God is an Impossibility

Yes, dad …
When children are young, dad is the most powerful in the world who can give them the psychological security.
But when the grow older, the realize their dad is limited [not absolutely perfect] to grant them the psychological security [life after death]. This is why the most active theist proper are those in their late teens who has to cling to an invisible being, i.e. God the greatest who can provide the psychological security against inevitable mortality.

There is a book that rely on the above thesis to justify how God emerged onto the consciousness of humans. Can’t remember which?

Pris,

“1+1 = 5” and “absolute perfection is impossible” are not within the same category of claims. The claim that 1+1 = 5 is incorrect, it would be seen as irrational and illogical to claim that it is. The claim that absolute perfection is impossible, is an assertion and must be proven in order to be a valid claim. The former claim is not debatable, the latter is.

No, I don’t. In reality, the term “perfection” describes an absolute.

That’s is not an accurate reflection of what I claimed. You may need to re-read what I stated.

In either case, you cannot know that absolute perfection is an impossibility. Absolute perfection could exist and you’re not aware of it.

If I am to take these three statements as being a true reflection of your thinking (which I have no reason not to), then by your own admission, you’re arguing that reason does not allow us to claim something as knowledge, because only the empirical can be claimed as knowledge - proving things by reason is not precisely knowledge (whatever that means), it is theorising. If that is the case, then by your own argumentation, because your argument/syllogism is based upon reason and not anything empirical, you’re only theorising that “God is impossible” and have not proven anything as knowledge, because to prove something as knowledge it has to be empirical.

My point is people can ask anyone for advice/assistance knowing they aren’t perfect.

Pris,

This observation is not correct. I never made any such distinction, you have. I stated “know”, I made no reference to a distinction between empiricism and reason… Knowledge, whether arrived at through empiricism or reason is knowledge. Your distinction is yet again, arbitrary.

Ah, the textbook straw man argument. Where in my arguments did I propose that “God exists”?

I didn’t know this was a topic of debate. If “absolute perfection” means “all-powerful”, then it’s contradictory since having the power of being big and small cannot exist in the same being. Every advantage has a disadvantage so there is no way of having all the advantages and none of the disadvantages just like you couldn’t collect the head-side of coins while discarding the tail-sides.

In 400 million years sharks have not gotten any smarter which can only mean that intelligent sharks are not favored by natural selection; therefore the intelligence of sharks is optimal and perfect. In that way, everything that exists is perfect because it is the result of countless selection processes which honed the perfection that exists.

There are indeed two ways of speaking about perfection, depending how you define your terms.

I know you’re replying to prism with that, but it reminded me of Goethe who said “Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.”

I posit there is nothing that is not empirical because all empiricism is conceptual. You aren’t looking at a tree, but a concept in your mind that you think is a tree. Do you see what I mean? (By seeing what I mean, that is empirical observation according to myself and Goethe, apparently). Deduction and empiricism is the same thing. There is no such thing as a priori either.

Serendipper,

I don’t think that something being “all-powerful” is necessarily contradictory, as something can be “all powerful” and be big or small. Something not being big and small doesn’t mean that it isn’t “absolutely perfect”, but I think that conclusion depends on what we perceive as something being “absolute perfection”. Also, in terms of something being “all powerful” I don’t agree that every advantage has a disadvantage, what would be the disadvantage of being “all powerful”?

I agree, and perhaps there are more than two, but not (I don’t think) in the way that Prismatic has expounded. To my understanding if something is perfect, it describes the maximal state that something can achieve – the absolute. I understand that there is relative perfection, which means that the perfection being described is relative to a condition or relative to something else, but I don’t make a distinction between “absolute perfection” and “perfection”, because perfection necessarily describes an absolute. So the term “absolute perfection” is the same as saying that there’s an “absolute, absolute.” It implies that something can be “more perfect”, than perfect which doesn’t seem correct to me. The term “absolute perfection” is used for emphasis, but to me it doesn’t mean anything other than perfection.

That’s no problem, Goethes’ quote makes sense to me.

I see what you mean, but IMV a tree is something which exists both outside of me, and as a concept in my mind. Why do you think there’s no such thing as a priori?

IOW, you don’t have a response.

In a thread where you are supposedly proving that “God is an Impossibility”, you “don’t even have to show God does not exist”?

That’s ridiculous.

Hmm… that is interesting lol :-k Well, I wouldn’t describe all-powerful as an advantage, but a collection of advantages. It’s the box that contains all boxes, but doesn’t contain itself because otherwise it would be a box with an inside, but no outside.

Statements concerning all things are illogical. If we say all things are moving, then there is no way to verify that since there is no still reference point by which to judge and it’s therefore a meaningless statement.

Bruce Lee would say water is all-powerful because it conforms to any shape and can yield, but also crash. But earth can dam water and fire can boil it away. As soon as you claim an advantage, you’ve also claimed a disadvantage. White has the first move in chess, which is an advantage, but it’s also a disadvantage. Throwing the first punch is an advantage, but also a disadvantage since you’ve committed to a strategy. To be all powerful would mean being able to throw the first punch without throwing the first punch. White could move first without black knowing what the move is. It’s impossible.

Alan Watts related it to having full control of a woman by mixing up some potion that upon being exposed to it, women do whatever he says. So he says what good is that? It would be like a blowup doll and it is only that he doesn’t have full control that a woman is enjoyable. So, the disadvantage of having all power is boredom and a ceasing of manifestation; one can only live if they lay some power down. God cannot be in control of everything or what sense would there be to having anything?

Is the species of sharks absolutely perfect? Could you make a better shark? What is better? Let’s say that better is being able to find food easier, well then it eats all its food and eventually starves. So if there is no way to improve upon the shark, isn’t the shark absolutely perfect?

Well, perhaps what I should have said is there is no difference between a priori and a posteriori and it’s for the same reason there is no difference between deduction and empiricism.

[i]A priori knowledge or justification is independent of experience, as with mathematics (3 + 2 = 5), tautologies (“All bachelors are unmarried”), and deduction from pure reason (e.g., ontological proofs).

A posteriori knowledge or justification depends on experience or empirical evidence, as with most aspects of science and personal knowledge.[/i]

There is nothing independent of experience since experience defines reality.

At the fundamental level there are only energy fields (gluon field, Higgs field, electric and magnetic fields and who knows what else.) There is no such thing as matter as such (Max Planck said “As a man who has devoted his whole life to the most clearheaded science, to the study of matter, I can tell you as a result of my research about the atoms this much: There is no matter as such!”)

In nature, there is no tree, just vibrations, oscillations of energy and a tree as a thing only exists because we call it into existence in our minds. In nature, there are no things, except the one big thing. The universe is a only atom… the a-tomos… the indivisible whole.

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear the noise, does it make a sound? It will create a pressure wave through the air, but it takes ears and a brain to make sound and each organism will create the sound differently.

You are mistaken.

Taking mathematics as an example … mathematics is pure manipulation of symbols based on specific rules. The symbols need not represent anything real nor do the rules. You do not need any experience with real objects (apples or sticks ,etc) to use a statement like 3+2=5 and to accept it as correct.

The same is true for statements like “all bachelors are unmarried”. The words are merely symbols. You can use them in a syllogism without knowing what “bachelor” and “unmarried” means.
In fact, the purpose of syllogisms is to arrive at concluding statements which you have not experienced. If you had experienced it, then you would not need a syllogism.

I don’t think you’ve put the thought into that Goethe had. I can’t make you see what you “choose” not to see. Ponder it some more. If Kant couldn’t see it, it can’t be easy, but I have faith in you.

You cannot have an experience which you have not experienced and that includes deduction and deduction is no different than observation since you observe what you deduce and your brain is an organ of observation.

Reality is the interaction between subject and object. Nothing is real until it is observed (where observation is not limited to optical). This was the principle underpinning of James’ AO: if something has no affect, then it doesn’t exist. Something can only be said to exist if it has affect on something else (subject/object).

I could say that apples and sticks do not exist except in your conceptualization of them or I could say that numbers do exist by your conceptualization of them. All you have to work with are concepts, whether it be a tree or a number, there is no difference.

They are symbols that inspire concepts like a tree inspires a concept of a tree.

Can you make a syllogism out of “gehdjshk” and “fehsjue”?

And then suddenly you experience it. You never experience the grand canyon either until you experience it.

Ah, I see 2+2=4
Ah, I see a tree

No difference. Can you see what I’m saying?

I’m just going to ignore you from now on.

Dad? Is that you? 8-[

Yes, if you can’t beat em, ignore em. Just don’t talk and that way you can never be wrong. Congratulations! You’ve found a way to beat the game. Now what did you win?

You and the old man are cut from the same cloth: the risk of being wrong just isn’t worth it because we must protect our preconceived notions at all cost! Never ever can we change our minds, learn, and move forward because we simply must be correct from birth, a priori! That’s why knowledge progresses one funeral at a time :frowning:

:bow-blue: Ego

  1. Within the decimal system 1 + 1 = 5 is an impossibility within an empirical-rational reality.
  2. I have proven ‘absolute perfection’ is also an impossibility within an empirical-rational reality.
    Both 1 & 2 are of the same category in the sense they are provable by reason only without the need for empirical proofs and justification like in Science.

I have argued on this many times.
There is relative perfection and absolute perfection.
Relative perfection like a perfection of 300 points in a ten-pin bowling game, 100% score in an objective test, scoring 100/10 in a sport, e.g. diving, are not ‘absolute’ because they are conditioned by criteria set by humans.
“Perfection” attributed to a God is absolute perfection, i.e. absolute = totally unconditional.
See the difference?

Humans [subjects] cannot ‘know’ absolute perfection because whatever that can be known by humans cannot be [absolutely] absolute at all.
Note ‘absolute’ = totally unconditional.

‘Knowledge’ is a very loose term. A layperson will take it that any information/data generated by the brain and ‘known’ by the person is ‘knowledge’.

Philosophically, I refer to ‘knowledge’ as within a continuum of information and thoughts from opinions, beliefs to knowledge. Knowledge in this case is objective knowledge, i.e. as justified true belief.

For anything to be knowledge it must be theorized [explicitly or implicitly] in stages from

  1. opinion to
  2. subjective belief [faith and conviction] then to be
  3. justified [empirically and rationally] as true belief to be qualified as objective knowledge.

Yes, my syllogism ‘God is an impossibility’ is merely a theory based on sound reason. The point here is I am using higher refined reason-only to kill your reasoned-belief (stage 2) based on crude reason.
Thus your belief cannot proceed at all to stage 3, i.e. moot to be qualified to be justified as true beliefs empirically and rationally. Your idea of God is killed at state 2.
Therefore ‘God exists’ is an impossibility within an empirical-rational reality.

We know via reason ‘a square-circle is an impossibility’ within an empirical-rational reality .
Therefore a square-circle is impossible to exist within an empirical-rational reality.
If that is the case, do I have to show a square-circle does not exist within an empirical-rational reality?

Thus that 'God is an impossibility within an empirical-rational reality, is the same with the above situation. I don’t have to show ‘God does not exists’ because it is impossible for a God to exists within an empirical-rational reality.

What is that which Kant couldn’t see?

I agree with the above.

There are two categories of experiences, i.e.;

  1. Experiences during one’s life time - individual and collective,

  2. Evolutionary Experiences of mankind [collective] throughout history [millions of years] and embedded in the DNA and is passed on to the next generation. This will also include the collective experiences of living things from billions of years ago.

I have stated my syllogism is based purely on reason alone, but in a more refined sense, reason is ultimately traceable to experience, not a posteriori but the embedded experience re 2 above. Kant’s Categories arise from such evolved experiences.

Note
The Evolution of Reason: Logic as a Branch of Biology (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology)
amazon.com/Evolution-Reason … 0521791960

Your square-circle example is irrelevant.

There is no logical contradiction in a god. Stop pretending that there is. ](*,)

Well I don’t really know if Kant could see that there is no actual distinction between a priori and posteriori, but wiki says “The Latin phrases a priori and a posteriori are philosophical terms of art popularized by Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason”, so I just assumed, since they are his terms, that he couldn’t or otherwise didn’t see the falsity of the differentiation.

I also don’t see the value in creating the distinction, which seems to be nothing more than a source of bickering, as if we need another, about where on a slippery slope that a line belongs which divides such things as pri from post, life from non-life, right from wrong, which guns to ban, and what constitutes illegal speech.

Yes and it is really by such evolutionary experiences that we experience empiricism and deduction because our brain and sense organs are themselves memory of that evolutionary experience, though I’m not sure if those experiences are the subject or object of observation. The evolutionary experiences comprise the brain which is a re-member-ance (as opposed to dismember) of those experiences which must be the subject that observes the inference and the empirical.

From Goethean Science:

Knowing would be an absolutely useless process if something
complete were conveyed to us in sense experience. All drawing together, ordering, and grouping
of sense-perceptible facts would have no objective value. Knowing has meaning only if we do
not regard the configuration given to the senses as a finished one, if this configuration is for us a
half of something that bears within itself something still higher that, however, is no longer sense-perceptible.
There the human spirit steps in. It perceives that higher element. Therefore thinking
must also not be regarded as bringing something to the content of reality. It is no more and no
less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear
sounds, so thinking perceives ideas. Idealism is therefore quite compatible with the principle of
empirical research.
The idea is not the content of subjective thinking, but rather the result of
research. Reality, insofar as we meet it with open senses, confronts us. It confronts us in a form
that we cannot regard as its true one; we first attain its true form when we bring our thinking
into flux. Knowing means: to add the perception of thinking to the half reality of sense
experience so that this picture of half reality becomes complete.

rsarchive.org/Books/Downloa … iner-1.pdf

What does that mean?

Interesting

Obviously theists will claim there is no contradiction in a god within THEIR personal perspective. But being personal, that is very subjective.

Theists insist God is real within the empirical realm, i.e. can be communicated to and answer prayers.
Philosophically, in terms of reality there is a contradiction, i.e. a pure rational being cannot exist within an empirical realm.

According to Kant the differentiation is critical to understand the dichotomy between ‘Empiricism’ versus ‘Rationalism’.
Note Hume’s challenge, one cannot get an ought [from reasoning] from an “is” [empiricism].
Kant argued yes, we can but we need to differentiate and understand the a priori and a posteriori.

I agree with the following;
“Knowing would be an absolutely useless process if something complete were conveyed to us in sense experience”
But further than that, we need to bring in the elements of a priori ideas and a posteriori knowledge. It is a long story to understand how Kant improved on the thoughts of Goethe.

According to Kant, knowledge is not based purely on a posteriori experiences but are influenced by the Categories within the psyche of humans.
The Categories [Kant merely assumed they are there] are actually evolved pure concepts embedded in the brain from our ancestors and back to the first one cell living things.
The pure concept of ‘Cause and Effect’ is inherited from our evolutionary ancestors and embedded deep in the psyche. Why ‘Cause and Effect’ is so significant is because it has survival values thus is embedded deep in the brain.