What is NOT God?

[variant]

Well, yes.

And it's hard for me to believe this is a serious question, when you're asking it in the non-Christian area of CF.

So, apparently the only serious place to ask a question is where it is going to be answered in the Christian affirmative manner.

Your confirmation bias is showing.

 

[Resha Caner]

God is not distinct nor distinguishable from not God.

That is the epistemic problem of theism.

Yes, so you are requiring an argument of necessity from me - it is necessary that God did x. The closest I've seen anyone come to that is Dembski's design inference argument (I'm not referring to the pop ID that followed after). Intuitively it feels like a very good argument, but as soon as one tries to put it in a logical framework to solicit agreement from unbelievers the gaps become readily apparent. Still, it's the best I've seen so far - better than Warwick's Tractatus Logico-Theologicus or Plantinga's The Nature of Necessity IMHO.

So, also IMHO, the answer remains personal experience and trust. If I put my newspaper on the table and go inside to get a drink, and it is gone when I come back outside, there is no necessary reason for it's disappearance. It could be the wind blew it away or that the dog ate it. I'll never know.

But when my friend says, "When you set it down, I thought you were done, so I used it for kindling," you need to accept that as a possibility and trust the answer. You don't start arguing that is not a necessary solution, and you believe it is more likely that the wind blew it away.

 

[variant]

Yes, so you are requiring an argument of necessity from me - it is necessary that God did x. The closest I've seen anyone come to that is Dembski's design inference argument (I'm not referring to the pop ID that followed after). Intuitively it feels like a very good argument, but as soon as one tries to put it in a logical framework to solicit agreement from unbelievers the gaps become readily apparent. Still, it's the best I've seen so far - better than Warwick's Tractatus Logico-Theologicus or Plantinga's The Nature of Necessity IMHO.

I agree that those are some of the best sorts of attempts at present.

Lacking as a solution for convincing the skeptical, but a yeoman's effort from the people you mentioned.

So, also IMHO, the answer remains personal experience and trust. If I put my newspaper on the table and go inside to get a drink, and it is gone when I come back outside, there is no necessary reason for it's disappearance. It could be the wind blew it away or that the dog ate it. I'll never know.

But when my friend says, "When you set it down, I thought you were done, so I used it for kindling," you need to accept that as a possibility and trust the answer. You don't start arguing that is not a necessary solution, and you believe it is more likely that the wind blew it away.

When God starts to speak for, and explain himself to me like your friend does with you, I'll be inclined to listen.

Our brains are known to be hard wired to attribute agency to the unexplained, and while the Plantingas of the world take that to be a sign that God exists, I take it as reason to think the assessed agency goes further than warranted.

I see a different more conventional sort of agency in general with theism. I see the agency of people who wish to tell me about what God is like, and the obvious motivations they have for doing so.

 

[Ana the Ist]

Thanks.

There is apparently a subtlety in "I don't know" that many miss. Or at least I think there is. I think people get frustrated with this answer when one side is arguing for necessity and the other side is arguing for possibility.

If your car won't start and you have it towed to a mechanic who tells you, "The battery might be dead," and you ask if he can replace it and he replies, "I don't know," that would be an unacceptable answer. You need a different mechanic, because there are certain criteria necessary for repairing your car.

If however, you're sitting around on your front porch one evening and a friend asks you how to get a car engine started and you reply, " I don't know how all cars do it, but I once heard about someone who used a rolling start", there is no reason for your friend to get angry and start arguing about how it won't work in vehicles with a torque converter. A rolling start is possible for cars with manual transmissions.

You lost me at "necessity" and "possibility". What part of "I don't know how the universe started/existed prior to the big bang" is an argument for necessity or possibility?

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I wanted to pose my other thread another way.

In church, often the pastor says that God is "in this place".

So, is God distinct from the things in the room?

If you removed the pews, would God still be there?
If you removed the carpet, the windows, the walls, the crosses, the musical instruments, would God still be there?
If you removed the pastor, would God still be there?
If you removed 80% of the congregation, would God still be there?
If you removed the whole congregation, would God still be there?

You are now left with a barren plot of land: no building, no people, no pastor. Is God still there?

Okay, so keep removing stuff...

If you remove the grass and dirt from the plot, is God still there?
If you remove the Earth, is God still there?
If you remove the Solar System, is God still there?
If you remove the Universe, is God still there?

You are now left with Nothing. Eternal nothingness. A pure vacuum. No universe. No matter.

Is God still there?

My main questions:

1) How is God distinguishable from Nothingness?
2) Is God distinct? Or is God dependent?

Well...Nothingness doesn't send its only Son to die for the sins of humanity. Nothingness does.............nothing.

We can hypothesize by way of thought experiments all day, but unfortunately, these exercises don't necessarily always lead to the discoveries like E=mc2.

 

[Resha Caner]

You lost me at "necessity" and "possibility". What part of "I don't know how the universe started/existed prior to the big bang" is an argument for necessity or possibility?

By advocating for the Big Bang, you tacitly admit to a cause (though there may be those who think they can explain the causeless). What I was trying to say is that some may be trying to get you to concede the cause must be a living agent.

All you have to do is imagine a lifeless agent (which is pretty easy to do), and it blows the argument for a necessary cause. That is going to frustrate people. They don't want to admit that all you need is an imagined possibility - that you don't have to prove your possibility - that "I don't know" is a legitimate answer.

- - -

Going a little farther, however (I'm no longer speaking of your reference to the Big Bang), overusing "I don't know" can begin to stretch the limits of credulity. If a bank is robbed and I see a man running out of the bank wearing a mask and carrying money, it's a bit ridiculous to say, "I don't know who robbed the bank. It could have been a coincidence." We can always imagine possibilities that allow us to deny what we don't want to accept.

It would be nice if a definitive method could be made to separate legitimate from illegitimate use, but I don't think that will happen.

- - -

And going still further yet, for some time my only goal for logic in these discussions has been to establish that God is possible. It is possible the Big Bang had a living agent called God. From there, it's a matter of how much you trust my testimony ... and if you reject it, then it's a matter for God and you.

 

[variant]

Going a little farther, however (I'm no longer speaking of your reference to the Big Bang), overusing "I don't know" can begin to stretch the limits of credulity.

I don't know is always going to be appropriate for things we legitimately don't know.

And going still further yet, for some time my only goal for logic in these discussions has been to establish that God is possible. It is possible the Big Bang had a living agent called God. From there, it's a matter of how much you trust my testimony ... and if you reject it, then it's a matter for God and you.

It would be hard to show by logic that God is impossible because as I said before: God is not distinct nor distinguishable from not God.

So you are arguing against a position I (and many other atheists) don't hold.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I don't know is always going to be appropriate for things we legitimately don't know.



It would be hard to show by logic that God is impossible because as I said before: God is not distinct nor distinguishable from not God.

So you are arguing against a position I (and many other atheists) don't hold.

...and that's why we need to take a holistic approach to 'detecting' God.

 

[variant]

...and that's why we need to take a holistic approach to 'detecting' God.

Before taking any approach to detect God, first one would need to define God in a manner that it could possibly be differentiated from not God.

 

[Resha Caner]

So you are arguing against a position I (and many other atheists) don't hold.

I think you misunderstand me. Let's try this: I assume someone raised you when you were a child - a mother, father, grandparent, sibling - someone. Assuming your father was involved in raising you, I would expect that your idea of "father" when you were a child was formed by that relationship. You didn't create a definition from the void and go in search of a man to fulfill it. Rather, the man in your life, by default, became the definition of a father.

Even if later you became disenchanted with him and wished for something different, yet he was still your father.

 

[variant]

I think you misunderstand me. Let's try this: I assume someone raised you when you were a child - a mother, father, grandparent, sibling - someone. Assuming your father was involved in raising you, I would expect that your idea of "father" when you were a child was formed by that relationship. You didn't create a definition from the void and go in search of a man to fulfill it. Rather, the man in your life, by default, became the definition of a father.

Even if later you became disenchanted with him and wished for something different, yet he was still your father.

I fail to see the relevance. My idea of father was indeed taught and experienced (first hand).

Agency is ascribed to all things with religion based upon our experiences with other people. So, how am I to know this is not exactly what it appears? Fiction.

And, what does this have to do with what I said about what you said? I don't consider God impossible because the concept is as I see it, indefinite.

How shall I judge the possibility of an idea which has no defining qualities that will be absent or present when it is true or false?

 

[Resha Caner]

I fail to see the relevance. My idea of father was indeed taught and experienced (first hand).

And so it is with any person, including God.

How shall I judge the possibility of an idea which has no defining qualities that will be absent or present when it is true or false?

I don't know what idea you're talking about, but the point is that whatever your idea is, it is most likely irrelevant.

Again, let's pick something. Since the Big Bang was mentioned, I'll pick creation. Suppose you meet a person who (by whatever means) manages to convince you they were the creative agent - the cause of the Big Bang, and his name is Bob. But as you got to know Bob you find he makes mistakes - he indeed created all the evil mess present in this world.

It would be irrelevant for you to say, "But, Bob, I thought the creator of the world was perfect." It doesn't really matter. You get to know Bob, World Creator through first hand experience, not by philosophizing in an ivory tower (or in an Internet forum).

 

[variant]

And so it is with any person, including God.

Yeah, no actual first hand experience with God. I understand biology pretty well and can tell you that I need a father, but I don't understand cosmology to say that the universe needs one.

I don't know what idea you're talking about, but the point is that whatever your idea is, it is most likely irrelevant.

It's certainly not irrelevant, if I can not define God so as to distinguish it from not God for a given set of experiences then the epistemology of theism fails at it's onset.

Again, let's pick something. Since the Big Bang was mentioned, I'll pick creation. Suppose you meet a person who (by whatever means) manages to convince you they were the creative agent - the cause of the Big Bang, and his name is Bob. But as you got to know Bob you find he makes mistakes - he indeed created all the evil mess present in this world.

It would be irrelevant for you to say, "But, Bob, I thought the creator of the world was perfect." It doesn't really matter. You get to know Bob, World Creator through first hand experience, not by philosophizing in an ivory tower (or in an Internet forum).

My first hand experience doesn't even begin to distinguish bob from not bob either.

Sorry.

If you want to use your experience as a barometer you first have to have some criterion upon which to draw a conclusion for the various possible outcomes of your search.

Thats right where I started though and you pretended to understand me back then.

God is not distinct nor distinguishable from not God.

That is the epistemic problem of theism.

 

[Resha Caner]

Sorry.

I'm sorry this is difficult for you to grasp. I didn't expect it to be.

If you want to use your experience as a barometer you first have to have some criterion upon which to draw a conclusion for the various possible outcomes of your search.

Search? Search for what? Did you go searching for "father" based on some criteria? For what people have you started with a criteria, and then gone searching for a match?

 

[variant]

I'm sorry this is difficult for you to grasp. I didn't expect it to be.

It's probably because I see your argument as very poor.

Search? Search for what? Did you go searching for "father" based on some criteria? For what people have you started with a criteria, and then gone searching for a match?

My father was not a very difficult epistemic problem.

My father has some pretty definite qualities, and all that first hand experience puts it right over the top so, my doubting his existence would be a bit silly.

I solved it long before I knew what epistemology was, but then, that tells us how radically different the two ideas you are trying to conflate are.

On the other hand, this being you suppose to exist, has, no qualities I could surmise would look different in a world where it doesn't exist instead of a world where it does. Theologians have been trying to nail down a proper definition for eons without any luck, and forget about experience based testing of the idea.

The idea that you would compare this religious idea of yours to be as immediate to me as my own father is extraordinary to me that it doesn't fall apart as simply in your own mind as it does in mine.

I have to assume you aren't trying very hard.

 

[Viren]

You are now left with Nothing. Eternal nothingness. A pure vacuum. No universe. No matter.

Is God still there?

My main questions:

1) How is God distinguishable from Nothingness?
2) Is God distinct? Or is God dependent?

Nothingness exists and is unbounded. It fits most of the descriptions of God. The problem is we think of it as less or inferior to material objects. The only differnce is that "nothingness" or space is unchanging and eternal. If that isn't God what is?

 

[Resha Caner]

It's probably because I see your argument as very poor.

Let me start again, then. You spoke of searches. Do you search for "father" as an idea and "father" as a person separately?

 

[variant]

Let me start again, then. You spoke of searches. Do you search for "father" as an idea and "father" as a person separately?

I experienced my father and then learned about him as a person. The idea follows from the experience, and the observation of other fathers.

 

[Resha Caner]

I experienced my father and then learned about him as a person. The idea follows from the experience, and the observation of other fathers.

Exactly.

 

[variant]

Exactly.

And, were direct observation of this type possible for your God we would not be arguing.

So, I fail to see your point.