying: “Since you can’t prove God does not exist, then God exists.” No one (at least I’m not) jumping to ontologically committed grounds because one cannot prove a negative.
I simply claim (again and again) that based on the imperceptibility of God, just as it is conceptually wrong-headed for a theist to INSIST that there DEFINITELY IS a God, it is just as wrong-headed for the atheist to DEFINITELY INSIST that there isn’t…because the imperceptibility of God leaves the question open.(Matt from Laguna Beach in another philosophy room stated this excellently)
Ultimately, we determine what exists and what does not exist (primarily) by the use of the five senses. Why do we say that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist, because we do not discern the tooth fairy with the five senses apart from representations of the entity in books, on television, or by word of mouth. We do not see the tooth fairy independently and spatiotemporally manifested apart from two-dimensional or verbal mediums.
This is what I call: “demonstrativism”(my term) for the fact that we determine what exists and what does not primarily by the senses. If a real physical entity is too small to be perceived by the senses, such as atoms or electromagnetic phenomena, we depend on CAUSAL effects of such phenomena on macroscopic (and sensorily perceivable) machines and instruments.
In short, anything that is not demonstrativist by nature is either deservingly imaginary( in the conceivability of beings that would be sensorily perceivable were they ever to show up, like Santa Claus, Superman, and the Tooth Fairy)-or perhaps logically possible, such as God under the Disembodiment Criterion.
As for consciousness, my view is that belief that God is consciousness without a brain and body is ultimately a CAUSED view, as beliefs are indeed caused by the brain. This does not rule out the logical and metaphysical(the way things might be in the world for all we know) possibility that a God is causing belief and nonbelief in the same God, or that all other “gods” in other religions for all we know are only metaphorical of the one God.
But this is only my view,
Jay M. Brewer
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com