Pragmatic Argument for God's existense

[devolved]

Sounds like a rather elaborate way to just end up in an argument from ignorance / incredulity and/or some emotional reasoning.

Sure. If you care to label it as such. To some degree, all of our baseline assumptions would have some form of these arguments mixed in. I'm merely comparing the available outcomes when it comes to justifications you would provide for your model, for example.

That's why I'm calling this a pragmatic argument.

Positing some faith-based god, does not result in some "ultimate justification". It rather just results in a show-stopping assertion and a gap-filler. An excuse to stop thinking about it. Or an excuse to simply acknowledge ignorance.

Sure, at some level it does. So does posing a multi-verse, or eternal contraction-expansion. Or claiming that atom is an indivisible particle, until it's not, and until the following particles are not.

The fact that something is a gap-filler does not make it invalid. And it's not an excuse to stop thinking, but rather a reason to shift our thinking into some meaningful discussion that doesn't devolve into absurdity.

Hence, I'm talking about our philosophical baselines as to what we presuppose. I would understand how we got here if we believe things are inherently meaningful. I'm not sure how we go on if all of a sudden we abandon that belief.

The universe doesn't owe you any meaning or purpose. No matter how much you demand that such is present.

Well, it's not that Universe owes me anything. It can't possibly provide anything it can't give. And since you are a part of that Universe, then you can't give what you don't have, especially coming from assumption that there is no inherent meaning in anything.

You can label things, and then corellate these, and then give abstract labels to these corellation... but ultimately your brain as a function doesn't carry any inherent meaning, hence it's a meaningless mechanism that happened to be here for a bit, react with some surrounding matter in meaningless manner, and then disintegrate into meaningless absurdity... which only seems to be different nominally in such context.

 

[devolved]

It’s no more circular than using a proposed deity to justify the use of logic and the use of logic to justify a proposed deity. It just assumes less.

Sure, we can also circularly sum up something in terms of "I works because it works", or "It is because it is", and it will assume even less (at least verbally) , but it doesn't address what I'm pointing to in the OP.

 

[gaara4158]

Perhaps I can be more laconic in my response.

If we have two propositions:

1) Intelligent being created our reality
2) Reality exists as an arbitrary function

Proposition 2 wouldn't even be able to justify pragmatism. It would be a cycle of "we do, because we do, because we do". The moment you look outside of the cycle... there are no reasons to keep doing it anymore... especially if doing it is painful, difficult and taxing. I'm not saying that's all it is, but in context of life... it is largely becomes a cycle of rather painful fight of keeping something intact for no other reason than doing something (if we inevitably reduce it to a pragmatic concept).

Thus, from unsupported pragmatic perspective... why do anything at all? Why have children that will suffer and die? Why build technology that merely gives us more to do. It's an existential problem, and many people who really get confronted with this problem fall into depression, which you have to find more things to do as a distraction, or alter brain chemistry to give you more dopamine to keep going through the cycle.

Thus reality devolves into meaningless absurdity. Yes you can act and pretend as though it has inherent meaning, but eventually you have to ask... does it really?

And if it doesn't have inherent meaning... why would you care to give it any meaning?

Indeed, why do anything at all? This, too, is only answerable on an individual, subjective basis. It may not be a satisfying answer, but it is an honest one.

 

[gaara4158]

Though it still falls in Agrippa's almost irresistable categories, it certainly does not assume more, in my opinion, nor is it a petitio principii as such.

How so? It takes the assumption, or faith, in something unseen to justify the intelligibility of what is seen. Pragmatism only assumes the intelligibility of what is seen on the grounds that it seems to be intelligible. It has elements of circularity, faith, and solipsism, but it differs from faith in God as the only faith it requires is in that which is seen, and not that which is unseen. In my opinion, if that counts as the same number of assumptions as the theistic solution, it is a much smaller one.

 

[gaara4158]

Sure, we can also circularly sum up something in terms of "I works because it works", or "It is because it is", and it will assume even less (at least verbally) , but it doesn't address what I'm pointing to in the OP.

Well, if all you’re asking is why the universe and reality work the way they do, there’s no reason to expect we’ll ever have an answer to that. What I’m pointing out is we don’t need that answer to function in life and a lack of a naturalistic answer isn’t an indication of a supernatural answer.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

How so? It takes the assumption, or faith, in something unseen to justify the intelligibility of what is seen. Pragmatism only assumes the intelligibility of what is seen on the grounds that it seems to be intelligible. It has elements of circularity, faith, and solipsism, but it differs from faith in God as the only faith it requires is in that which is seen, and not that which is unseen. In my opinion, if that counts as the same number of assumptions as the theistic solution, it is a much smaller one.

We'll just have to disagree then. From my opinion, what you describe requires quite a lot. You are anyway starting out with an assumption that what is seen is what must be justified - this belies the whole worldview, and certainly is not a given: Mahayana Buddhist ideas of Sunyata or Void, or the radical Monism of the Eleatics spring to mind. This is not really the Theistic goal, think of Plato's Cave - it is often considered merely shadows of a greater Reality.

Further the validity of some form of Empiricism needs to be assumed; you need to place an artificial distinction within qualia to determine what is sensory or 'spiritual' or derivitive, with the former then given preference for some reason; you have no way of asserting intersubjectivity without placing part as the whole; etc.
Not to get in a big debate, but the idea of YHWH, which loosely means What Is, or I AM, or Being, is as underlying Existence. So such things follow from the assumption, but just because He is 'unseen' does not make it less valid, nor require more assumptions, than something that is seen. Why is spiritual experience given a short shrift in what is pragmatic? There is a weird primacy given to the sensory here, which though common in Western civilisation where Empiricism is taught in schools, is certainly not innate or universal to man; nor philosophically sound, without loading on a whole bunch of extra presuppositions.

 

[DogmaHunter]

Sure, at some level it does. So does posing a multi-verse, or eternal contraction-expansion.

First, a hypothesis is something very different from a religious assertion.
Second, no scientists "believes" in a multi-verse like theists believe in their god.
Third, the multi-verse hypothesis is not something that is invented out of thin air. It is rather a prediction of other hypothesis like string theory and whatnot.

To compare these two as the same kind of claim, is to misrepresent both.

Or claiming that atom is an indivisible particle, until it's not, and until the following particles are not.

Yes, that's the great thing about testable claims / models. You get to actually test them and if they are wrong, tests will show them wrong.

Can you say the same about your god-model? No, you can not.
Your god-model is unfalsifiable. Which is exactly why it is pointless and without merrit.

The fact that something is a gap-filler does not make it invalid

It is, if that is its only purpose and merrit in unfalsifiable ways.

Hence, I'm talking about our philosophical baselines as to what we presuppose.

There is exactly zero reason to "presuppose" the existence of unfalsifiable super entities.

I would understand how we got here if we believe things are inherently meaningful.

Presupposing purpose, will only make you miss the fact that there might not be a purpose.
This is one of those things I don't get from theistic thinking... why MUST there be some cosmic purpose for the existence of humans?

I'm not sure how we go on if all of a sudden we abandon that belief.

I've been going on for 38 years without such a belief. And I'm looking forward to the rest of my years as well. I find great purpose in my life. But it's a purpose that is creating by me, by my own brain. It doesn't objectively exist outside of my brain. If I die, that purpose dies with me. I have no problem at all with that.

Well, it's not that Universe owes me anything.

Sure sounds like it. Sounds like you feel that you are owed cosmic purpose.

It can't possibly provide anything it can't give. And since you are a part of that Universe, then you can't give what you don't have, especially coming from assumption that there is no inherent meaning in anything.

Give what, to whom? No idea what you mean.

You can label things, and then corellate these, and then give abstract labels to these corellation... but ultimately your brain as a function doesn't carry any inherent meaning, hence it's a meaningless mechanism that happened to be here for a bit, react with some surrounding matter in meaningless manner, and then disintegrate into meaningless absurdity... which only seems to be different nominally in such context.

On a cosmic scale - sure.
If our sun would explode tomorrow and annihilate the entire solar system, the universe would remain virtually exactly the same. On a cosmic scale, yes, we are absolutely utterly irrelevant.

So what?
Does that change anything about your life? Does that make you not see the point in waking up tomorrow, going to work, making love to your wife, having fun with your kids, enjoying a great meal, going for a good nice run, enjoying a great movie,...?

No, it doesn't.

 

[devolved]

First, a hypothesis is something very different from a religious assertion.
Second, no scientists "believes" in a multi-verse like theists believe in their god.
Third, the multi-verse hypothesis is not something that is invented out of thin air. It is rather a prediction of other hypothesis like string theory and whatnot.

To compare these two as the same kind of claim, is to misrepresent both.

I'm not working in scope of scientific method. I'm not sure why you are attempting to cast scientific method as though it supposed to work in a realm of philosophical discussions. I'm not doing it here, so your appeals to informal fallacies are misplaced... and is actually fallacious, ironically.

The reason why I pointed out multiverse and dark matter is to show you that these are provisionally presupposed concepts that allow us to examine a model in a scope of hypothetical scenario.

That's what I'm doing here. I'm not saying that I presuppose that God exists. In the scope of this discussion... we can compare a philiosophical model in which universe is created with a philosophical model in which it was not.

In order for us to conceptualize a created universe (reality), we have to provisionally presuppose God's existence to examine the implications. My focus here is not on God. My focus here is intelligible reality.

Yes, that's the great thing about testable claims / models. You get to actually test them and if they are wrong, tests will show them wrong.

Can you say the same about your god-model? No, you can not.
Your god-model is unfalsifiable. Which is exactly why it is pointless and without merrit.

I understand how scientific methodology works. Science adheres to methodological naturalism. I don't agree with presupposing methodological naturalism as absolute. I don't think it works in every context of any discussion, and you attempt to say that it does.

If you can demonstrate that methodological naturalism is valid in this particular scope... THEN you get to invoke falsifiability, and testability as a scientific excercise . In the scope of philosophy we are talking about justification FOR concepts like falsifiability and testability BEFORE you get to use and make an appeal to these.

There is exactly zero reason to "presuppose" the existence of unfalsifiable super entities.

One of the good reasons to do that is to compare hypothetical models and draw conclusions. I'm not talking about scientific models here. I'm talking about philosophical models.

There are zero reasons to do that in a scope of methodological naturalism, of course, but you are in the wrong place to do so, buddy .

Presupposing purpose, will only make you miss the fact that there might not be a purpose.
This is one of those things I don't get from theistic thinking... why MUST there be some cosmic purpose for the existence of humans?

Well, the opposite is the case to... presupposing that there is no purpose or meaning would make you miss the fact that there is.

On a cosmic scale - sure.
If our sun would explode tomorrow and annihilate the entire solar system, the universe would remain virtually exactly the same. On a cosmic scale, yes, we are absolutely utterly irrelevant.

So what?
Does that change anything about your life? Does that make you not see the point in waking up tomorrow, going to work, making love to your wife, having fun with your kids, enjoying a great meal, going for a good nice run, enjoying a great movie,...?

No, it doesn't.

If there's no inherent meaning in our reality. Any meaning is accidental, it would mean that whatever social structure and social values, and whatever contextual values that we hold today are arbitrary in a sense that we are arbitrary collection of matter bouncing in space and creating these ideals without any end purpose or goal.

 

[devolved]

On a cosmic scale - sure.
If our sun would explode tomorrow and annihilate the entire solar system, the universe would remain virtually exactly the same. On a cosmic scale, yes, we are absolutely utterly irrelevant.

So what?
Does that change anything about your life? Does that make you not see the point in waking up tomorrow, going to work, making love to your wife, having fun with your kids, enjoying a great meal, going for a good nice run, enjoying a great movie,...?

Likely, you are either missing or avoiding my main point of the argument.

How do you even get to the point of having a process, which primary purpose is to recognize and contextualize meaning, in a reality that doesn't have any?

 

[Sanoy]

A seems paradoxical, for if it's true we shouldn't believe it's true. If there is no God who created us, then why should the contents of our beliefs reflect truths about the world. For example the content of my belief "God does not exist", why should that content be true if our minds came about circumstantially and evolved based on survival? The content of a belief doesn't matter in regards to survival, only the behavior that it brings about. So for any belief that results in survival, the content of that belief could be any number of things other than actual truths about the world. Maybe I don't put my hand in the electrical outlet and survive because I think it's a tiger. Or a bear and so on. If survival is the only thing responsible for the way my mind works then the content of my beliefs will always be more probably wrong than right.

 

[gaara4158]

A seems paradoxical, for if it's true we shouldn't believe it's true. If there is no God who created us, then why should the contents of our beliefs reflect truths about the world. For example the content of my belief "God does not exist", why should that content be true if our minds came about circumstantially and evolved based on survival? The content of a belief doesn't matter in regards to survival, only the behavior that it brings about. So for any belief that results in survival, the content of that belief could be any number of things other than actual truths about the world. Maybe I don't put my hand in the electrical outlet and survive because I think it's a tiger. Or a bear and so on. If survival is the only thing responsible for the way my mind works then the content of my beliefs will always be more probably wrong than right.

In a world where everything you believe is wrong, but yields the same results as if you were right, what’s the difference? What’s the point of being right if it makes no difference? For that matter, god or no god, think of all the things in your life you don’t understand, but use every day. Do you know how your car works? Your computer? Your phone? Chances are, you’ve got a handful of black boxes in your life that you can’t explain beyond a crude, approximate explanation, but you can operate reliably just the same. You’re not right about the exact mechanisms behind your everyday gadgets, but you’re right about the parts of them that are relevant to you: the user interface. Point being, a god’s existence doesn’t rescue you from your vast ignorance about most things. Trial and error, on the other hand, is pretty effective.

 

[devolved]

A seems paradoxical, for if it's true we shouldn't believe it's true. If there is no God who created us, then why should the contents of our beliefs reflect truths about the world. For example the content of my belief "God does not exist", why should that content be true if our minds came about circumstantially and evolved based on survival? The content of a belief doesn't matter in regards to survival, only the behavior that it brings about. So for any belief that results in survival, the content of that belief could be any number of things other than actual truths about the world. Maybe I don't put my hand in the electrical outlet and survive because I think it's a tiger. Or a bear and so on. If survival is the only thing responsible for the way my mind works then the content of my beliefs will always be more probably wrong than right.

I think you have to be careful with your use of "true" as a concept here, because all true means is in context of our brain is a matching pattern A correlating to a matching pattern B.

Thus what you call "true" exists in the scope of our internal axiomatic meaning that we assign to these patterns.

The question is whether such meaning is arbitrary (and thus we merely project it), or if it's inherent (we merely recognize it).

Now, we may never know the difference, because you may not be able the tell the difference. Internally, the only thing you are recognizing is a pattern.

What I'm pointing out is the absurdity of a meaning-seeking process existing in a reality where there is no inherent meaning.

 

[devolved]

In a world where everything you believe is wrong, but yields the same results as if you were right, what’s the difference? What’s the point of being right if it makes no difference?

I think the difference is internal conceptual coherence.

If you say that X exists to perform action Y, but in reality there's no inherent reason or purpose as to why it exists to perform such function... then action Y is meaningless and absurd.

Do you understand the implications of such belief for a society of people, for example?

 

[gaara4158]

I think the difference is internal conceptual coherence.

If you say that X exists to perform action Y, but in reality there's no inherent reason or purpose as to why it exists to perform such function... then action Y is meaningless and absurd.

Do you understand the implications of such belief for a society of people, for example?

I edited my post pretty significantly but you beat me in your reply. I’ll wait for your reply to that before I reply to this. I apologize, that was pretty irresponsible of me.

 

[Sanoy]

In a world where everything you believe is wrong, but yields the same results as if you were right, what’s the difference? What’s the point of being right if it makes no difference? For that matter, god or no god, think of all the things in your life you don’t understand, but use every day. Do you know how your car works? Your computer? Your phone? Chances are, you’ve got a handful of black boxes in your life that you can’t explain beyond a crude, approximate explanation, but you can operate reliably just the same. You’re not right about the exact mechanisms behind your everyday gadgets, but you’re right about the parts of them that are relevant to you: the user interface. Point being, a god’s existence doesn’t rescue you from your vast ignorance about most things. Trial and error, on the other hand, is pretty effective.

You think it's true that right beliefs don't make a difference. So why are you trying to convince me that your belief is right? What difference would it make?

You are correct, God does not rescue me from my ignorance over my devices. He does however provide the epistemic grounding and empirical facilities to create those devices I don't understand. And the most important difference of all is that He is directly related to my future existence.

 

[Sanoy]

I think you have to be careful with your use of "true" as a concept here, because all true means is in context of our brain is a matching pattern A correlating to a matching pattern B.

I'm a type of dualist. I think we have intentional states, such as beliefs, and the content of those beliefs are either true or false. Though this works under materialism just as well through brain patterns. Better in fact because without God you have this inexplicable property in matter such that when it's arranged in a coincidental way an epistemologically ready consciousness forms. We would need God under Materialism or Dualism.

 

[gaara4158]

You think it's true that right beliefs don't make a difference. So why are you trying to convince me that your belief is right? What difference would it make?

You are correct, God does not rescue me from my ignorance over my devices. He does however provide the epistemic grounding and empirical facilities to create those devices I don't understand. And the most important difference of all is that He is directly related to my future existence.

Good, so you do recognize that the only distinctions that matter are those that can affect future outcomes. This is why I harped so much on a god being unnecessary to a good epistemology. The mark of a good epistemology is reliability, not an unfalsifiable, unsupported foundational claim.

 

[Sanoy]

Good, so you do recognize that the only distinctions that matter are those that can affect future outcomes. This is why I harped so much on a god being unnecessary to a good epistemology. The mark of a good epistemology is reliability, not an unfalsifiable, unsupported foundational claim.

I said no such thing. What do you have to say about your inconsistency?

 

[gaara4158]

I said no such thing. What do you have to say about your inconsistency?

You just said the most important factor in your belief in God is his link to your future existence. I can only assume you find the difference between a god and no god meaningful for this reason. You offered no other distinction between taking your experience at face value and grounding it in divine power.

Any inconsistency on my end is entirely accidental and I welcome it being shown to me so I can correct myself.

 

[Sanoy]

You just said the most important factor in your belief in God is his link to your future existence. I can only assume you find the difference between a god and no god meaningful for this reason. You offered no other distinction between taking your experience at face value and grounding it in divine power.

Any inconsistency on my end is entirely accidental and I welcome it being shown to me so I can correct myself.

Right, that is a singular statement, not an absolute statement as you returned it. It is a distinction that is more important than others.

I told you in my first response that you found it important to tell me that right beliefs don't make a difference. Which is a belief you are presenting to me as if it does make a difference. It may be an accident, but it's brought on by habitually living inconsistently with your claimed beliefs.

That habitual inconsistency will continue with your next reply where you further try to correct my beliefs as if there was a difference that mattered.