Is There Any Room For God In Modern Science?

Your assumeing there is such a thing as god

I live in a land that is further from any other land on earth 3000mi minmun. Very few life forms made it here but when they did the began filling niches right away. The Ecuadorian canary became 100 pieces. They evolved so radically they could only survive if one specises of hibiscus flourished. hen men came they killed all the honey eater and only about 30 spp of honny seekers survived. I think 14 spp still live in the Aliki swamp. God evolution it seems the whole thing is a "Confederacy of Dunces"

 

it used to be omnibenevolent as well but That's been shown to be a logical impossibility with the Problem of Evil, among other things. There is an area in Philosophy of Religion called theodicy which tries to address Problem of Evil, but really it is probably one of the weakest attempts to save face in all of Philosophy and I think this paragraph from Writer could apply not only to your argument, but pretty much every argument that's been put forth trying to maintain those attributes of God.

 

Writer's quote is incorrect because with each peeling away of layer of identity, it's showing you that God is both all of the manifest Universe and yet not at the same time. In the same way that my clothes and music are part of me, ultimately they will fall away and don't completely define me. In the same way, the gender, age, etc. of God falls away because it is all of that and and yet not fully defined by any of it. If God is omnipresent then it would encompass all moments and all situations.

I think a shift in focus here needs to shift from the question of God to the question of the existence of a Soul. The peeling away process ultimately reveals your own contact with your Soul essence.

 

Those attributes have been put forth by theists and if we are to use your reasoning, then Every Religious Person who tries to define God is incorrect as well. because in their definitions, they are not defining any attribute God actually possessess. Comparing this to your examples it would be like saying You are a shoe. To consider Writer incorrect, you have to see the statements he is responding to as incorrect assertions in the first place.

 

Yes, no religion completely encompasses the entire whole. But it is one shade of expression. This is what I'm saying. God is taking the form of all the different manifestations. God being nonlocal Consciousness.

 

You agree, then immeadiately try to redefine it again :rofl:

 

Obviously no religion's description is the full description, but it still is part of the whole. God's omnipresence would take the form of science, religion, etc. Everything in the universe.

 

I got you all covered with god being what you invoke.

In practical terms we are omnipresent. We are present to every circumstance that can be imagined.

Less than present is an abstraction.

 

Sounds like a deepity.

 

Oh, you're thinking of the cutesy leprechauns on boxes of cereal perhaps. I'm talking about the real Lep'Rechauns, who can peer into your heart and know all that you think and feel. If this confuses you, I want you to think about whether an Omniscient Frisbee exists? How could you ever say that it doesn't, after all, perhaps this OF requires you to believe in it to exist before it shows itself to you? The OF can obviously see into your beliefs and cares deeply about what you think.

You know simply by the parameters of these creatures whether or not they can exist? So, little irish dudes hiding gold under rainbows, obviously outlandish, big invisible dude who made everything and really, really needs you to believe he exists, totally makes sense?

Where did these parameters come from Neon? How is it that we know that leprechauns seek gold and that god seeks belief? These parameters were constructed by normal people. This is how myth is created. The source of your parameters is imagination and fiction, so you can't rely on that. And you again run into the problem that the parameters which YOU believe cover God are not accepted by billions of people on this planet, so it's not like you're searching for something universally appraised. This is just your idea of the god myth, and you're putting great weight onto the parameters which you have decided to place upon it.

Sure, if you assume some things: the person who told them that there is a third person in the room, 1) actually knows this for a fact, 2) is trustworthy to present factual information, 3) is not mentally deluded, and 4) has no ulterior motives for deception. There's many more assumptions you have to make before you trust that information. There is no such analogous source of information in the god debate.

Then, assuming you believe your information, and suppose you call out and call out, and never hear an answer, not for 10,000 years do you ever hear a peep of an answer. Your fellow roommate who is searching with you eventually becomes a Third Guy Theologian; he tells you that the reason we can't see the third person is because we aren't believing in him enough. That his ways are mysterious. That we can know for sure that the third person exists, because the room exists, and obviously the room was made by the third person! (because the Third Person Theologian decided to imbue his concept of "third guy in here" with omnipotence).

At what point do you stop shouting out in the dark and think that maybe there never was a third person? How many thousands of years would you take the word of the guy who told you there is a third?

Exactly, guilt is analogous to god in my example.

Just as you say "I believe there is a god, because if I believe there is a god, then I have an experience of god, based on the parameters which I imbued my belief of god with, therefore there is a god".

In my analogy the reasoning was "I believe the defendant is guilty, because if I believe the defendant is guilty, then I have an experience of his guilt, based on the parameters which I imbued my belief of his guilt with, therefore he is guilty".

I can turn back to you and say "There is no reason to suggest that believing in God will reveal that God exists".

"Well, I believe in leprechauns because I want to experience leprechauns". "Well, that sounds reasonable"

^ that's what you sound like.

We don't believe in things without evidence in order to then come upon an experience of those things; we experience things FIRST (the evidence of their existence) and then we begin slowly believing them to be so.

You've got this all backwards. You would never go grocery shopping and select your vegetables, fruit, and meat, based on a BELIEF that they are fresh and ripe, which you then HOPED would give you an experience of them being fresh and ripe. You FIRST experience their freshness and ripeness with scientific tests (squeezing, scanning, smelling) and the data then persuades you of their freshness.

So off the top of my head you are already in conflict with one of the more vocal and eloquent theists on this board, Okiefreak, who believes that there is a god, the christian god in fact, but that god is not omniscient! What do you say to someone like that? On what basis do you compare your parameters? When does it finally occur to you that the source of your parameters is whimsy?

What you've made is not a scientific hypothesis, not even close to one. Really I don't even have to get past one thing with it; it's not falsifiable. That is the alpha and omega of science. It's not even POTENTIALLY falsifiable. I mean, imagine that tomorrow, a giant figure comes down from the clouds, and says "I AM GOD! You guys were right, I DO exist!" and it went on to create miracles which the entire planet witnessed. We would still have to wonder "Is that REALLY god, or is that some other entity? Because maybe the REAL god is still out there, pouting that we don't believe in HIM, and not showing himself to us!"

You missed the point; you are misusing the word "Faith". You don't first "have faith" that god exists, and then go looking for evidence for it . . . evidence has no place in faith. Faith is deciding, without evidence, that you will believe a proposition.

As soon as you start weighing evidence for a proposition, you no longer have faith in it; you are deciding whether or not the proposition is true based on the evidence.

 

Right, but perhaps you can't have empirical evidence of Leprechauns without first believing Leprechauns exist. Sound reasonable?

No, I would say faith in science is exactly as bad as faith in religion; because faith is the problem here. Pretending to know things you don't know, no matter what those things are, is a huge, huge problem. Turning your back on evidence and reason in order to just DECIDE to believe propositions (and then dressing up your decision with outlandish rhetorical flourishes, and even implying that it is MORAL to do so!) is a piss poor way to go about things.

I don't have faith that science works. Science works. There is evidence. I don't need to turn away from my screen where I'm typing this post to be INUNDATED with evidence that science works.

You are really getting tangled up in logic here, and I already covered this point. You are making a similar error to the ontological argument.

"If you say you have faith in Neon's guilt, doesn't that guilt have to exist in order for your faith to be reasonable? So if you have reasonable faith in Neon's guilty murder verdict, musn't he by guilty of murder? No further questions your honor"

You are begging the question here. It's a formal logical fallacy. You are saying:

1) In order for faith in X to be reasonable, X must exist

2) I have faith in X, and i'm a reasonable kind of guy and I believe my faith to be reasonable

3) Therefore X must exist

This is a very flawed argument, which not only doesn't follow logically, but also there are major disputations with your assumptions. For example, I reject #1 entirely, I reject #2 politely, and I reject #3 categorically.

But faith is not scientific; faith is not a way of REALLY knowing. Faith is deciding on what you know from step one, and closing the book.

If something's only parameter for existence is that you have faith that it exists, then this is a giant, blinking neon sign that is telling you that this thing does not exist.

Why don't you worship Mithra?

Standard to whom? Is this the official designation of God according to the World Symposium of God and Godly Things? Did you poll humanity? Did you even do a cursory study of world religions? You didn't. There is no standard definition, and this particular definition comes up against some serious issues, Theodicy is a giant one, as is free will.

You have to ask yourself, REALLY ask, skeptically, "Where do I get these assumptions from? Can I trust their source? Am I being objective and scientific here?"

The answer is no and no . . . you are begging the question, and contorting logic in order to make room for a god which YOU believe in, which you WANT to believe in.

You are engaged in the ancient art of theology in other words I hope for your sake you don't waste too much time here, counting the angels on a pin.

This goes against every major world religion, if that matters to you. It's also making god such a concept that it's both everything and nothing at the same time.

Not to confuse the point, but I actually believe in this god.

I'm going to repeat that.

The god you describe above, I believe in that god. I believe that god exists as plainly as you and I do.

That is to say, the god that is simultaneously:

1) Nothing . Pause here for a second. Take it in. God is nothing.

and

2) Everything. God is everything. Which means you can't have faith in it, you can't point to it and say "thats god", and you are in disagreement with almost every religion that has ever existed. You are also, in some real sense, an atheist.

As Richard Dawkins said, Pantheism is really just sexed-up Atheism.

"When everything is god, nothing is god"

 

Ok so we are in agreement that God is everything and nothing. But if God is everything, then it's not going against any world religion is it? It's expressing itself through those forms. Yet, it's not limited to those forms. This doesn't really make me an atheist, as I am not denying the archetypes that this God can manifest itself through, that being all the different Gods and beyond.

 

A creators purpose is to extend himself as creation is extension. We are created in the likeness and image of a sound work that being the real functions that make us what we are. The abstract mind exists in nature. It must come from nature. We are the evidence of god.

 

Just because Richard says it doesn't make it so. If god is the source of every thing then god is regardless the measure of your belief. The measure of belief, if it involves theoretical elements, being not a thing that can be quantified as it is an abstraction. In our own terms our devotion is the motive for all our actions. In simplest terms our motive is first to be and then having that, to be at ease in all things. Our compulsion to our own good is evidence that compulsion exists. Where does it come from and why does good appear good or why do we look for it?

 

Being is profound evidence. That is why I say knowledge is being shared.

Self is only recognized as self otherwise we call it other.

That is not to say that our limited conceptions of self are all that can be recognized.

 

Shame a moderator never shut this shit down on the first page. There's a whole religion section for this fucking nonsense.

 

Well I also question whether something can be omniscient without being God. In other words, if you know everything, you must also be omnipotent, because you know what it's like to have all the power and you know how to utilize it as well. You must be omnipresent, because you know where everything is and what it is like to be everything in all places. So if you were looking for an omniscient leprechaun I would probably assume you were indeed looking for God.

Also, that no leprechauns have broken the silence isn't indicative that they don't exist, because leprechauns aren't said to be omniscient. You'd be better off creating a new creature which is omniscient but somehow not God. I don't see how an omniscient creature can not be God, though.

Honestly I'm not too concerned with the problem of evil. For one thing, good is an opinion. For another thing, if something is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, I'm going to call it God even if it does allow evil to exist.

I think I already addressed this in my reply to ace. I don't think you can have an omniscient being that isn't omnipotent and omnipresent; otherwise it wouldn't know everything. And no I've never heard of real Lep-Rechauns who can peer into your heart. That said, the existence of the possible creator of this world is a little more important than the existence of leprechauns.

The scientific endeavor in finding leprechauns I would think would be to try and communicate with anything that knew your heart through and through. If something shows up and it's a leprechaun, there's leprechauns. If something shows up and it's not a leprechaun, there is something else. If nothing shows up, then perhaps you were ignored or perhaps it doesn't exist. The point is it's not unscientific to try and communicate with something that possibly knows everything.

I think it could be deduced. Rainbows don't come to ends with pots of gold, for instance. So if a leprechaun requires a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow in order to be a leprechaun, then leprechauns don't exist. And if a rainbow did come to an end with a pot of gold, if rainbows occasionally did this, then I think such instances would technically be different from standard rainbows and you would need new words to describe them. I'm not claiming that God is invisible or a dude. Or that he needs you to believe he exists. Just that if he exists and doesn't try to force people to believe in him/her/it, then it would make sense that, knowing your motivations for trying to experience God, belief might come in handy.

The analogous source of information has been lost to time. Whoever conceived of God in the first place, as in the creator of this world. So the only analogy needed is that it is in fact possible that God exists. Just as it is possible there is someone else in the room. My point only being that it's safe to assume that attempting to contact such a being is the best means of making contact with said being.

I don't think it's required that we ever stop shouting out in the dark. If we seek the third person, that's our right. We don't have to make up fantastical stories about the person. If God knows all hearts, then maybe it just takes the perfect heart to shout out and God will respond. If no one shouts out, and God, evidently doesn't try to force us to believe it exists, then I would assume God would not just suddenly begin communicating with us. Though maybe he would.

There's no reason to think you'll have an experience of his guilt just because you believe it, though. If that were the case, then we could convince ourselves of anything and it would come true. God is different because there is reason to suspect that if you believe in it you will experience it.

 

Well to me you sound like someone who confuses leprechauns with having the exact same traits as God. You can't just insert "leprechauns" into every instance I mention the word God and pretend that's an argument against God's existence. They're two fundamentally different things.

This is not the case with an omniscient being. It is reasonable to think that belief in an all-knowing being might entail experience of an all-knowing being.

God is different from fruit. It's funny how both of us think the other has it backwards. Because really, is God the same thing as fruit? You really think they're the same things?

And in the case of God, faith is reasonable, because it follows that a God who doesn't otherwise intervene would intervene with someone who really desired communication. Even desired it enough to believe in the thing before experiencing the thing.

Imagine there was a psychic who never spoke to anyone. Imagine just one person was convinced this person was a psychic, ie. that he existed, and directed psychic thoughts at the psychic without assurance he would get a response. Don't you think this person is more likely to get a response than all of the people who are just ignoring the psychic?

I don't know -- is that true? I've never heard that of leprechauns. I need more details about leprechauns in order to continue debating whether or not they could be real. We've already established, in my opinion, that they can't technically find gold at the end of a rainbow. Not without changing the laws of physics. But the existence of God wouldn't violate the laws of physics in any way.

Well I think faith requires sentient beings. Well, duh, obviously. But saying you have faith in science is kind of similar to having faith in scientists, right? So don't you kind of have faith in it as a method for our advancement? Because there really is no telling where it is leading us.

1) In order for faith in X to be reasonable, X must exist.
2) If X doesn't exist, faith in it is unreasonable.
3) Reasonable faith in X exists.
4) X exists.

 

There just happen to be billions of testimonies from people who say faith is a way of really knowing. Granted, testimony isn't proof, but it also isn't the absence of proof. Far from it.

I'm not saying that the only parameter of something's existence is that you have faith it exists. I'm only saying that it's reasonable, in the case of God, to have faith in it in order to experience it.

I don't know if I worship anything. Is worship the exact same thing as directing a lot of attention towards something? I direct a lot of attention towards the concept of God. I don't know much about Mithra. I'm not particularly interested in Mithra, I guess.

Well, regardless if it's standard or not, I think it's reasonable to think that if something is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, that it is God. Or if it's not "God", call it something else for all I care, but then I will debate with you that it's reasonable to believe that thing exists.

I'm not saying it's only reasonable to believe in God, mind you. It just depends on what you're after and if you're after it in a responsible way. If you think belief in God will direct your focus away from more important matters, then I would say it's reasonable to not believe in God. Unless you buy my proof of God, which really I just came up with yesterday? And proving God will only mean something to you if it means something to anyone else. Just like everything you can prove, pretty much. I have another proof of God:

1) It's possible that God exists. It will never be possible to prove God doesn't exist.
2) Therefore, anything that can't possibly be known to be false must be true. (Because God can possibly know everything that is true and false.)
3) The existence of God can't possibly be known to be false.
4) The existence of God is true.

 

Who is shamed? Is there room in science for shame or regret? Your irritation is not germane to the subject.