As long as you keep your ‘God’ within the empirical then there is an empirical possibility it can exists.
Then it is a question of what is the probability which in such a case is almost negligible.
Note Richard Dawkins as scientist and not a philosopher is in such a situation.
As a scientist, Science do not allow him to claim certainty in an empirical setting.
Thus at best he can only be an agnostic and has to make provision that there is a 1/7 possibility [his god belief scale] that God could exists. But somewhere in his mind, he think it is actually 0% possibility like Zeus or a Santa Claus but not being a philosopher he has no basis to express it.
This is why an empirical-rational basis [with philosophy] is the most effective to deliberate on the issue of God.
When you claim your pantheistic God is empirically based, there is a possibility for such a god to exist, but the possibility of an actual proof is very slim.
The real problem with a empirical-based pantheistic God is it has limitations.
An empirical God not being certain and absolute cannot be absolutely 100% in terms of any quality attributable to that God, thus is always below 100%. So in what % can one assign to one’s pantheistic God, 99%, 90% , 80%??. Because there is a gap, this leave room for another to claim a greater God that one’s claim, i.e. an inferior. The point is a typical God cannot inferior to another.
This is why even with a pantheist God like Brahman within Hinduism-Vedanta, such a God is claimed to be absolute or The Absolute [capital A] so that Brahman cannot be inferior to another God.
Thus if you want to claim your pantheistic god to be an empirical God, then you have to accept it has empirical limits, which is not typical of any ‘God.’
Generally there is no serious issue with a pantheistic or a panentheistic God which is not assigned any agency power in comparison to the Abrahamic monotheistic God with agency power.
Richard Dawkins is an idiot. And not because of his beliefs, but because he constantly embarrasses himself and all atheists. Krauss, not an idiot, had to distance himself from the idiot.
So, you look on your life as being either a glass half full or perhaps all full.
Perhaps you are also grateful for the life you have experienced.
I may be wrong here but it almost seems to me that though you have experienced a loving God ~you may not have experienced a God who has given you free will to think otherwise based on how the other side lives, based on less than a tunnel vision and more on a panoramic vision of the reality of the world and life.
There are many who, based on the emptiness of that glass, are incapable of seeing a loving God. How do you explain a loving God to someone who has never experienced love, joy, happiness, a sense of security but only misery, fear and degradation?
How do you explain away a loving God in view of it all? Are some more special to this God and some much less…
Would you put a band aid on it? You believe in a loving God because you believe. Does that make it so?
If he (I presume your male, Snark) believes in a loving God then it is so that he believes. But what we believe has no effect on what actually exists in reality.
That may or may not be the case. At present, we know so little about consciousness and QM that to claim that what we believe has no effect on what actually exists in reality is premature.
Krauss’ idiocy came to full light when I saw him interviewed on Closer to Truth regarding why is there something rather than nothing. His frustration was apparent when, in effect, he said causation was turtles all the way down.
I see, so only the most aware are able to develop a belief in God - presumably it follows that those who do not believe in God are suffering from a deficit in attention to subtleties.
Would you say that an awareness of the subtleties goes hand in hand with the ability to explain the nature of these subtleties - and how they necessarily amount to what is something of an overt claim that one has (or at least you have) no right to not believe in a specifically loving God, as opposed to something else? There must be something that definitely leads to your claim and not others in order for you to transform subtleties into something so overtly certain.
I think both theists and atheists alike are aware that something(s) other than themselves is/are affecting events beyond what is normally understood to be an individual locus of control. And naturally these forces will necessarily cause events to unfold in the way that they do, such that they bring you to where you are today - they hardly get you to where you aren’t today after all? So obviously you must be referring to subtleties in and around this necessary outcome that point to specifically loving God belief that you don’t have a right not to have - (again) as opposed to something else.
Though you say your belief is personal and does not require any correlation, so perhaps the ability to explain these subtleties is intrinsically lacking in such a style of belief? After all, correlation somewhat helps with explanation, and ease of explanation must surely fall in proportion with subtlety of the elements of such an explanation.
If he (I presume your male, Snark) believes in a loving God then it is so that he believes. But what we believe has no effect on what actually exists in reality.
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That may or may not be the case. At present, we know so little about consciousness and QM that to claim that what we believe has no effect on what actually exists in reality is premature.
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If I believe that when i perform the double slit experiment i will see an interferance pattern, does this belief, the belief itself, dictate wether or not i will actually see an interferance pattern? No, of course not- it depends (apparently) on whether or not i have “which path informstion”.
Just because i believe in God that doesn’t make God exist.
Of course not, but why close the mind to possibilities? Don’t you think it’s a bit self-serving when scientists argue that anything that can happen happens while implicitly meaning with the sole exception of God?
The belief is just the conceptual interpretation an experience. I’m not about to say that it’s factually true.
So am I to take that as confirmation that your belief intrinsically lacks explanatory ease or possibility? There’s not so much going on anymore and you’ve skipped me again…
If that was the case, I don’t think you would really have the right to claim you have no right not to believe in a loving God. In general, not being able to explain something is a good sign that you don’t understand it, which certainly wouldn’t constitute a sufficient ground on which to support such claims as you’ve made - or maybe you’re just busy/not interested.
You’re going to believe what you want to anyway, so not interested in debate. My “claims” are analogies, incomplete descriptors and conditioned interpretations, not truth-statements. Accept what I say as true (for me) or don’t – I don’t care.
P.S. I have a life outside this forum, so when I say there’s a lot going on, I don’t mean in the forum.
This is an interesting reply, since I am currently only trying to explore what you believe.
I don’t think I’ve even addressed what I believe yet in my conversation with you…
Maybe “you’re going to believe what you want to anyway” was more reflective of yourself? I am not going to assume.
I will accept what you say as true for you or I won’t… I am aware of my options, but I would be disappointed if you didn’t care enough to give me grounds to make up my mind in the first place - you’ve barely scratched the surface in your explanation to me of your beliefs I am sure. Believe it or not, I am actually interested in your beliefs, whether or not they are analogies/incomplete descriptors/conditioned interpretations or truth statements. It’s all interesting to me.
I think you have much in common with everyone here, having a life outside this forum - some more than others for sure. But over 4 posts per day so far suggests you still manage to make plenty of time for this place all the same - I will try to be more patient though - I understand if that cannot continue at that rate. God belief can be very mysterious and I would very much like it if somebody who is so certain of their beliefs could demystify it for me.
Everyone has their own evidence. It is kind of silly to say “there is no evidence”. Of course he means that Science has provided no evidence to the public, nor the horde of loud mouthed idiots. Objective evidence requires the ability to reason, which is beyond the average person (another good reason for faith based religions).
Objective evidence also requires boundaries, but being infinite, God does not have boundaries by definition.
Silhouette:
“You’re going to believe what you want to anyway” applies to everyone, no exceptions. Perhaps you should pay more attention to what you believe. I wonder how many times and in how ways it has to be said that it’s about felt relationships expressed in terms of as if and not about beliefs at all?
Some atheists, for example, don’t want to believe there is no God etc. but they are overwhelmingly compelled to due to evidence and reason - though arguably they want to be authentic and honest with themselves and others more than they wish that a God existed, so as a “net want” they “believe what they want to anyway”. So I’ll grant you your generalisation and agree with you. I think what statements such as yours are usually meant to imply though, is that “you aren’t going to change your mind anyway” - which is very wrong for some people. There are probably more who will stick to their guns and even bury their head in the sand (enough mixing metaphors though) before they change their mind - cognitive dissonance gets the better of most. In certain cases, the scientifically minded such as myself actively try and find evidence and reason to change their mind. That’s not to say I won’t challenge my quarter first - I most certainly will - but only in the honest attempt to evolve or even abandon my beliefs.
Believe me when I tell you I want you to try and change my mind.
I already have an excellent understanding of what I do believe, despite not going into it yet with you.
But enough of that for now.
Are you saying that you believe in God because it is “as if” He must exist, given that things are the way they are? Or am I completely misinterpreting what you’re saying here? I cannot stress enough that I am not trying to mock you when re-iterating your words in my own, I am absolutely withholding judgement until I have a clear picture (and even then I probably won’t judge - just take anything that you might have offered and try to incorporate it into a greater understanding).
I actually happen to agree with the Lucy quote - my own philosophy even holds the point of the quote at its foundation. In my terms I call the “unfathomable scale” continuous experience and the “codified/sketch” with “units of measure” discrete experience. I regard the former as primary and the latter as constructed within and parallel to it - and the degree to which you tend towards one over the other depends on your values and intentions.
I still find no necessary reason that God must be included into the picture, especially such that I have no right not to believe in Him. But that’s where people like you could potentially come in - I have yet to see. But so far I’m not feeling anything to convince me that subtle as-ifs necessarily amount to an overt lack of right to not believe in (a) God.
Rather, the notion of God was invented to compensate for the puzzling fact that things seem to come out of nowhere.
We may interpret “god” as “seed”.
And indeed in ancient times there wasn’t a difference between sexuality and divinity.
In the beginning was the inherent existential crisis.
IF you review the history of mankind, the concept of theism ‘progressed’ from animism, deity worship to polytheism, then to monotheism.
As a child, it is natural the psychological security is covered by the parents but for adults who do they turned to?
It was this existential crisis that compelled the early humans [adults] to seek some higher power than their own to give them that psychological security. At this point, no one was thinking of ‘things seem to come out of nowhere’ so there must be a creator.
Therefore what is fundamental is that inherent unavoidable existential crisis that is embedded deep in the pscyhe of humans.
With that permanent inherent unavoidable existential crisis as the substance, the forms that humans came up with to deal with it vary with time and human consciousness and intellectual progress.
That thinking, ‘something cannot come from nothing, therefore it must be God’ is a very recent thought relative to human history. The fundamental of it is still the inherent unavoidable existential crisis on the psychological basis.
The fact is when the inherent unavoidable existential crisis [mother of all dukkha] is dealt accordingly based on its ultimate psychological roots, there is no need for theism. This is why Buddhism [& others of the like] are non-theistic and so do have the negative baggage of theism.