God is an Impossibility

But I would like to know the REAL one. …not the greater one…but the one which is hidden.
Do you see THAT?

I know that your response was in response to my post ~~ Wouldn’t the atheist…~~ but that tells me NOTHING, James. :blush: I was raised a Catholic.
This is why I think that being an agnostic is a far better feast than nibbling on a belief or wearing old hats. :angry:

Until one is able to demonstrate that a God, the God, my God does in fact exist – and that it is therefore entirely rational to state this – how would we go about determining/demonstrating that He is perfect?

Whether what he argues is true or what you argue is false is still just a conflict between what you both believe “in your head” is true/false, based it seems [in the absence of an extant empirical God], on the manner in which you define the meaning of the words you use in the arguments themselves.

And isn’t that “arbitrary” in the absence of a God able to close the gap here between your words and our world once and for all?

And how is your assessment that his logic is flawed based on any observed evidence? Evidence that does in fact establish the most rational [or the only rational] manner in which to construe God?

And then we’ll have James interject here with his “definitional logic” pertaining to the Real God. The Real Christian God?

Yes, but it is one thing to discuss a “reasonable concept of rationality” in a world of words, and another thing altogether to discuss it in a world where the existence of a God, the God has been established such that we can compare the arguments about God with the real thing.

Okay, we live in a world awash in natural disasters – great floods, earthquakes, super volcanoes, tornadoes, devastating droughts, viruses, epidemics, crashing asteroids, gamma ray bursts, CMEs, extinction events.

Now, if someone were to argue that “God is loving, just and merciful”, based on the your own “observed evidence, logic and proven methods of reasoning” would you say that this is a rational conclusion?

Note to others:

Go to this thread: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=193464

Note that I had continued my exchange with Phyllo regarding Peggy and Boris. He is the one who abandoned it.

I don’t worship anyone. I merely note the extraordinary technological and engineering accomplishments that we take for granted here and now; accomplishments that would have been virtually unthinkable back when, say, Christ is alleged to have been born.

Physicists must know something rather objective about the world we live in, right?

And while you dispute many aspects of “modern physics” [re RM/AO and the Real God], you have not yet been able to demonstrate this much beyond your tiny presence here on the internet. In other words, when will you deconstruct the conspiracy they have mounted against you, such that you will begin to pop up on, say, Nova or the Science Channel?

Or [as no doubt you imagine] when will they come to you?

Instead…

Again, until you are actually able to reconfigure your premises/assumptions/definitional logic into a demonstrable model of the universe that we live in, I suspect you will remain but a tiny presence on the internet.

And that’s before we get to the manner in which you integrate your TOE regarding the either/or world into the world of is/ought.

Well, my own argument here does revolve around psychology. Remember this:

[b]1] For one reason or another [rooted largely in dasein], you are taught or come into contact with [through your upbringing, a friend, a book, an experience etc.] a worldview, a philosophy of life.

2] Over time, you become convinced that this perspective expresses and encompasses the most rational and objective truth. This truth then becomes increasingly more vital, more essential to you as a foundation, a justification, a celebration of all that is moral as opposed to immoral, rational as opposed to irrational.

3] Eventually, for some, they begin to bump into others who feel the same way; they may even begin to actively seek out folks similarly inclined to view the world in a particular way.

4] Some begin to share this philosophy with family, friends, colleagues, associates, Internet denizens; increasingly it becomes more and more a part of their life. It becomes, in other words, more intertwined in their personal relationships with others…it begins to bind them emotionally and psychologically.

5] As yet more time passes, they start to feel increasingly compelled not only to share their Truth with others but, in turn, to vigorously defend it against any and all detractors as well.

6] For some, it can reach the point where they are no longer able to realistically construe an argument that disputes their own as merely a difference of opinion; they see it instead as, for all intents and purposes, an attack on their intellectual integrity…on their very Self.

7] Finally, a stage is reached [again for some] where the original philosophical quest for truth, for wisdom has become so profoundly integrated into their self-identity [professionally, socially, psychologically, emotionally] defending it has less and less to do with philosophy at all. And certainly less and less to do with “logic”.[/b]

And while this pertains to the “psychology of objectivism” in the is/ought world, it is probably true in turn regarding physicists assessments of the either/or world. Especially regarding…

1] the world of the very, very small
2] the world of the very, very large
3] the world that brings them both together seamlessly so as to explain Existence itself

And the parts we call “human reality”.

On the contrary, my “reference for being rational” is no less an existential contraption than I suspect that yours is. It’s just that with regard to the either/or world, it seems that “modern physics” has established an astounding accumulation of seeming facts about the world we live in.

My dilemma on the other hand pertains far more to the is/ought world. And, really, what do physicists [modern or otherwise] have to tell us definitively [even today] about that?

Until, pertaining to God, an understanding of rational is able to seamlessly integrate words and worlds – definitions and meaning with hard empirical fact/evidence – showing just cause remains as elusive [or even illusory] as ever.

That’s the wherewithal that piques my own interest. If such an integrated argument does manage to convince me, then my dilemma is dissolved. I would no longer believe in an essentially absurd and meaningless world that ends for all eternity in oblivion.

Polemics aside, I’m rooting for Phyllo and James here!!

And yet I recognize that even if I were to be convinced by any particular argument, there may well be an even better one out there — one that [once again] yanks God out from under me.

I will die. Then I will know. Or “I” will never know anything ever again.

That’s the profoundest mystery of all, of course. Why something instead of nothing? Why this something and not another? And given that something certainly seems to exist, God is clearly one explanation for it. But then we are back to the child asking, “Well, who created God?”

Do the theists here among us really have anything approaching a definitive answer for her?

Theists, atheists, deists, agnostics etc., all seem to be in the same boat here.

How can they not acknowledge the gap between what they think they know about all of this here and now and all that would need to be known in order to finally encompass/grasp Existence and Human Reality once and for all.

That’s why my own argument here tends toward the conjecture that God is more likely to be a manifestation of human psychology: the need for comfort and consolation given the “brute facticity” of what may well be an essentially absurd and meaningless world that ends for each of us one by one in oblivion.

I have to ask: Exactly who is “they”?? :confused:

Not that such is the grand concern you seem to think that it is, but in fact, I have demonstrated. But as it as been pointed out, there is nothing that can be demonstrated to everyone, especially those who can’t even find their way out of their self-imposed mental dilemma. Most of the things that you believe of science have only been demonstrated to a very few. And a great deal of what is demonstrated, is never revealed to you.

Same here, I would like to know the REAL one as well, but where is the evidence or even a thesis for its possibility?
Ever since the idea of God emerged into human consciousness from animism, polytheism to monotheism, no evidence has been produced to prove a REAL god exists. Why?

It is because it is so obvious that theists are unable prove God exists as REAL that they push the argument to one that is based on reason and subsequently more ‘sophisticated’ reason [cosmological argument, etc. ] culminating in an ontological God which is an impossibility.

A human-liked aliens in a planet billions of light years away is an empirical possibility, albeit very very low possibility. But God which must ultimately be an absolute perfect God is not even empirically possible, it is an absolute impossibility [as proven].

The idea of a God emerged out of crude primal reason as compelled by an inherent existential crisis and it is with finer reason itself that the God-idea is destroyed as an impossibility to be empirically real.

The alternative argument I have provided why people believe in a God is due and driven by subliminal psychological factors, e.g. an existential crisis, angst, and the likes is a more tenable and manageable thing. This is not a speculation but the various Eastern spiritualities has already instituted and been practicing such a non-theistic ideology since thousands of years ago.

The above presumed God exists somewhere and God is real.

The idea of God exists as real has always been merely a hypothesis.
Since the idea of God emerged into human consciousness [from animism, polytheism to monotheism], there has been no proofs that God is real.

It is so obvious that theists are unable prove God exists as REAL that they push the argument to one that is based on reason and subsequently more ‘sophisticated’ reason [cosmological argument, etc. ] culminating in an ontological God - an absolutely perfect God - which is an impossibility.

It is not rational to state the above because the hypothesis [God exists as real and ontologically] is not tenable at all in the first place. As such the question of the idea of a God as perfect [absolutely] is a non-starter and moot.
Therefore we do not have to ensure God exists as real [empirically] so that we can assess whether God is perfect or not.

Again, being a die hard Theist , another, different way of presenting an opinion will be attempted.

What god is, pertains to cognitive constructions of ideas formed by ritual, based on myth or Reversely, ritual based myth.

There is substance to ritual and myth, and they pertain to both, rational and so called irrational” content. Now reel foreward to modernism and beyond. The superconscious is developing out of superconscious compilation of memory.

It is beyond discussion, that given a survivable time for humanity, super memory-consciousness will eclipse and overcome human memory by many many fold of power.

This will become a repository, not of matter, since by that time all matter may be reducible to pure energy, based on a temporal universal imminence, which would preclude questions about the creation of matter mute and irrelevant to the underlying question of inquiring of what ‘existence is comprised of’. Therefore nothing ever is created or destroyed.

If aGod can be understood as a quantum memory whose set comprises another, then another, approaching small possible sets, then this super repository can curve space time and return to the beginning, which instantly becomes imminently analogous, so near identical with this curve backward, that the perfect ontological perimeter is created, for ever.

Now if this is conceivable, then the beginning, where the word describes the beginning of creation, of belief, may have transferred to primitive man by a conduit, which can only be understood, by higher levels of revelation, then was available back then, which really is still only now, except we understand it as a transcendence.

As per Hume there cannot be a conduit from OUGHT to IS.
Your end result is transcendental but it is not related to any empirical possibility, thus what is transcendentally possible in your case is never empirically possible.

Yes, there is substance to rituals and myths. Note for example the Myth of the Buddha Story, the substance is collectively the old man, the sick man, the corpse [mortality] which are all existential crisis materials and the monk representing a non-theistic solution to soothe the related existential angst.

The above existential crisis is generic to all human beings but unfortunately theists were compelled ignorantly & outwardly toward theism [God is an impossibility] and thus theism’s baggage of negatives and evils.

To resolves the terrible evils and violence by SOME theists we need to trace the ultimate root causes, i.e. the psychological existential crisis and deal with it effectively.

By conduit, I was not referring to a deferral against Hume’s ideas, and there are some in Philosophy who do not poin to the problem caused by what is\or should be. The conduit is not iffy like that, it is, rather, the underlying forces generated by physics and metaphysics.

The mathematical basis of physics , when it predisposes metaphysics, which is grappling with the empirical logic’s incompleteness, in terms of a reductive, or referential logical system, is not yet clarified do to many other variables which have not yet been referred to a satisfactory understanding which can unite all the partial functional understanding of what is at stake.

Empirical specialists struggle for pre eminently to position themselves into more advantages and superior positions, and use hypothetical paradigmns to beat each other to those positions.

What a mistake that is remains to be seen, and to categorize modern partial functions as if they were simply attachable disassociated partial circuitry is using mistaken hypothesis.

It is not to say that computer analogies of that high caliber are never to be discovered in the future, but until then , a viable truth machine does not yet exist to give an ultimate verdict on the infallibility of inferential, rather then referential logic.

So on those grounds, I may sustain my opinion, which incidentally gives an analogous interpretation of ideas purporting a regression into myth , for these purposes.

In other words, it seems to me, You are advocating a total uselessness of metaphysical considerations so that to buttress up a total and absolute rationale for science.

What I am saying is, even if, science can get there, to that place where a total vindication is possible, and it point point to a final and successful impartiality between various factions of knowledge, even then, You may be at a disadvantage to prioritize one from the other, vis. Physics, over metaphysics. The reason for that, is, at that point causation will break down, and all temporilization as well.

But the question then, as is now should be posed, at what point will science loose the courage to ask, if, the end point to reach such an effort will result in a God filled eternity, or the coming of the reign of the Beast.

As some of the talk of demonology in various forums here seems to put a damper on discussion of other than a strictly archaic explanations, consensus among the well versed Gnostics seem to go the other way, and go at least to the point Nietzche arrived- beyond the problem.

Well, for starters, those physicists you think that I worship as priests.

Again, this is what I call a classic “general description” argument. The argument consist entirely of words defending other words. The extent to which they are applicable to the world we live in is never, ever addressed until someone is willing to go up into the stratosphere with you and duel over definitions.

No, somehow or other you are going to have to come up with a way in which to bring RM/AO and the Real God onto a platform in which those who own and operate science today have no choice but to either falsify it or to embrace it in turn.

Until then [as with me and dasein] you will flail away at a teeny, tiny audience of folks with virtually no chance that your own “intellectual contraption” sees the light of day. To a broader audience as it were.

My whole argument though is that, while it is always fascinating to speculate about these things, the existence of God would seem to fall into that yawning gap between what any particular individuals think they know [or profess to believe] about God, and all that would need to be known in order to know this.

In the interim, what we are doing here then is grappling with the gap between what folks think they know [or profess to believe] about the existence of God, and that which they are actually able to demonstrate [empirically] that all rational men and women are obligated to believe in turn.

Otherwise it all devolves [re James and his ilk] into dueling definitions and deductions.

The tricky thing here though is that there may well be theists out there who have in fact proven that God is real. But what counts [here] is that this person’s proof becomes known to us.

One thing would seem certain though. If such a person is out there, he or she has chosen to keep this proof to him or herself? Why? Because if such proof ever did get out [on youtube or facebook for example] that’s all any of us would be talking about 24/7.

Also, there may be billions of other planets out there in our staggeringly vast universe with civilizations advanced enough to grapple with the very ontological/teleological explanation for Existence itself. It seems foolish then to confine the discussion merely to Earth.

And that’s before we get to God [perfect or not] and the multiverse.

These are wishful thinking and speculations. What counts is; bring the evidence or empirical-rational arguments, else no point speculating at all.

God created the Universe with Earth therein.
Therefore the God that is spoken of anywhere in the Universe must be the same God all its believers speak of. Thus a discussion of God within Earth is sufficient to understand the idea of God and to confirm God exists is so easy, just bring the direct evidence.

If you are referring to human-liked higher intelligence existing somewhere in the Universe. Human-liked is empirical and empirically possible, but we know the possibility of such aliens existing is negligible to likely Zero. Thus your proposition related to this has near-zero credibility at present.

Beside why must an all-powerful God hide itself that only 100x time more intelligent being can only know it? It is so simple, just bring the direct evidence.

I have proposed the basis for the emergence of the idea of God is due to psychological factors. It would more easier and viable to research from the psychological perspectives within human [readily available for research] rather than waiting for direct evidence of God and finding evidence of human-liked aliens some billion of light years away. This is crazy.

Besides the non-theistic spiritualities, e.g. from Eastern spiritualities had already embarked on non-theistic approaches to resolve the human issues theistic doctrines are trying to tackle.

In addition, in resolving the same inherent existential crisis, the theistic path is full of ‘potholes’ of negatives, terrible terrors, evil & violence arising from its evil laden elements in their holy texts.

OTOH, non-theistic Eastern spiritualities like Buddhism are fully pacifist without elements leading and inspiring believers to commit terrible evils and violence.

Philosophically and wisely, the rational approach to the existential crisis is more effective than to rely on an impossible-to-be-real-God with its negative & evil baggage.

Probably.

But more to the point [mine] the existence of God is a constellation of experiences, relationships and sources of information/knowledge [embedded in particular historical, cultural and experiential contexts], that have, here and now, there and then, coagulated in minds such that we believed/believe what we did/do about it.

But what is that next to all that would need to be known in order to demonstrate that in fact God does or does not exist.

Just because we are not shown the evidence does not mean that the evidence is not there. Thus we are all “stuck” until it can in fact be demonstrated definitively one way or the other.

Whatever that means.

At best, the No God folks can [in my view] reasonably argue it is incumbent upon the God folks to demonstrate that what they claim does in fact exist does in fact exist. Either that or fall back on faith.

And yet there may well be civilizations on other worlds that conceive of God in ways that have never even occurred to folks here on earth. They may be so much more advanced than we are that their thinking about God may in turn be all that much more sophisticated.

Instead, when I think of God and the universe, the thing that most intrigues me is why He deemed it necessary to make it so staggeringly vast. The more we learn about it the more mind-boggling it gets. Was God behind the laws of nature or must God be in sync with them?

No, “we” don’t know this. You think that you do. But any number of folks who spend their lives thinking about it [astrophysicists for example] speculate that there are almost certainly billions upon billions of planets “out there”. Thus their proposition would seem to carry considerably more weight than yours. They would ask you what empirical evidence do you have to support your claim? And then they would show you theirs: exoplanets.nasa.gov/the-search- … ife-signs/

Again, I am generally in agreement with you here. I just have no illusion that I am any more capable of providing direct evidence for a No God universe. Just that those who do believe this seem more obligated to provide the evidence. Especially given the fact that immortality, salvation and divine justice itself are at stake re the looming shadow that is the abyss.

And Eastern religious narratives are no less confronted with this. There is how we choose to behave on this side of the grave, and what our fate is to be on the other side of it. And how the two are intertwined. Either Western or Eastern religionists address this point or they don’t.

But that is still basically my own interest in God and religion: How ought one to live?

It’s just that, with God, the speculation doesn’t end at the grave.

On the contrary, in the absence of God, rationality quickly devolves into any number of conflicting “humanistic” and “nihilistic” philosophies [and political agendas]. And there is plenty of “negative and evil” baggage about when these titanic entities clash. For example, liberal vs. conservative, capitalist vs. socialist, I vs. we vs. them.

It depends on what type of evidence we are expecting.
If we are expecting evidence of empirical-based things, then we cannot discount its possibility. I can agree there is a possibility of a tea-pot [empirically possible] flying somewhere out there in space billion of light years away. But this probability would be very low.

But if we are referring to God, it is not empirically-based at all. God is a philosophical idea churned out of primal reason and thus is an illusion. Note Kant’s

Based on higher critical philosophical reasoning we can conclude God is an impossibility, thus is no question of evidence for God in the first place.

No matter where the Law of Non-Contradiction and logic will apply.
Other civilization and their entities will share the same Universe and the ultimate absolutely perfect has to be same in substance regardless of how its forms are interpreted.

Why don’t you turn around [like Copernicus] to human_ness and your own self [instead of out there] to understand why humans are thinking of God in the way they do. This way is more manageable than the infinite Universe which in one sense could be an illusion [nothingness in the Buddhist Way].

Note I agreed human-liked aliens [with empirical elements] are empirically possible.

I agree but it is only in the present state that the secular is in quite a mess, but its knowledge base is expanding exponentially.
I am looking into the future with optimism as we have already mapped the full human genome and moving on to map the brain’s circuits plus knowledge is advancing in so many other fields.
With more sophisticated knowledge we will be able to dig deep to understand the human brain in relation to human existences and its problem. This is the basis for my point;

“Philosophically and wisely, the rational approach to the existential crisis is more effective than to rely on an impossible-to-be-real-God with its negative & evil baggage.”

That is easy. You have fabricated an either/or conceptual utopia where by every iota of matter can be classified into one or the other of your prescribed categories. I’m pretty sure that falls into one or another logic fallacies. And OH, gosh I did it too. So let’s look it up: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma

The false dilemma occurs if their is at least one other possibility. And I would claim their is… "WE DON’T “KNOW” (absolutely everything and questionably anything) Which means the notion of an “absolute perfection” can be loosely paraphrased as “the cumulative best GUESS we have”. That sucker ain’t pointing anywhere near “perfection” by these accounts.

I realize if god were perfect, this sort of thinking does follow. What would happen if god isn’t/wasn’t/will-never-be perfect? How does that eliminate said god from being a creator? We humans create shit all the time and man or man that does make us perfect any more then it would make the possibility of a god.

Your argument requires a god to be perfect, my idea of god does not (I would have to presume I know what is absolute, and I honestly can’t intellectually get myself there.) Granted that is not the indoctrinated notion of what religion defines god as. Maybe it is the mechanisms of power and self prescribed authority and theocratic rule that has it wrong.

That entity god is a flipping genius. We humans as a species have never managed any creation that demonstrates such ambiguity. Roughly looking at a really big picture. What we can only imagine as the entire universe was created in such a way to leave that one question floating out there. We were created as a perfection seeking machine. If we can’t find “it” “out there” we make it up. And then if all is going well in god land we “discover” something “new” It’s really been there all along it is nothing new. It is only something new to our awareness. Why didn’t we see it before? The only thing that has changed over time is the population and there are a lot more people that can be aware. New shit is bound to pop up.

My argument can be summarized by two phrases 1) we don’t ‘know’ what we think we do, 2) number one changes.

My argument is the idea of God is inherently driven towards an absolutely perfect God. This is evident in the evolution of the idea of ‘god’ from animism, to polytheism to monotheism then to an ontological God [Islam, St. Anselm], i.e. the an absolutely perfect God.

As you had stated below;

As I had stated the idea of a God inherently has to be an absolutely perfect Being not as something real but the point is the majority humans are compelled psychologically to believe in a made-up God and they made it up to be absolutely perfect.

If ‘your’ god isn’t/wasn’t/will-never-be perfect [absolutely perfect] then your lesser than perfect God is inferior to another/others and will have to kiss the ass on another’s God who is claimed to be absolutely perfect.

Thus when cornered all normal theists will naturally claim [revise] for their God to be absolutely perfect to avoid having to kiss the ass of another’s God and leaving no room at all to be dominated by another God. Thus ultimately if theism, it has to be based on an absolutely perfect God.

The above support my P2, why God imperatively must be an absolutely perfect God and not any lesser. If theists are ignorant [at any time] of the weakness of believing a less than perfect God, they will eventually definitely revise their belief when cornered [evident by the evolution of the idea of God over history]. Changing a belief is so easy, just change their mind to the favored belief, viola!

As for P1, I had demonstrated why an Absolutely perfect God is an impossibility to be real in contrast to empirically-based relative absolutes or perfection [e.g. 100% score in an objective test].

It’s true of course that what would actually constitute hard evidence for God’s existence will vary among different folks. But if someone were to announce that God had conveyed to him or her a promise that for an entire month no child would starve to death on planet earth, and, then, for an entire month, no child did in fact starve to death on planet earth, well, that would work for me.

Again, in my view, you assert this as though by the fact of asserting it that makes it true. In fact, to the best of my knowledge, you have no capacity whatsoever to demostrate this empiraclly. Any more than Kant, in suggesting that in order to sustain the relevance of his categorical imperative [one rendition of a deontological morality] the existence of God [the transcending font] was imperative. As though this proves the existence of God.

The existence of the universe – multiverse? – is still embedded in profoundly problematic ontological [teleological?] mysteries that only the most foolish of scientists would argue are now within our grasp.

Or are we to believe as some do that it is possible “logically” to explain why something exists rather than nothing? Or why it must be this something and not some other?

Using “the Law of Non-Contradiction and logic”, encompass for us a definitive explanation for why Existence [this Existence] is all around us.

Okay, “philosophically and wisely” note a particular existential crises that besets the human race [in the is/ought world] and expound on what you construe [here and now] to be the more [or even the most] effective resolution.

In other words, in a world sans God.