Crazy little thing called God:
In ancient times, unusual physical events apparently scared the shit out of the locals, even the local philosophers. Events like lightning, earthquakes, meteors, floods and things of that nature prompted fears and speculations about the wrath of some critter, a critter much more powerful than ourselves, that suffered petty jealousy and fits of rage. The goal, assuming such a being, becomes appeasement. That is a highly rational belief. Bad things are bad. It’s worth investigating ways to avoid them. It’s probably why Richard Simmons became a celebrity.
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But the story of God also includes the effects of such natural pharmaceuticals as the psilocybin content in certain mushrooms, the mescaline content of certain cacti and many other wonderful things. The ingestion of these substances to differing degrees produces highly altered states of consciousness with a notable continuity of experience between them. That experience often leads to novel understanding which, to the ancient tripper, needed a name also. Maybe the two issues were somehow related.
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Finally, the ever present nasty knowledge of our own mortality added a nut to the trail mix. Now we have a god who is a creature which occasionally brings great calamity, a known alternative universe and the need for some experiential continuity bridging the state of alive with the state of dead. Add in some mumbo jumbo by a priest trying to impress a girl or claim a mandate for leadership and you have the stew from which a God is born. Sort of like Aphrodite born of the simmering foam, arriving on a chunk of potato and waving a hunk of meat menacingly.
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Eventually, each of those issues became known to be the result of ‘ordinary’ physical and biological processes. The God that used to explain data received through the senses, rationally explain I should add, ceased to explain those phenomena any more. The deeper mysteries still allow for a God as explanation but the rational tag doesn’t fit so well any more. Now that God doesn’t explain any of its original activity, we hold onto the idea simply because it is an idea, not because it’s a good idea. The common parlance for that behavior is “God of the gaps”. God suddenly loses any relevance. This God cannot be appeased because it doesn’t interact. It’s like trying to appease arithmetic.
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Our perceptions are what they are. We learned to measure most of them. Explanations for those perceptions however, change with experience. The God explanation has so far failed in every case to account for an event in our perceived universe. So, where a rational person once posited a God with the burden of proof on an unbeliever to proffer a better explanation, that burden was met in every single case until we get what we have now. The activity became a game of hunt for the gaps and fill them with knowledge, knowledge in all cases replacing God. There is also another word for what knowledge replaces.
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At any rate, clearly the burden was met and now has shifted to the believer to explain what the heck God is and does. It is not rational to believe in something which has no measureable effect, is odorless, colorless, tasteless, massless, chargeless and above all pointless.
So, unless this god has an attribute that matters to us here, in this universe, pointing to the universe and doing things like claiming an unmoved mover or some ineffable je ne sais quoi is merely masturbation to the memory of a lost lover. The argument means nothing because the mover has no qualities other than that it came first. Aspice, officio fungeris sine spe honoris amplioris.
Some say love, it is a river, but it isn’t a river. It’s an emotion or a complex mix of emotions. Some say God, it is a flower, but what good does that do? What’s wrong with the word ‘flower’? People tend to use a lot of words to get around the fact that any definition of God which doesn’t run into the problem of stupidity immediately faces the challenge of irrelevance.
In other words, just give one concrete attribute and defend it. All knowing? All loving? All powerful? A matter of any relevance whatsoever? None of the preceding have managed to hold up under scrutiny (although I am happy to go ahead and go through the motions if you like). What can a disembodied mind do? Can it turn water into wine? Can it drive a plexiglass wedge through an ocean to allow some nomads to escape an army? Can it feed the slavering crowd on a bagel and some lox? Does it have desire? Does it have goals? Is that consistent with all knowing and all powerful? Is this just a run-around? I guess I have to throw the teleologimacal argument in the same trash bin. Without a definition, the argument is empty. With a definition, the argument is unnecessary.
So, even though clearly our universe is big, really big, and even though we are little and tiny compared to the big, really big, universe, and even though the grand order of things exceeds our knowledge, our word ‘God’ is only a placeholder and has no actual meaning when examined. What we used to call God, we now have different and more specific words for. Gravity, electromagnetism, air pressure, chemistry and ideas like that replaced the entire dictionary of definitions we used to use for God. At this point it is clear that the personal deity idea was bunk. It is only still rational to believe in such a creature if the believer is ignorant of the bulk of human learning over the past 400 years. Given access to elementary education and the internet, the belief is either not rational or not relevant. You choose. 
Perhaps someone can explain to me what they mean by God.
I agree that “God” is a placeholder. The problem with a lot of theology, it seems to me, is that rarely are the places held made to connect.
The classic spot where “God” is used as a placeholder is the answer to the question: “whyis there anything rather than nothing?”. Another spot is the answer to the question: “what is the right thing to do?”
But nobody ever seems to connect these two. Why should the X that stands for the reason for existence be equal to the Y that stands for what is right?
Anyway, thanks for the post 🙂
I have to a quote my son, at 15, on being challenged during confirmation class, whether he actually believed in God:
“As long as it’s spelled with two o’s.”
He’s a smart lad.
I’ve always had a hard time getting theists of the abrahamic variety to engage on this topic. They tend to say that atheists can’t understand (which may be true, often atheists seem pretty thick to me too), but since I am not an atheist, I wonder if they mean something more like, “if you weren’t indoctrinated with specific imagery when you were very young, you can’t understand.”
Which is fine but it does put a damper on relationships when the other party wants to convince me of something they can’t explain.
Well, I have some sympathy with the position.
I used to feel that way myself, and I still feel it with regard to the good old Hard Problem of Consciousness, only now I have had it from both sides – I used to think the anti-HPoC “just didn’t get it”, now I think it’s the other way round 🙂
I spy priors!
Oops forgot to close tag!
“I still maintain there is variability in “imperviousness” to indoctrination. Why are most people indoctrinated into the sect of their particular culture?” is my remark
I’m not convinced that there is a coherent concept of God.
Back when I was involved with religion, the question of the nature of God did puzzle me. But then I started reading the Bible. And it seemed that the nature of God was evolving over time. That’s when I began to realize that it was humans who created God in their image, and as their culture evolved, their created God evolved with it.
Well, I realised that too, but I figured that it was like science – the longer we were around the more we discovered about what God was like.
If you can’t explain it, I’d say that you don’t have a solid enough grip on what you are trying to explain. The HPoC is unique because there are two distinct rebuttals to the challenge. One points out the flaw in the question -which is still a problem because it suggests the question may be more difficult than it sounds if it is impossible to formulate well- and the other answers it on its own terms which doesn’t make anyone happy if they think it’s really a challenge because it’s really the terms they reject. It is diagrammable very easily but the question is misleading so people don’t recognize when it’s been answered.
For that to happen you need to construct an entire mythos or paradigm first, and establish it gradually with clarifications along the way, so that everyone can see how the question works from a similar vantage point. Once we do that, the question suddenly has the word “explain” glaringly standing on the side of the road dressed like a banana, and everyone recognizes the problem with the question.
It’s also the problem with the word ‘God’ afaict. Either it can be ‘explained’, or it ‘explains’ something. Any other possibility is no longer a part of our modern language and is literally meaningless to us today.
I’ll find a post I wrote somewhere else and post a new OP on the subject.
I’ve long been anti-HPoC. Maybe you could start a thread on that topic.
I just submitted a new thread on the supernatural element of the HPoC.
Indeed 🙂
But I need to clear my diary first….
My biggest problem with god is the use of god in argument. Lets take the fine tuning example. Richard Swineburn in “The Existence of God” tried to make an inductive probability model for the existence of God using the various characteristics of God (infinite, etc…) the problem with such claims is I do not find them to be based in evidence.
I take this argument not from the “prove god exists” aspect, rather the “how can you describe god” aspect. Gods throughout human history have been littered with the entire gamut of human qualities, along with various supernatural qualities. This is mentioned in the op. One must narrow down WHICH god, WHY that god(s), and defend such attributes.
The fine tuning argument argues that this is how a supernatural being would create a universe. How could one ever make such a claim? Why do these claims always seem analogous to “this is how a PERSON would make ‘x’.”? I equate this argument to going into a forest,seeing a patch of fallen trees and saying it was caused by a spelt bug. What is a spelt bug? Well, it has never actually been observed. We dont know HOW it knocked down the tree, but it seems like something a spelt bug would do. While in science, we do occasionally do this top first deductive approach (dark matter,dark energy) we still have some basis is what we know.
I am, even speaking as a former-theist, confused as to how someone can rationalize these issues.
To paraphrase Robert Duvall in Secondhand Lions, there are some things man has to believe in whether they are true or not.
When it comes to necessary a prioris, whether or not there is actually a god is as irrelevant as the question about whether or not “I” actually exist; whether or not “I” actually have free will, and whether or not an objective world external to my mind actually exists. We must assume all these things are true and live as if they are true.
What is relevant is that unless one accepts the existence of god as acausal first/sufficient cause, source of reason, free will intention and good, worldviews are doomed to non-rational, nihilistic subjectivity, whether one actually follows the implications of their non-theist worldview to it’s ultimate conclusions or not.
Sure, one can be a non-theist and live a happy, successful life as long as they either do not examine their worldview too closely or are content with existential nihilism, moral solipsism and viewing themselves as nothing more than biological automatons, but then rational coherency was never a pre-requisite for success or happiness in this world.
Yet some theists, when they have examined their world-view closely, have become non-theists.
The fact that your god exists but had no cause, is evidence that any other god can exist without being caused.
By “closely”, I mean “logically”.
No, they cannot, because the existence of the god I premise precludes the existence of any other such gods by definition.
Had your god been caused by “something”, then you would have an entity that had the ability and the time to limit the existence and power of any god and your argument might be valid.
Since your god is uncaused, there is “nothing” that has the power to decide which gods exist and which don’t or even to limit their powers.
Your premise leads to an irrational conclusion.
Please defend your premise.
That doesn’t change anything.
“Yet some theists, when they have examined their world-view logically, have become non-theists.”
Toronto:
The god I posit is posited as the (not “a”) source of existence. Obviously, no other god can “exist” except from the god I posit, which would render it something other than the kind of entity I have posited. Such secondary entities would not be the source-of-existence god, and so wouldn’t be gods at all under this definition.
Becase they claim to have examined it logically doesn’t mean they have. A lot of people think they are applying good logic, but are not.
The difference is that “closely” is a subjective perspective, and “logically” is an objective methodolgy.
BTW, for someone who has said that they don’t believe that logic is the arbiter of true statements, one might wonder why you are arguing as if your logical criticism of my statements indicates that they are not true.
Ok. So we must live as if these things are true. What does it mean to ‘live as if there is a God’? What is God and how does that affect our potential choices?
Ok. I accept God as acausal first/sufficient cause, source of reason, free will intention and good. Now what? As far as I can tell, that gets me precisely nowhere in terms of influencing any behavior or points of view whatsoever. Are you perhaps slipping judgement and eternal life in there on the sly? And if so, on what grounds? And too, if so, on what grounds would a person determine the criteria of that judgment?
I’m not following you here. How does this follow?
Toronto:
When part of my founding premise is that my god **is** the only god, you can’t then say my premise leaves it open for other gods to exist.
It doesn’t matter if I premise that my god is the only Leprechaun in existence, you can’t then say “Well, if one such Leprechaun exists, others could too!”. Sure, they might, but that isn’t the premise for **my** argument.
You can certainly offer up your own premises for your own argument – for instance, if you think an existence full of many gods can lead to a rationally coherent worldview, then posit that and see what happens.
Because “I” am criticizing your statements, not “logic”.
It is the “engineer” that analyzes a circuit, not his “test equipment”.
You yourself said that if a logical conclusion is not rational, then the premises are not valid.
Well, there are a lot of meaningful conclusions one could draw from the kind of god I propose, which would lead to ramifications for behavior.
Without going through all the logic and to focus specifically on morality:
If one concludes that “what is good” is an objective commodity (as per my posited god) and pursuing (or fulfilling) that good is the reason for existence itself, it might rearrange one’s behavior rather dramatically than if one believes that “good” is subjective and the only real consequences are those that occur if you happen to get caught.
If one believes that the consequences of pursuing or not pursuing the good are inevitable (like the consequences of how one interacts with gravity or electricity are inevitable), and not subject to the whim of any entity – including god – then it also might rearrange how one behaves and even thinks.
Do you really think I mean that logic is applied without an “I” applying it?
You’re using logic as if it arbits true statements from false while (in another thread) claiming it doesn’t.
But, without logic as one’s guide, such contradictions don’t really matter much, I guess.
Please answer this question with some thought and detail.
Is it possible that this statement describes you?
I have consistently, along with others, told you that logic doesn’t “tell” you anything.
Please follow my “logic” carefully and give me your opinion on it.
An engineer walks over to his stock in the lab and pulls out a two-input NAND gate.
He wires the output to an LED and each of the inputs to a button.
Only when both switches are high, does the LED light.
He labels one switch “Over 20 years old” and the other, “Over 40 years old” and then asks people their ages.
If a person flips both switches and the LED lights, the person must be at least 40 years old.
We now re-label the “Over 20…” switch to, “Under 20…”.
If a person flips both switches and the LED goes on, would logic have proven it “true” to say he is both “under 20” and “over 40”?
Please note that the logic circuit was not changed in any way.
Of course it is possible.
Obviously, since by logic both X and not-X cannot be true (principle of non-contradiction), a person cannot be both over and not over 40 years old at the same time and place.
An examination of the system shows that there is no means of ensuring that the input is accurate – people responding could make mistakes or be lying.
If we didn’t have the principle of non-contradiction, a person answering that the were both over 40 and under 20 at the same time and place wouldn’t concern us.
Because of a fundamental logical prinicple, we know the results were not true, so we infer that there must be something wrong with our system.
Ahh yes, the input might be flawed…
Yes! You validated the premises to ensure your conclusion was valid for the applied logic.
The logic had no way of determining the truth. The error was present before the inputs were processed by the NAND gate, (logic).
You have to validate your premises if you intend to use logic to arrive at a valid conclusion.
For some reason, you don’t believe you have to validate that the existence of god is a valid premise for any logic you build.
I don’t understand why you would allow that when you have just seen how faulty that can be with my simple example.
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That means that the “conditions that allow an uncaused god” and the “conditions that DON’T allow an uncaused god”, cannot both be true at the same time.
Only one of those two conditions can be true so therefore there is no uncaused god or there is the possibility of an infinite number.
Your “asserted single uncaused god” violates your own principles of logic and therefore is not a valid premise.
I really have no idea what you are going on about. I have stated repeatedly that if one’s premises lead to irrational conclusions, they must change their premise if they wish to develop or maintain a rationally coherent worldview.
You are erecting a straw man by adding “conditions” that exist which “allow god to exist”, when the premise is that god is the source of existence itself – no conditions “exist” except from the premised god.
Yes, you have said more than once and in more than one way, if the conclusion you reach is not the one you would accept, then change your premises.
Your saying, if your “inputs” don’t give you the “output” you want, choose new “inputs”.
That is not following the evidence.
The only condition that exists is that nothing exists at all to prevent any god from existing.
This is your claim, that god himself is uncaused in a vast infinite void.
Declaring that god is uncaused gives justification to the premise that, “there is nothing that exists that can prevent god from existing”.
If there were something that could prevent god from existing, then the premise that god is your “first cause” for your universe, is not valid. For your world-view, god must be the first cause, not reliant on permissions or causes of some other pre-existant entity.
Therefore, nothing exists BEFORE god, but that doesn’t mean something ELSE can’t exist alongside god without being caused.
Your god is proof that uncaused entities as powerful as god, can exist, without being restricted by anything.
God himself cannot PREVENT any other entity from existing since there is no point in a time-line that he could prevent or be prevented.
This is not a strawman, it is a conclusion that follows from your premise, that something as powerful as god can exist, and yet not itself be the result any cause.
Your premise of an uncaused god, in an environment where such a thing could exist, opens the door to other gods as there is nothing that can prevent them.
If you don’t accept where your premise has lead you, i.e, the possibility of multiple gods, you are forced to change your premise, in accord with your previous statements.
According to you, premises must be valid for rational conclusions. You said that to me yourself.
Justify your premise that only one god can exist.
If by “want” you mean “rational conclusions that do not contradict known facts about the world”, then yes. If my premises result in irrational conclusions or contradict known facts about the world, then I must change my premises.
Without a means to define what “evidence” is, and without a methodology of “following evidence” that is rational, then “following the evidence” becomes a useless phrase.
Toronto,
I’ve already sufficiently explained all this several times. I don’t have to “justify” any premise. I am free to posit any premise I wish for the sake of exploring the consequences thereof.
If you wish to have my rationale (not “justification”) for positing a single god and not several, it is because the existence of “several gods” doesn’t generate a coherent rational worldview.
An infinite number of gods might exist. I don’t know that they do not. However, in order to develop a rational worldview, “one” god works; “many” gods does not.
For “exploring” in your imagination yes, but not for “accepting” for the real world.
As a basis for your actions in the real world, you need a valid conclusion which you can only derive from valid premises.
You have told people here that theism is the proper world-view but you have arrived at that conclusion without valid premises.
Why should I accept that world-view for the real world?
All this very much misses the point of the OP which is that none of the attributes normally ascribed to God can be deduced from either WJM’s postulated first causer nor any measurable element of human experience. None. The postulate must be invented from either an innate knowledge or whole cloth and there is no way to test it or even to point to a single prediction or perception which it explains.
It is meaningless in its entirety as far as I can tell. Omniscient and omnipotent and omni anything (OTHER THAN OMNIMAX) (stupid caps lock) are words which cannot mean anything other than ‘more than our horizon’ because we give the words their meaning and we have no non-trivial inclination about the infinite. We have numbers which go to infinity and the substrate from which we produce numbers. Aleph null. Beyond that we do not use the term with any sort of communicable meaning.
What does the first causer mean for morality? Can you use your knowledge of the first causer’s moral guidance to answer some moral questions I might have?
Here’s one, the Serbian gunman has your family lined up against the wall and tells you to choose which one he will kill. If you do not choose he will kill them all except you.
What does the first causer say in that situation? And how could I gain access to those insights? Because, I’ve never seen a religion offer a single moral principle that I couldn’t deduce from situational ethics other than the golden rule, which, actually, I can deduce from situational ethics. soooo…
Tell me about this all goodness bit. What does that mean and what should it mean? What at all is different when you accept the posited first causer? Or is it really about slipping eternal judgment in there without saying so? And, if so, by what criteria are we judged and how do you know?
William J Murray,
Wait. I believe -as does almost any human- that what is good is objective. And too that pursuing what is good has value, again, in company with almost all humans.
That has absolutely nothing to do with religion and only insofar as some situationally specific definitions of good is influenced by culture and knowledge. We innately know that babies are to be protected and life is precious. All living things know this to some degree. If that comes from the first causer, we’re good. There is no need to ever even think about this first causer cause the job is already done.
No?
I didn’t say anything had anything to do with religion.
The real issue is how one rationally justifies the idea that an objective good exists, and what one means by it. What is a good or moral act? How and why is it good? Can one get an ought from an is?
Let’s say I put screws, leaves, sand and seawater into a blender and mixed it up. Is that a “right” or a “good” thing? Without the context of “what I’m trying to achieve”, it’s just an act, not really good or bad, right or wrong. If my “final cause” or goal is “to bake a chocolate cake”, then we can judge the actions as “bad” or “wrong” in service of that goal.
So, what does “objective” mean in the case of morality and the good? If morality is a description of human “oughts” – how humans ought to behave – then to say that “good” is objective means that human beings have an objective “final cause” or purpose that is true whether or not any particular human or group of humans agree with it or know about it.
IOW, if a sociopath tortures a child for personal pleasure, it’s objectively wrong whether the sociopath agrees with it or not.
If an entire culture decides it is okay to drown female infants or pitch less than perfect babies over a cliff, then it is either right or wrong regardless regardless of what the culture thinks or allows.
However, if what one really means by there being an “objective good” is that there is a “consensus good” that most people would agree on, then that creates some issues. If “most people” decide it is okay to round up all the Jews and gas them, does that make it moral to do so? If one holds that whatever the consensus says to be moral is moral, then how can one justify any challenge to the consensus morality? Etc.
If one, however, actually believes an objective good exists regardless of what any human or human institution claims, that belief requires the a priori premise that humans have an objective purpose to their existence (which our moral “oughts” serve); how can human existence have a teleological, objective “purpose” unless they were created by a purposeful agency for that purpose?
If I understand you correctly, the belief that we have a purpose is what leads you to believe in a creator.
So stepping back, what is it that makes you believe we have a purpose in the first place?
What does that tell you about that agent?
Nothing “makes” me believe it. I choose to believe it because if I do not, then there is no such thing as universal moral rules describing an objective good, and thus “torturing infants for personal pleasure” could be a statement of moral good depending on whatever subjective “good” some individual or group invents for themselves. If I define my own personal pleasure as the highest good, and if I happen to enjoy torturing infants, then it is moral by definition.
It is my experience, however, that “torturing infants for pleasure” is as objectively and self-evidently wrong as any other “self-evidently true” statement I can make about my experience; logically, if something is an “ought” (one ought not torture infants for fun), it can only exist in relationship to apurpose, because oughts require a goal or a purpose. One cannot get an “ought” from an “is”.
Thus, if it is an objective “ought” to not torture infants that holds true for all humans whether they agree or not, then it necessarily follows that it describes movement towards an objective purpose.
It might be true that there is no objective purpose, and that all “oughts’ are ultimately subjective, but I cannot live as if that situation is true. That doesn’t mean that I do not want to live that way; it means I cannot, just as I cannot live as if I do not have free will, and I cannot live as if there is infinite regress to causation.
If I cannot live as if morality describes a subjective good, it would be the same as if I believed that gravity was a subjective phenomena, but behaved as if it were objective; it would be a functional, practical contradiction, and an irrational way to live.
That it is necessarily purposeful, sentient, and by definition the incarnate “good”, because if it capriciously assigned purposes (aristotlean final goods), then it could create us in a fashion where torturing infants for pleasure was moral, thus “good” would be only a reflection of whim and might, which we rightfully reject as self-evidently not true. This is the view many atheists had of the christian god – a tyrant simply ordering what is good and what punishments would be capriciously in a might-makes-right manner. IMO, it is self-evidently true that “might makes right” is an immoral premise, whether one applies it to humans or to a god, therefore god cannot install “what is good” capriciously, or generate humans for a purpose capriciously. Good is good regardless of what any person or god says or is claimed to have said.
Acknowledging that self-evident truths exist gives us the sufficient grounding to challenge any person, group, institution or culture – even those professing to speak for god – on what is moral and immoral, just as the declaration of self-evident truths gave the founding fathers of America the recognized right (recognized around the world) or sufficient grounding to revoke the authority of the crown. If all “good” is just subjective or consensus, all one has is anarchy or mob rule as their grounding premise.
It also implies that since god cannot change what is “good”, then god is not omnipotent in the common sense of the word. God cannot do “anything”; god can only do what is in god’s nature to do.