How can God be.....

What CAN be known about God?
Well clear reason lets us deduce some things.
For example: we know that God either exists or doesn’t.
No human has ever proved, to the satisfaction of all, that there is a God, but nobody has ever proved that there is NO God either…
I thought it was obvious from the opening words of my OP (“Many religious thinkers claim”) that I was criticizing what others claim about God…

The universe is evidence of God, but it’s not proof.
This thing we call “God” seems to be beyond proof, beyond disproof…

I doubt it. What a gross waste of power there would be. The proof is in the pudding, as they say.
My intuition tells me that the human psyche needs the thought of an omnipotent God to make up for our own sense of powerlessness in such a chaotic world.

My own intuition leads me to believe the same thing…

Notice that I did not reply to the OP. I replied when you asked “why can’t an omnipotent being defy the rules of logic?”. And my reply was in the nature of “Think about it. What kind of answer are you going to get? Why do you bother to even ask?”.

There are few proofs possible in life and they exist only in very controlled and limited circumstances. Even these do not “satisfy” all. For example, mathematical proofs are meaningless to non-mathematicians.

The majority of life is not based on proof, certainty and the agreement of all people. I don’t know why people insist on such things when they are not applicable. :confused:

One has to accept the limitations of human existence.

Justified how? What exactly are you arguing?

What evidence that is observable exists? Yes, I’m arguing that faith is bullshit also. Aren’t we arguing for the same thing here?

The origin of God and religion is that of social control so it is not mere coincidence that it is very ambiguous to prove or disprove as this was all very intentionally done by ancient priests thousands of years ago. The very best kind of social propaganda and control is the kind that you cannot prove or disprove as it intentionally confuses the minds of people keeping them in constant disarray leading them to be easily directed. Because it cannot be proved or disproved so easily it makes it difficult for a minority of would be rebels to fight against it with a faithful devoted majority outnumbering them. With authority zealous faith is a weapon to be utilized and is used often.

Just because I don’t know something (and cannot) know, does not mean that nobody knows. It’s easy to show … I cannot know what my neighbor was doing last night at 8 o’clock but he knows. A killer knows that he killed someone even when nobody else knows. Etc.

I alluded to some in this thread. You can look up arguments for the existence of God on the internet. :smiley:
Design arguments for example are based on evidence …
iep.utm.edu/design/

No. You are arguing that there is no evidence, only faith. I’m arguing that there is evidence and faith is not sufficient or required.

Therefore, we come to different conclusions about the existence of God.

Are you arguing for a world of solipsism? The arguments for the existence of God are very weak and misleading which is why I don’t embrace them.

So, you’re arguing from the position as a theist against my position of atheism, I didn’t think you were a theist. How very interesting.

There are things which are known to some people and not others. That’s not solipsism. That’s just a fact.

The nature of knowledge is an interesting topic to investigate.

Okay. Others disagree. One can discuss what is a strong and weak argument or what is adequate or sufficient.

Well, I might be arguing a position that I don’t personally hold … for fun or to exercise myself or to expand my awareness and understanding. Or not.

I know … people at ILP just could not wrap their heads around such an idea. :evilfun:

Correlation is not causation.

Dogs use their tails for communication. But that doesn’t mean that such is why they grew them.

In trying to explain to some families how to avoid dying out, or how to escape slavery, methods to be highly respected are distributed to the enslaved or dying out. And the excuse for respected them is; “That’s just the way it is” and “Because this is what works”. They ask "Who are we having faith in? Who is our guide and lead? “I am that I am”, they are told. “Worship no one other than Me, and you will not die out and they can never enslave you again.

Today when slavery of a different type is being instilled, you might notice the strong push against any idea that there is a Reality (aka “Everything is relative”, “Everything is mind”, “multiple realities”, "multiple parallel universes, “No one can really know”, “faith is for the foolish”, “There is no Truth”, “No one can know anything for certain”, “Only scientists know (the new priesthood)”, and “There is no evidence at all to have faith in any God, damn you!”.

Guess what? Atheists are actually fighting for the return of enslavement by the Pharaohs via the method of “blame-shifting” and “scapegoating”; “Those evil God worshipers are just trying to enslave you” when in fact, as is very often the case, the reverse is more true. Who you think to be the “good guys on your side”, are in fact, the “bad guys setting you up”. But that’s not to say that the effort to enslave is only one sided. First chance given, former slaves do everything they can to enslave everyone else.

“Make it look good, safe, innocent, and wise… until it is too late to choose otherwise.”

What was the solution to their riddle?

One word;
[list]Truth (meaning “Reality”, “Your Real Situation”)[/list:u]

“The Truth will set you free” (as long as you maintain faith in it). Respect/worship nothing else.

How do we know Truth?

…not easily. “Pray to” (humbly seek of) Reality. Meditate on it. Contemplate it. But Nullius en verba.

I suspect many theists–strengthened in this idea by their faith–hold that given the omnipotence and omniscience of God, it’s reasonable to assume that our view of His inability or reluctance or refusal to interfere in pain and suffering is analogous to the parent who allows his child to suffer the consequences of her poor choices; sometimes that’s the only way the child learns. When my very stubborn middle daughter was a toddler she reached one day for a pot of hot water on the stove. I scolded and instructed her to not touch. Lower lip came out and glaring angrily at me, the little hand slowly reached for the pot. Again, the command to stop, again the pout and tentative reaching. I let her reach. A few tears and a Band-Aid resulted. She never touched a hot stove again.

If on the scale of human understanding there exist reasons why good can come from allowing suffering in love, then there seems reason through the eyes of faith to assume that the same principle applies on the scale wherein an omnipotent and omniscient God allows human suffering–and that suffering’s end will attain a greater good than its initial “cost”.

You completely miss the point of omnipotence, omnicreation and omnibenevolence… the hot stove would never burn the child.

That’s one rebuttal. Another is that the kid would not be tempted to touch a hot stove.

Phyllo wrote:

What is wrong with asking that question, Phyllo?

I do not think that an omnipotent being could even necessarily defy the rules of logic.

An all-powerful being is NOT necessarily one who is omniscient (unless that being WAS proven to be both).
You cannot get blood out of stone so an all-powerful being who is not also omnicient cannot, cognitively speaking, defy the rules of logic since that being is not capable of logic in the first place.

Wouldn’t it take an all-knowing being to deliberately defy the rules of logic? All knowing suggests that there would be a knowable reason for deliberately defying logic - that the outcome would be better served in defying logic.

Did that make any sense? :-k

And this was determined empirically how?

How can That which underpins everything knowable be reduced to an idea or belief? Where and how does an observer find evidence for Wholeness?

This whole business of trying to ideate and explain away the very human sense of the sacred is dehumanizing and insane.

This is a very complex issue and I shall address it superficially.

First it is proven the idea of God is merely a mental thought and do not has any empirical element. Thus it is an impossibility within an empirical-rational reality.

There are empirical evidences of how the idea of God arose psychologically which is empirically based.

  1. There are loads of evidences how the idea of God arise and is experienced and felt via mental illnesses, brain damage, electrical stimulations, drugs, chemical, hallucinogens, stress and various reasons that trigger the mind to identify with a God.

  2. Many non-theistic spiritualities has dealt with the same inherent unavoidable existential crisis on a non-theistic and psychological basis from many thousands of years ago, e.g. Buddhism and other non-theistic spiritualities.

  3. Some theistic approaches use drugs and hallucinogen [note 1 above] to enhance their experiences of a God.

There are more complex explanation but the above two are sufficient empirical basis to justify how the idea of God [illusory and impossible] arise due to empirically psychological factors.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPo6-gvuwJ4[/youtube]

Maybe we should feel sorry for Prismatic and his idol, Kant.

First off, you are shifting the ground of the argument. You made a statement about how the idea of God came about. That is a specific claim which does not hinge on the existence of God or not. Second, empirical means experienced, based on experience. To many people there is an empirical element to God. Now I understand that you mean, that these experiences have not been put together in scientific research types of protocols, where observations, that is experiences) can be controlled and repeated. But to keep misusing the word ‘empirical’ is not helpful.

No. That is unscientific. You cannot say that everything that has not SO FAR been demonstrated to exist via scientific research does not exist. Science is a process and obviously there are things that exist that have not yet been confirmed by those processes.

People also experience things and phenomena which are real when they have those conditions and experiences. You are arguing that since some people experience X when they are mentally ill, X is not real. That is clearly a poor argument.

That is not evidence, empirical or deductive that the statement you made about how the idea of God arose is correct.

For example, let’s say God is not real, it is merely an idea. The idea could have arisen for many reasons other than the one you posited. Perhaps it is natural - if something in error - to anthropomorphize. The idea may simply have arisen from that tendency, seen in children, to see agency and personality where modern science says there is none. You are making a specific claim about how and idea arose. That is based on certain fears. You offer no evidence that this is case. And note, you main argments are deductive, no empirical.

And again, there are implicit fallacies which would be more obvious if you made the argument. Some theistic approaches use drugs, therefore all experiences of God are like drug hallucinations…and how this supports your thesis I do not know even though it is already fallacious.

If you want to argue that empirical research does not support the existence of God, fine. But then this criterion should hold for your own statements. You then get to act like you know the origins of a belief, unless you two can ground this on empirical evidence. Even from atheistic positions there are very strong deductive arguments that would argue that beliefs in God come from processes other than the one you stated in the previous post. And note, the implicit claim is that you can face the fears that the theists cannot without God.

Note I qualified the following;

i.e. I have not dealt with the issue in dept in my responses here.

I have proven here;
viewtopic.php?f=5&t=193474
it is impossible for the idea of God [thought only] to fit into the scheme of the empirical.
This meant the idea of God cannot be proven at all within the empirical set.
As I had stated the idea is not exactly but equivalent to the claim a square-circle exists which a contradiction and an impossibility.

Many people have empirical experiences which they as driven by psychology attribute to an empirical God.

Yes, it is not meant to be scientific.
To claim something to be scientific one must start with a reasonable hypothesis established by reason [i.e. thinking only]. Then when this hypothesis is proven within the Scientific Method then it qualifies at a scientific knowledge [as qualified].
Now, the idea of God [in thought only] cannot even be raised as a hypothesis for empirical processes. It is moot and a non-starter for any empirical consideration.

Whatever SO FAR has not been demonstrated to exist via scientific research MUST have inherent empirical elements that is empirically possible. What empirical elements does your God has? a brain, head, beard, body or penis?

Yes, people under those conditions experiences various things but these things must be classified into two main categories, i.e.
[list]1. Has empirical elements and empirically possible
2. Do not has inherent empirical elements, thus empirically impossible.

If someone has an experience of a common tiger stalking them, the existence of such a tiger is empirically possible. If someone experience a God as the bearded man in the sky [has empirical elements], such a God is empirically possible but the odds of such a real God is very slim until we have the empirical evidence to prove it.

BUT, the ultimate default God as I had argued in the thread [linked above] MUST be [an imperative] an ontological God, i.e. an absolutely perfect being than which no greater exists.
Such a God is only an idea [philosophical] and is never empirical thus not empirically possible.

I have given the above examples as a clue that it is more likely for God to be an illusion than real.

My main argument is deductive that the idea of God cannot be empirical thus not empirically possible. It is not an empirical argument.
Btw, even if you rely on empirical arguments [the most credible humanity has], according to Hume, empirical proofs via Science based on induction are not absolute credible. Note Hume’s Problem of Induction. Popper asserted Scientific Theories are at best polished conjectures, i.e. they started as a conjecture [thesis].
In the case of the idea of God [thought only] cannot even qualify as a scientific conjecture to as a start for scientific verification.

As I had qualified above, this is merely a supporting clue. They have some credibility when considered with my whole argument.

My approach is two prongs, i.e.

  1. Logically, it is impossible for the idea of God [which is exclusively based on crude reasons] to be empirically possible at all.
  2. The origins of theism is psychological.

Basically my basis in (1) is sufficient to prove the idea of God is illusory and impossible within an empirical-rational reality.

My second argument is an reinforcement to the first. As I had stated this empirical basis is quite complex and I have given various clues [tip of an iceberg] to why the belief in a God is psychological. I have tons of materials below the tip of this iceberg to support my point but I do not intend to go into the details here.