Taffy Lewis

God is supposed to be a personal being who is ontologically independent of anything distinct from himself. God's necessity is supposed to at least involve an unconditional, independent existence. This basically means that the conscious being which is God simply IS. There are no conditions or requirements for his existence. He just plain exists.

This is supposed to be in contrast to everything distinct from God. Humans and the rest of creation are supposed to depend upon many things. For example, humans have various environmental requirements such as oxygen and various historical requirements such as the process of reproduction. And ultimately humans and everything else can trace their existence back to God. At least according to traditional western theism.

However, there seems to be a good inductive argument against this picture of things. It could be argued that every uncontroversial instance of the existence of a conscious being involves a physical dependency of some kind. All human beings depend upon their brains in order to have a conscious or mental life. All of our thoughts, sensations, intentions, beliefs, desires, feelings, emotions, memories, hopes, wants, wishes, ideas, etc. depend upon a functioning brain. Even if some kind of mind/brain dualism is true it is still a fact that minds depend upon brains or at least some kind of physical basis. So we have:

(1) We are aware of billions of instances of conscious beings.
(2) Every uncontroversial instance of a conscious being of which we are aware is dependent upon a brain (and even imagined cases of conscious beings not dependent upon brains, such as computer intelligence, at least depend upon some kind of physical system).

(3) Therefore all conscious beings are dependent upon brains or some physical system.

But (3) contradicts the theist's understanding of God.

Any thoughts?

Jobar

Taffy, I think the theists will try to brush this off by claiming that God is a spiritual, not a physical, being. Trouble is, they can demonstrate nothing spiritual; they may try to define it as undefinable in the physical universe, but this means they have nothing but their own words to back it up. If spirit is completely indeterminate, then nothing we can say about it in the physical universe means squat.

Bill Snedden

It appears to me that the 2nd premise contains a hidden physicalist assumption. That is, it assumes that because the mind appears to be dependent upon the brain, that it actually is. However, traditional theistic dualism holds that the mind and brain are separate entities.

While the state of current neurophysiological knowledge is sufficient to call such a dualistic hypothesis into serious question, it does not provide conclusive proof of its falsity. Many theists will most likely question the assumption of physicalism that underlies your argument, holding instead that "mind" is a non-physical entity that interacts with the physical world through the brain while not being dependent upon it for its existence.

Regards,

Bill Snedden

Albert Cipriani

Well Said Bill,
The problem inherent with that approach is the problem of Descartes, and why the Catholic Church rightly put his books on the index. If the mind or rational soul is distinct from the brain yet can influence the brain and vice versa, where's their point of contact? If the one is truely spiritual and the other truely physical, by definition, like east and west the twain should never meet.

I prefer the notion, and I do not mean to be facetious, that all things are conscious. Quantum physics seems to be on my side. Plus it avoids the problems of a dualistic spiritual/physical, sentient/dumb universe. All is one. Ohmmmmm. -- Cheers, Albert the Traditional Catholic

eh

Is there really something in quantum physics that suggests everything is conscious?

Bill Snedden

One possible solution could be that the brain is a sort of "transmitter/receiver" built for providing interaction between the physical and spiritual.

Interesting. I must second eh's question in that I don't see consciousness as a necessary element of quantum physics. The "observation" that collapses the wave function need not be an act of consciousness.

However, if true, wouldn't this suggest a sort of pantheism (or perhaps panentheism)?

Regards,

Bill Snedden

yguy

Even if 1 and 2 are true for every conscious being other than God, what reason is there to believe the Creator wouldn't be the exception?

How could He require physicality if He is the creator of all things physical? If physicality was created, it appears there was a point in time before which it did not exist; and, following the logic proposed here, neither did God. That would make God subject to time, and therefore not omnipotent.

That's how it looks from here.

HRG

I agree that if a divine creator existed, he would be an exception. Thus the inductive argument suggests that no divine creator exists.

IOW, in order to create an exception for entity X, you must first present independent arguments that X exists and differs sufficiently so that X's case can be regarded as a reasonable exception.

Otherwise every inductive argument could be simply defeated by special pleading.

Regards,
HRG.

Darth Dane

Think of it like this perhaps. The methodology that Buddha provided, with yin/yang, is prevalent all over, to the point where "God" is teh "unmovable mover"

God never moves but humans do, so we are two sides of the yin/yang concept. However yin/ynag together is Tao. This Tao is the absolute. So we can always use yin/yang to divide, and Tao to unite. Depending on how you look you will need a different methodology, and this methodology determines your outcome. If you use yin/yang then we have heaven and hell. If you use Tao, you have one supreme God, or "all is one"





DD - Love Spliff

Dr. Retard

Hold on, so far as I know, even dualists tend to think that minds depend on brains. Maybe the second premise begs the question against some really 'out there' dualists, but it doesn't presuppose physicalism.