Inconnu

DD, you seem to be arguing that god is a product of imagination and as such, god is real, at least to the imagineer. Not sure about it tbh

Darth Dane

DD, you seem to be arguing that god is a product of imagination and as such, god is real, at least to the imagineer. Not sure about it tbh

Some say that it there is a law called "mind over matter"
The Tibetans say that everything is made of "mind" or "mind-stuff#, and thus if everything is in the mind we can control it, just like we do in concious dreams.

Experience is not bound by physical attributes, as we can see through our dreams.

If our conciouss dreams are also electrons running in the mind, then those electrons that enables us to fly in dreams, why should they not allow us to do it in "real" life?

God is not the product of imagination, imagination is a product of God!




DD - Love Spliff

sandlewood

I’d say you are anthropomorphizing the moon. Actually, all we need to say is that Earth’s gravity affects the moon, not that it has any meaning to the moon.

I think there is some equivocation going on there with words like “meaning” and “experience”. We commonly take “experience” to mean a particular thing. You can’t say a rock experiences something and then expect the word “experience” to retain its old meaning.

This all sounds to me like Bishop Berkeley’s idea of “to be is to be perceived”. Since things stay in existence when humans are not there to perceive them, there must be a god that perceives them all the time. But I believe I once brought this up in an old discussion (the search function of disabled so I can’t find it) and it turned out not to be what you were talking about. Didn’t you say that everything in the universe is conscious to some extent? And from that it follows that everything “experiences” everything else—such as by gravitational force, for example—which explains why everything remains in existence? If so, although that’s an interesting speculation, I think it needs more support.


I think it’s possible that our inclination to see consciousness and meaning in everything, even dead objects, is akin to our tendency to see faces in random pictures. It’s a side-effect of the way the brain works.

Albert Cipriani

Dear Lob,
Yes, meaning may be divorced from our consciousness but not from the consciousness of those entities in relationship with one another.

I do not. I wish to argue that all relationships in the universe are meaningful, whether or not we are conscious of them.

Yes. And there is meaning in their interaction, that those rocks perceive.

Yes. Such a universe could not “perceive” or be “conscious of” or “experience” itself. Such a universe would be the very definition of a non-universe.

Yes.

We are arguing that existence is manifested by a subjective (perception, consciousness, meaning, experiential, you name it) reality, not by an objective (external, logical, empirical, factual you name it) reality. If you can accept this, then just maybe you can also accept the notion of a God whose existence is manifested by subjective reality and stop searching for God in all the wrong places, i.e., through objective reality.

I knew of no experiment to detect the effects of ether. If such an experiment were conducted, then I’m in error for thinking that scientists thought that it could not be detected. I’ll take your word for it. What I was ridiculing was the notion of proposing the existence of what, by definition, could not be detected. I believe Einstein’s Lambda fudge-factor was such a notion. Something he considered the worst mistake of his life.

That would be true for you. But I would continue to exist for me as long as I could relate myself to something other than you, a mirror, for example.

Yes, if you were the only entity in the universe that was in relationship with it. This corresponds to the idea of annihilation. Whereby Catholicism teaches that if the Creator lost awareness (stopped being in relationship with) any part of His creation, it would revert back into the nothingness from whence it came. It is God’s consciousness of all universes and every part of this universe that maintains its existence and keeps it suspended from annihilation.

Obviously, I have more consciousness than you do for my perception of this universe includes its Creator. Just joking. Thanks for the smart post. – Albert the Traditional Catholic

Adrian Selby

Does it make to sense to ask of something what it means for it to exist, when we are talking about something rather than nothing. The term 'something' connotes existence doesn't it?

Lobstrosity

This wasn't something that couldn't be detected, it was an addition he made to a theory that we would one day have the technology to test. Basically, he intuitively thought that the universe should exhibit certain symmetries because such symmetries would be too "beautiful" or "elegant" not to exist. One of his intuitive feelings was that the universe should be in steady state. It did not make sense to him that the universe could be expanding or contracting (this was before the Big Bang theory was postulated). Since his theories resulted in a universe that was contracting, he added a fudge factor (the cosmological constant) such that they would imply a steady state universe. He later called it the biggest mistake of his life because he realized he allowed unsupported personal ideology to blind him. Had he not added the fudge factor but instead trusted his work, he might have been able to predict the Big Bang...something that would have been truly extraordinary at the time. In an amazing ironic twist, however, it seems that Einstein was actually correct in postulating a cosmological constant. Experiments indicate that a non-zero cosmological constant actually exists. It seems Einstein's only mistake might have been trying to give a value for this constant without the use of empirical data.

But I understand what you were trying to say with these examples, Albert.

Tercel

"Unicorns" are 'something'. They do not exist however. They are a concept only which is not instantiated in reality. What this thread seems to be aimed at examining is what is actually means for something to be "instantiated in reality". I propose the definition that such instantiation consists of the concept being perceived. The materialists however belief that things can exist independent of all awareness. Personally, I find it hard to understand exactly how something can exist "out there" independent of any perception. Not only is it true that it "might as well not exist", but I suggest that it doesn't actually exist. Hence what I'm looking for is an explanation of what consistutes "existence" according to the materialists.

Tercel

Well, yes. But that doesn't explain very well what the nature of that actuality is.

Are you saying:
"Something exists if and only if it has a specific location in space-time"?
Does "space-time" itself 'exist' under that definition?

Well this doesn't really help. I'm perfectly aware of how to use the word "exist". It doesn't explain the nature of how things exist though.
For example, I would just interpret this as saying "were I to travel to the center of the solar system, I would perceive the sun".

Albert Cipriani

Dear Adrian,
Yes. Tho, it may have only a subjective existence. For example this forum’s infamous orbiting pink unicorn. Most atheists think it is a parallel model for the non-existence of God. Actually it is a parallel model for the existence of God.

Most things we know about have a dual existence. For example, with one foot planted in objective reality and one foot planted in subjective reality, that horse you subjectively see in your head may also be the objective horse that actually crushes your foot. But the ravings of a lunatic and the visions of the mystic and the imagination of that orbiting pink unicorn only have a subjective reality. That’s no reason to deny the existence of such ravings, visions, and imaginations. But atheists do.

If there is a God, He necessarily inhabits the dimensionless realm of subjectivity, not the temporal/spatial realm of objectivity. Look at it this way, every objective event you can be aware of results in a subjective experience. The subjective experience is the reality that objective events have no part of but merely open up for us. Objectivity is the stone tool we use to get at the subjective marrow of reality. – Sincerely, Albert the Traditional Catholic

Tercel

I'm not saying that my worldview isn't supported by logic...
In fact I have argued often that it is more supported by logic and provides better support for logic than does atheist materialism.
...I'm saying that worldviews are allowed to be circular.

The difference between an idealist and a materialist is that an materialist claims that things find their ultimate explanation in terms of a miscellany of non-aware particles or in some non-aware "theory of everything", while the idealist claims that things find their ultimate explanation in terms of awareness. Naturally, the single such awareness in which everything else must find its ultimate explanation is equated with God. God is not an unwarrented assertion, merely a logical consequence of adopting idealism over materialism. And as Jobar has kindly alluded to already, there are quite a number of philosophical reasons for adopting the philosophy of idealism over materialism.