What do you mean when you say God "exists"?

[John 1720]

Rather than asking whether or not God exists, I instead want to focus on the epistemological criteria that we use to determine whether things in general exist and how that applies to God when someone says God "exists".

I think most of us might say that existence is far more complex than a series of multiple choice criteria that "we" decided is the key to it all. I also think that some might take issue with relegating "love" to an abstract notion, since evidentiary attestation to its existence can be found just about everywhere but that is my opinion.

 

[devolved]

God has no parts, so what we have is a source of reality, so to speak, that is simultaneously a unity and a multiplicity. It's paradoxical, but makes a certain amount of sense, given that this is the same paradox that plays out throughout the whole natural world. The age old problem of the One and the Many.

You've repeated this a couple of times, but do you care to elaborate? I'm not really sure that it's useful to define a concept in a way that's not relevant to our being.

We analogize virtually everything, because that's how we relate the world out there to our internal frameworks. But the world out there has parts, at least that's how we disect the world into perceivable distinctions.

What would "have no parts" mean? That's sort of how we describe "conceptual nothingness"... It has no distinguishable parts in it.

I find this concept intriguing, but I'm not sure that it's describing anything in particular.

I'm not really looking to debate it. Just trying to understand what you mean by that, and why you think that's the case?

*Just as a side-note... I am familiar which historical background behind divine simplicity. But it's never explained in a language that isn't reduced to paradoxical concept of how such simplicity can causaly relate with our complexity. Hence "process theology" makes more sense to me, although I'm not married to it. I'm always interested on updated perspective on either concepts of what we label as divine and God.

 

[SolomonVII]

To me, it sounds like the same thing.
Except that pots of gold at the end of rainbows actually sounds somewhat comprehensive, while your "explanation" reads like word salad.

I don't mean to be rude. It genuinely sounds like word salad. I can't make heads or tails of it. It's abstract mumbo jumbo with no grounding in reality at all.

At least I know what a rainbow and a pot of gold is....

The unknown that is being referred to is that which is beyond the reach of empirical science to describe. The power of empirical science is that it is reductive to sensory experience, and information that limits itself to where the sensory data usually takes us is immeasurably useful.

The extents of reality nevertheless go beyond the reach of empirical science. That is what the meaning of the word transcendent is. The pertinent point here is that the 'unknown' exists as a part of the reality that can be inferred from empirical science, even if the laws of physical science are no longer involved.
Therefore, that 'unknown' exists and it is pertinent to our lives. We have evolved to deal with the chaos and void that exists beyond the reach of empirical science, and human experience is of a nature where that transcendence is being processed by humans in a way that has been useful to humans since before history was even being recorded.
Empiricial science has given us magnificent shovels and tools. That does not mean that we bring our shovels to the dance.
Science points us to alternate realities and dimensions and 'moments' that lay outside of space and time. It is the artists who make that which transcends our empirical experience into something as real and meaningful as scientific advancement.

 

[Silmarien]

You've repeated this a couple of times, but do you care to elaborate? I'm not really sure that it's useful to define a concept in a way that's not relevant to our being.

Why would it not be relevant to our being? I am going to have to follow @dlamberth straight into mysticism to respond to this, because divine simplicity is really the type of theological concept that comes from contemplation rather than empirical observation of the outside world. Look at something like the unity of consciousness--while the mind itself is clearly complex, I think anyone who experiments with contemplation or meditation will tell you that at its heart, there is something that is utterly simple and perhaps even better described as a "nothing" than a "something."

When looking at divine simplicity, we're dealing with the flagship of negative theology, so I don't think it's entirely wrong to refer to it as "conceptual nothingness." You would just need to look at that from within the context of the apophatic tradition, maybe go straight to Hegel and conceptualize the Absolute as a sort of synthesis of being and nothingness. (From a more explicitly Christian perspective, you might be able to say that even divine being would require differentiation between the unformed and formed, leading to the Father and then Son as Logos, but that is probably too explicitly Neoplatonic to be orthodox.)

Speaking of Neoplatonism, if you want an article about divine simplicity in its original Plotinian context, Lloyd Gerson is always a good source for all things Platonic: From Plato's Good to Platonic God

(Christians should probably look to Church Fathers like St. Maximus the Confessor instead--he's the foremost proponent of this type of thinking from the Christian world that I'm familiar with.)

*Just as a side-note... I am familiar which historical background behind divine simplicity. But it's never explained in a language that isn't reduced to paradoxical concept of how such simplicity can causaly relate with our complexity. Hence "process theology" makes more sense to me, although I'm not married to it. I'm always interested on updated perspective on either concepts of what we label as divine and God.

Sorry, missed this. I'm not sure I can help you, then, except to challenge the idea that our complexity doesn't have an element of simplicity at its heart as well. Paradox makes sense to me, but process theology doesn't. I don't think the two are necessarily opposed, though--Hegelianism is kind of both.

 

[dlamberth]

Well written, Silmarien. You covered the subject pretty well.

Look at something like the unity of consciousness--while the mind itself is clearly complex, I think anyone who experiments with contemplation or meditation will tell you that at its heart, there is something that is utterly simple and perhaps even better described as a "nothing" than a "something."

Very true. What's interesting is that the Mystics say that in the "Nothing" is Everything. It has to be experienced to be known.

For instance you cannot just describe Apple Juice and talk about it, you must drink it. Apple Juice cannot be described by concepts and words. Apple Juice can only be encountered by direct experience.

When looking at divine simplicity, we're dealing with the flagship of negative theology, so I don't think it's entirely wrong to refer to it as "conceptual nothingness."

To give an example of negative theology, God can be described in the negative such as the unseen, unrelated, inconceivable, uninferable, unimaginable, indescribable. Yet at the same time the Divine can be "experienced". This is Mysticism at it core.

(Christians should probably look to Church Fathers like St. Maximus the Confessor instead--he's the foremost proponent of this type of thinking from the Christian world that I'm familiar with.)

It changes for me, depending upon whom I'm studying at the moment, but right now I'd suggest Meister Eckhart.

An interesting side note, at least to me because of my love for Thomas Merton, is that it was D.T. Suzuki, a Japanese Buddhist, who changed Merton's spiritual direction when he introduced him to Meister Eckhart.

 

[dlamberth]

What would "have no parts" mean? That's sort of how we describe "conceptual nothingness"... It has no distinguishable parts in it.

Try "nothingness" in an experiential setting, maybe through contemplation or meditation. I think experiencing it from that perspective might give an understanding to your question.

I find this concept intriguing, but I'm not sure that it's describing anything in particular.

Can anyone truly describe God? Not really. If a person tried, they would never hit the mark. If they never hit the mark, what are they describing than?

 

[DogmaHunter]

There's a whole lot more than Faith going on. There's also the Divine Mystery to explore.

Which is faith based.

Take your argument up with the Mystics.

Pot8to, potato

How is consciousness not a verb?

Yesterday, I was consciousnessing
We consciousnessed all night long!

uhu

 

[DogmaHunter]

I understand. When ones structure is doctrine, ritual, dogma and organization it becomes a lot harder to express the Divine Mystery.

More word salad.

Also, I'm not the one adhering to doctrines and rituals.

 

[DogmaHunter]

What evidence?

Observation and medical science

I don't think it's so much as "what" as much as it is "doing".

That doesn't answer the question. You used the words. I'ld assume that you had a meaning in mind when using them.

There's only One Divine source.

Prove it.

Trees have consciousness as do all plants.

 

[dlamberth]

Which is faith based.

I was thinking experiential based.

 

[DogmaHunter]

I was thinking experiential based.

pot8to, potato

 

[dlamberth]

pot8to, potato

Well, if God is an absolute reality for a person, such that everywhere they look, even in potatoes they see God, perhaps there's a lot more going on than "faith".

 

[DogmaHunter]

Well, if God is an absolute reality for a person, such that everywhere they look, even in potatoes they see God, perhaps there's a lot more going on than "faith".

There are thousands, millions of people alive today that you can go and talk to for whom the following things are an "absolute reality":
- alien abduction
- inner thetans able to manipulate space and time (scientology)
- allah
- visjnoe
- elvis is still alive
- michael jackson is still alive
- bigfoot
- the lochness monster
- time travelling visitors
- reincarnation (they're absolutely convinced of remembering past lives)
- .......

I don't care what people believe. And you don't either. Because you likely don't believe anything on that list. Except the "absolute realities" that agree with your a priori religious beliefs.

Yes, that's exactly what "faith" is: to accept as true (or "absolute reality") those things that you merely believe but can't prove or demonstrate or support with objective evidence.

 

[Tinker Grey]

Well, if God is an absolute reality for a person, such that everywhere they look, even in potatoes they see God, perhaps there's a lot more going on than "faith".

Delusion?

 

[dlamberth]

Delusion?

No, I don't think so. It's more like "Immanence", as one might find in Panentheism.

 

[dlamberth]

Yes, that's exactly what "faith" is: to accept as true (or "absolute reality") those things that you merely believe but can't prove or demonstrate or support with objective evidence.

I guess the apple tree in my back yard is based on Faith as well than?

 

[Tinker Grey]

No, I don't think so. It's more like "Immanence", as one might find in Panentheism.

Seeing stuff that other people don't see is delusion.

 

[Quid est Veritas?]

I agree that this is a methodologic assumption. The "lower" categories are not any "less real" than the "higher ones" in a subjective sense. But the more general category is more objective. The idea being that, no matter how you look at a rock, you can always see it as a collection of forces or particles. It is more general.

I also think the view that the rock is more real than the particles that make up the rock is an epistemological dead end. The entirety of scientific and technological progress is primarily driven by figuring out what stuff is "actually" made out of.

Imagine two people sitting on a hill top. They both witness lightning strike a far-off tree. The first person says, "That lightning is real for me. The experience of lightning is more real than anything else I could see. I am content." The other person says, "I want to know what that lightning actually is. What is is made of?"

The first person is at an epistemological dead-end. He can known nothing more about lightning.

The second person will go on to discover electricity, electro-magnetism, light-bulbs, radios, computers, the internet, Wifi, satellite GPS, and much more. All because they sought to better understand lightning in a more fundamental sense rather than seeing it simply as it is in a subjective way.

So I suppose neither view is "correct" per se, but one view has lead to greater understanding and technological progress whereas the other has not.

In what way does one lead to anything more than the other? Both are merely building abstractions. The one creates principles and systems which he attempts to apply; the other is substituting his own understanding of, or memory, or subjective experience, for the thing itself. The latter isn't experiencing anything except the arrival of a modulated nerve impulse, which in reductionist terms is nothing but sodium and potassium exchange over a membrane. Either way, we are treating 'reality' in abstraction. You cannot say one leads to greater understanding, as you are presupposing valence of what 'understanding' entails. This is the difference of the Taoist Sage and the Confucian, the Platonist vs the Aristotelian. We are debating the merits, but on what scale? Our Empiricism assumes intersubjectivity, which is highly problematic from a strict observational standard, so actually there isn't as big a difference as we think. Regardless we are looking at complex phantasms loosely connected to what they are meant to signify, and assumed solid.

Besides, we have no way of knowing whether electromagnetism et al. is any closer to anything. Remember, we know all our Science is probably wrong. Quantum Theory and Relativity Theory are a bit at odds, so we look for a Grand Unified one. This means that what we think we know we know to be deficient of the actual presumed end-point. It is all an abstraction after all, theoretical circles in the sand, unless you adopt some a priori Idealist notion. It isn't a mutually exclusive proposition therefore between your two friends on a hill.

We know science is useful, but little more than that. Much modern science is Empiric, so Empiric values predicting Empric results are still hedged on the presumed validity of Empiricism, even when we have 'predictive value'. Petitio principii, in other words. It means little, as old-fashioned systems like Galenic Physiology made positive predictions that were confirmed, but today we think the system wrong in entirety (for instance in Haemosiderosis, where the Galenists predicted bleeding would help and it does or how shockingly well it predicts Arterial Wave form). Or Roman Aquaducts built on incorrect ideas of pressure and flow, have worked for millenia regardless. Our Science too will pass away, and future generations will laugh at the silly things we thought, and they will likely be unable to show their ideas more fundamentally having 'greater understanding' than ours. For things often make long winding paths to return to favour or depart. Atomism was rejected as idiotic by Aristotle, the foundation of the tradition leading to Science today, only to return. The same with solid-state universes from the ancients to our day, multiple times. Or Aristotle's four causes, which we merely differentiated by field. Or Scholastics debating potentialities and modern quantum states. Or ether as unitary element, etc.

So neither can show 'greater understanding' nor can we assume technological progress. Progress implies a goal moving towards, but if that goal is itself a debatable abstract value... Lord Kelvin said heavier than air flight impossible, being a great Scientist with all the latest in scientific materials and meters at his disposal. Those with far less, much less technological resources, made him look a fool.

We are assuming the paradigm you prefer here, that asking how something comes to be, by reducing it, you understand it better. Perhaps the whole is more than the sum of parts. Losing the forest for the trees. After all, reducing man to his physiological homeostatic mechanisms and nerve depolarisations, you gain little real understanding of the creature in front of you. You gain insight into an abstract homunculus you made, a reduction to broad similarities or bell-curve generalities, which may or may not correspond. How can we even tell the difference between the abstract and the original it was abstracted from? We are creating a meta-narrative and presupposing it to be veridical. We humans are quite sloppy.

For you, what is the alternative to monism?

Dualism. I think there is something called 'I' and things beyond that. Often these may be intermingled to whatever extent, for I certainly agree a large part of my conception of myself has a physical component, but then I don't know where my concept of my own personhood begins or ends, nor if my conception is fundamentally valid. However, it clearly must end somewhere, or all bets for rationality and such are anyway off. So either it does or it doesn't matter.

Is not mind (or Mind) also just another category? Is not God just another category invented by us?

Seems like turtles all the way down to me.

Nope. The Tao that can be named is not the Tao. Read my first posts again. For us to be able to characterise at all, we are looking at potential metaphysical necessities here.

 

[dlamberth]

Seeing stuff that other people don't see is delusion.

But others do see God as immanent. The count would be billions. Any more I think that not see the Divine in life is the delusion.

 

[Tinker Grey]

But others do see God as immanent.

That is not seeing; it is defining.