How can god not exist?

Hammer

Once again you read wrong...

Occam said
"the potential of HUMANITY to understand anything it wishes to"

Is occam humanity?
NO..

Please start reading 'humanity' as humanity.
Imagine it a huge gestaltic organism....
Can one cell in that organism do what the whole gestalt can do..no.
No more than a cell in your butt can pick up a glass of water
Or understand geopolitics

Occam

 

I think you have missed Occam's point. It is not that we understand everything; it is that we have the potential, through reason, to understand what we attempt to understand. One path is based on the tangible, the other is based on the intangible. I agree that understanding comes from the collective experience. As I have mentioned in other posts, when viewed in the context of an infinite universe, our interactions with each other are all that matter.

 

No, the point still stands. How can anyone or any group of people, an individual or a collective, go about discoving something if they do not know what it is they are trying to discover? The immediate question that follows is, how can a person or group of people step outside of their own subjective experience, the limits of all possible contexts of all possible languages to discover some unchanging, objective Truth?

 

It happens because of the human imagination and our incalculable ability to wonder.

 

No, it doesn't happen at all; that's the point. Imagine trying to have thought, purely objective thought, without language. It just can't happen. And it doesn't matter how much wonder or desire to inquire we have.

 

TheHammerSpeaks

If you had any faith in US

You would see the answer without words...

3000 years ago men looked at birds..and wished to fly with them. Yet they had not the faintest idea how that could happen....It was the most etherial of dreams

Now we do....

How did that happen?

For it SURELY DID HAPPEN...driven, by that very wish...

You say understanding god is something we cannot concieve of understanding...
Yet the fool down the road in the church says he knows what god is...
And you believe him.

Occam

 

And then language to describe that wonder and experience develops.

 

I can't imagine it--I already have language. But the world does not begin and end with language. Thought does not begin and end with language. I agree completely that language facilitates all that you have said; but it (language) is not the alpha and omega of thought, it is a catalyst.

It is the combination of thought, language, and wonder that makes understanding possible. None of these elements can be viewed in isolation.

 

I certainly do have a certain degree of faith in humanity. I do not, however, have faith in humanity's faculty of reason.

I have no doubt that flight is something well within humanity's ability to understand. But why should I assume that everything can be understood by humanity based on such examples?

Now this is interesting, but I want to make sure I clearly understand what you're saying before I reply. Would you care to clarify a little, especially the part about God being something we "cannot conceive of understanding?"

 

No, it disintegrates. Because the meaning of words changes with context. If someone describes an experience to me, then the meaning of that experience changes because my context differs from that of the original experiencer.

Then how do you suggest we step outside of language to view pure thought?

I added in the italics becaues that's my point exactly. Thought or wonder or anything else cannot be viewed isolated from language, so they are always distorted because of context.

 

How do you know that a cell in your butt cannot understand geopolitics? Isn't it necessary for all butt cells to act in the way they do to contribute their share to geopolitical formation?

 

I believe you, Kharakov, that God is knowable. Buddha said no, but I am sure he was not always right. You say you know God, and I am not one to doubt you.
I have no reason to, and see no reason for you to say it is so if it is not. So far, the exact nature of God is not known to me, but I have a strong belief in what God is not, and the list is a long one.

Organized religion could be a joke, one that you have to laugh at, cuz if you didn't you'd cry. They tv evangelists are excellent proof or your proposition.

 

It can happen, and does happen with me every day. It is emotion. I feel love and the feeling is beyond words to describe. It exists without language.
I believe that the great spiritual leaders of the past were able to do just what you say cannot happen.

 

There are two books out that show many examples that memories are not just stored in the brain, but in the heart as well. These books are about the changes heart transplant recipients go through post operation. In many cases, they adopt the tastes, ideas, and sometimes even language of the donor.

 

I think I understand your point. No one can ever truly understand another's reality. We have not, and will not experience it first hand, therefore, can never be sure we understand it. Having said that, I believe certain truths bridge all cultures. That is just my humble belief though. For example, I believe that the feeling and expression of brotherly love (agape), is understood by people of all cultures. The only ones who do not understand it, in my view, have closed their hearts to its existance, and I feel these people also exist in all cultures.

 

Hammer

1. Why not...The difference between savages bringingdown an animal for food. Alone in a world of action and reation. Of pure enviroment and survival.
And the works of keats or shostakovitich.
Is reason.

2. You do not. But why not have faith that we can...?
So many have faith that we are sheep or born evil.
That we are helpless pawns
Occam prefers to have faithy that we can be anything we wish to be.
There is NO FATE..but what we make.

3. YOU said god was something we could not concieve of or understand.
That humans are not capable of it because of our subjective nature.
"how can a person or peole step outside their subjective nature"
But as PEOPLE..we can.

Occam

 

What does reason have to do with art, especially since Keats was a Romanticist?

Why do I lack faith in man's faculty of reason? Because it's imperfect and has been demonstrated to be so. Pure reason cannot exist. Read Hamann and Herder. Western philosophy has overemphasised the importance of truth value anyway. As I've said, I'm far more conerned with meaning. And pride is the meaning of such faith in humanity. And what good is pride?

And how, exactly, do we accomplish this? I do not believe it can be done. That does not mean, however, that we cannot understand God. It only means that we cannot understand God through reason.

 

I've never expressed it like that before, but that's actually a pretty good way of understanding it.

Remember though, the general message can still get across, but people's views can still differ on the finer points of that message. So, which it seems likely that the general message of brotherly love can transcend all cultural boundaries, different people's interpretations of the particulars of that message will differ.

 

Hammer

Great stuff..
This why occam posts here...
Because some minds wish answers.

1:
What does reason have to do with art....?
Let us go to the roots of it...
How do represent a 3Dreality on a 2dimensional surface...?
Rules of perspective.
Rules of perpective are a 'codec' to allow humans to represeent 3dreality
on a 2d surface.
These rules are rational/logical rules.

Without them ...90% of human 2d art..could not exist.

2:
Reason...it IS imperfect.
Everything is.
Occam does not believe the word perfect means anything.

Occams idea of perfection is absolute nothing.....
Where no questions can ever be spoke.
And no answers ever had...
A very difficult concept.

3.
Why not?

In a few 'ticks' of the second hand of the clock of reality...
Humans have gone from packs of pre homonids.
To creating the sun on earth.
From using the bones of prey as weapons.
To Employing armoured divisions backed by tactical air power
From scratching in the sand
To libraries of millions of books..and billions more 'online'

Occam suggests that this has come about through two things...
Drive...our ego
And
Reason..the way to do it.

And look at the world today..A mass of ego , supported by a shell of technology...based in reason...
Twisted by ego to do ego's will.

Occam never said reaon was infalible,, or even well used...
It is however..the only way the maximum number of people will survive the next few centuries...
We MUSt use it...
Or fall 'way back' and occam means 'WAY'

Occam