No Evidence For God, Why Still Believe?

Cool I’ll check him out. The main problem I have with buddhism is if we do not exist, then why did the buddha come back to eliminate suffering? If the key to the ending of suffering is to realize that there is no one to suffer, then there is no suffering to end.

Well what I mean is that I hadn’t considered that a spirit could be native to the universe instead of given by a monarchical god who is separate from the universe, so my only choices at the time was either to believe in that type of god or to believe the dead universe somehow created life.

The way I think of spirit is like the spirit of the great outdoors, the spirit of fun, the spirit of the wild.

Like the song Fred Bear:

[i]There I was back in the wild again.
I felt right at home, where I belong.
I had the feeling, coming over me again.
Just like it happened so many times before. eh.
The Spirit of the Woods is like an old good friend.
Makes me feel warm and good inside.
I knew his name and it was good to see him again.
Cause in the wind he’s still alive.

We’re not alone when we’re in the great outdoors
We got his spirit We got his soul
He will guide our steps and our arrows home
The restless spirit still roams
Oh Fred Bear
Walk with me down the trails again.
Take me back, back where I belong.
Fred Bear
I’m glad to have you at my side my friend
And I’ll join you in the big hunt before too long[/i]

(If some of our teenage thrill seekers really want to go out and get a thrill.
Let them go up into the northwest and let them tangle with a Grizzly bear
Or Polar bear or brown bear and get that effect that will cleanse the soul.)

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyNYzcXAPf4[/youtube]

Spirit is wind or breath, which seems to be an effect with no cause. I remember being <5 yrs old and looking out the window during a storm and thinking the trees were making the ruckus.

“The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.”

I used to believe computers could never be conscious since it’s just a glorified set of deterministic switches, like dominoes, and I couldn’t see how that would result in a feeling of experience, but now I’m not so sure because if spirit is in the atom, then a computer is more than switches.

I think it boils down to every effect needing a cause, but if the causes can never be known, then it’s as if events do not have causes and randomness exists. Freewill and spirit is somehow mixed up in that I think.

I have to remember that anytime there is a trap that I can’t get out of, such as the freewill problem, it means I and the trap are one and there is no trap or anyone to get out of it. Trying to peer into my own inner workings is a trap with no exit because a subject cannot be an object to itself and therefore the fundamental deterministic variables can never be known.

Right, I get that and in discussions with atheists that kind of false dilemma is so apriori-ily jamming into the unconscious of the discussion it takes a huge project to even open the discussion.

It has now almost become taboo to speak of spirit, even in philosophical contexts. You rapidly get labelled a dualist and there seems to be this consensus that 1) that is the only possible option (that, for example, there cannot be a spectrum in the one substance with spirit at one end and physical things on the other) and 2) we are so, like, way past dualism, if you mention it you are, like, so uncool. Oh, you are a dualist, so you are wrong, nuff said.

That we have particles and waves as part of physicalism does not make it a dualism, even though it would have a couple of hundred years ago.

Sure, I think we may be able to make conscious entities. Perhaps they will be in agony all the time. Perhaps…and so on.

Given the epistemological consequences of assuming that you can only believe what you believe - which one must believe if one is a determinist - then it seems like agnositicism should be the rule for them. People tend to think that if it makes sense on the page/screen then we can then know our beliefs are correct. The problem is ALL KNOWLEDGE is in situ. I wake up. I remember things correctly or not. And in this muddled deeply embedded experiencing, I determine (have already assumed) what is true, what is not, what might be, how likely, how one knows and so on. We are not on the page, we are (seemingly) fallible beings experiencing our way forward.

Yup, I’ve been there, but can’t get past being labeled and categorized for the conversation to open up.

What’s wrong with dualism?

I think the waves act like particles, but are not particles. Probably they are highly directional waves due to very high frequency.

I don’t believe we can’t control what we believe. No amount of effort and determination can make someone believe what they don’t. If knowledge comes to light that changes our beliefs, that was largely out of our control as well.

There is no rule because determinism justifies every position - “I have no control. I can’t not believe what I believe.”

I think we might be saying the same thing. At least the quote you have there is what I am saying.

Did I read it wrong? :confusion-confused:

You seemed to be saying that agnosticism can be or ought to be preferentially selected by determinists.

.Ah, ok, I get the issue. Yes, that is what I was saying.

And yes, what you are saying above could be argued by a determinist, but they can no longer say they are rational. None of them will want to admit that they cannot know whether their conclusions were rationally arrived at. I would love it if they did. It would be so sweet and honest. I know determinism is the case even though this means I cannot know if I arrived at that conclusion rationally, though it sure seems like it.

Either something determines an effect or the effect is causeless. That is our options.

The best argument for freewill is to say that the causes of the effect cannot be known within this universe and therefore, they may as well be regarded as causeless events (randomness).

This may all be true, but to be a determinist undermines your ability to claim you know you arrived at this belief rationally. I think that is likely also true for believing in free will. That’s why I do not claim to believe in either FW or D or that I can know either is true or not or whether some other option is available.

If I am a determinist, then there is no “me” and therefore no one to have a belief.

Maybe, but I can’t conceptualize how an effect doesn’t have a cause. How can something come from nothing?

John Bell proved randomness exists. If it is physically and mathematically impossible to predict results, then the results are fundamentally random. Now, ‘why’ we can’t predict the results is debatable, but it’s established that we cannot from within the universe. Random events are causeless events because if we could know the causes, then it would be possible to predict the outcome. So the only way it would be absolutely impossible to predict the result is if there were no cause, effectively. But it doesn’t make sense to have something come from nothing, so we must conclude that causes exist, but cannot be known. Now that leads us to the next conclusion which is if causes exist, but cannot be known, then we are obviously looking at ourselves. To make an observation requires that we affect what we are observing and now it’s an infinite regression of affectation while accounting for the effect of our affect which produces yet another effect that we must account for and so on forever. Anytime we find ourselves in a trap like that, we know we are looking at ourselves.

Proofs depend on the judge of those “proof” on being “proofs” at all and even whether they are “convincing”. I know that over the course of several treads you feels as if you have “demonstrated” such concept is an impossibility. But that is about a concept.
The Self itself is such a concept, which many philosophers, from Hume to Nietzsche, have shown to be an impossibility as a concept. Now, I’m not interested in arguing for or against belief but simply noting that believing is what we do, is in our nature. We act with certainty on what amount to unproved beliefs. People do not kill because God commanded it. That is a rationalization used by murderers. People kill for God just as easily and with the same clear conscience as the do for their Tribe, their State or Nation, or Father-land. Why don’t you ask about those proofs for those concepts? Sure “God” can be a dangerous concept, but so can those others, and so I argue that it is nothing in the concept but in the users of the concepts where dangers lie.

You might be an epiphenomenal observer.

How can a particle be a wave (and a particle)? How can the future cause the past? (see some dual slit experimental results) You asked a question, but often people state things with certainty, sure of their ability to deduce and rule out. I am skeptical about ruling out in these ways. Of course, when I plan my days, I use deduction. I gotta do something, avoid other things. But I am wary of metaphysical deduction leading to certainty when I have no practical reason to do it.

Where did you learn a word like that? lol

I don’t think there is such a thing as a particle. If there were, it would be made of smaller particles until we get down to waves or an infinity of smaller particles, which makes no sense. Waves can act like particles, but one particle can’t act like a wave since a wave needs a medium.

Light comes from the vibration of charge (acceleration of charge), which is sinusoidal. The difference between a neutrino and gamma ray is just a relatively small difference of frequency. I think the equation is E=hf and E=mc^2 so then hf=mc^2 and we have m=hf/c^2 or just that mass is a function of frequency and is measured in electron-volts. The higher the frequency, the more directional and “particle-ish” the wave becomes.

The delayed choice quantum eraser experiment. Maybe the future doesn’t cause the past, but the continuum is continuous: whatever caused the decision to look during the interval between the slits and target was there all along and we can’t decide to look at something without affecting what we’re looking at.

Alan Watts said everyone has a metaphysical assumption that they can’t prove. Watch out for it! All statements must be supported with empirical evidence, except this one :wink:

Philosophy books. Though as a noun not an adjective.

but single particles do act like waves, again, the slit experiments. Or waves act like particles. Either way we have things acting like both, depending on stuff like observers and that’s just weird.

Ah, fuck empiricism. No one, absolutely no one relies only on empirical evidence.

Skepticism is certainly rampant in modern society regarding the Scriptures which states that God is exactly what it claims Him to be. There are those who say they do not believe in the existence of God because no one has ever seen Him, in other words they believe in only that which they have the ability to see. How many of us have stood on a mountain and surveyed the surrounding landscape in awe and admiration, exclaiming that there must be a God who brought all these things into existence. Louis Pasteur, the French biologist, declared: "Posterity will one day laugh at the sublime foolishness of the materialistic philosophy. The more I study nature the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.

No evidence for God… it is all around you.

You have a pretty good memory then :wink:

“Depending on observers” tells us it’s all connected. The cause of the decision to take a measurement came from the same field of existence that the wave is traveling through. There is no way to have an objective perspective.

It was a joke: all statements needing to be supported by empirical evidence is the metaphysical assumption that can’t be proved.

Or like my claiming there is no objective truth. How can that be an objectively true statement? My reasoning is objective truth cannot have an observer or it would then be subjective truth.

Creationism is still materialism isn’t it? The potter makes pots of clay (lifeless stuff with life breathed into it). The only difference between the Ceramic Model and the Fully Automatic Model is the creator: one is God and the other is the automatic process.

But what if the creator and creature are the same thing? No lifeless junk needing life breathed into it because the life is already there.

Do you know of anything that is superior to your mind? and

Do you honestly believe that any power or force which is inferior to your mind could have produced you?

Pernicious beliefs are like finding used band-aids in my soup. I never forget the moment I find them.

Or perhaps to avoid one. :mrgreen:

Ah, OK. It’s also a heuristic no one follows.

Yes, but how do you remember the brand of band-aid? I can never remember the quadratic formula; only how to derive it. I can retain processes, concepts, but I have trouble with abstracts. I guess that makes me a perspicacious dimwit :laughing:

Hmm… I haven’t thought about that angle. Can an object be a subject to itself? My supposition is that objectivity can never be realized because the moment there is an observer (subjective interpretation), it’s no longer objectivity.

This hearkens back to a conversation concerning the valuing of money. One position is that all the valuers constitute one entity and that makes it objective valuation. My perspective is each valuer is an entity of many, making it a collection of subjective valuations whereas objective valuation would be a value set by the government. The reasoning for that is the government dictation doesn’t require a subjective observer for it to be so: even if there were no trade occurring in the universe, the value would still be set in stone and therefore objective. My position is that objectivity doesn’t require and, in fact, cannot have an observer (subjective interpretation). Of course, we could still observe the government’s dictation of the value of money, but not through our own subjective lens of valuation (we can have no influence). The other point is that it’s still somewhat true of collective valuation: that the value is set by a higher entity which makes it objective. It’s a tough problem to sort out.

They say they do :confused: