Heleilu

Gods, spirits, call them whatever you want, it seems like most people (though not around here) believe in immaterial intelligences. What keeps puzzling me is how an immaterial intelligence can exist. I only know two modes of existence, physical existence and existence as an idea. Spirits don't exist physically by definition, and existence as ideas doesn't agree with the alleged properties of spirits either. So, how can something with no physical existence influence the world without using conscious creatures' minds?

bltl6

What about love? We see the effects of love, but we don't see a tangable love. Yet love commands us doesn't it? It holds us captive and causes us to do all kinds of crazy things.

Of course, love isn't really intelligent like what you're talking about.

Have you ever heard of the watchmaker argument? A man is walking in the desart and sees a watch and says to himself, "Someone must have made this watch, for it couldn't have just come into being."

I believe this to be ture. And if we have a Creator, then that One must be greater than us, just like an artist is greater than his/her art. So an intelligent immaterial being (that can materialize at will) seems to be an obveious choice for something that could've created us.

Daggah

Love is a chemical reaction that goes on inside your brain. There isn't anything "immaterial" about it.

And who made god, then?

Vorkosigan

Not obvious to anyone at this forum. Setting aside for the nonce the obvious silliness of the "watchmaker" argument, the Designer need not have any particular goal or intelligence. For example, it may have created the universe so it could watch the patterns of the clouds in Jupiter's atmosphere, or the shape of the Great Wall of Galaxies, and we might just be a side effect. The Designer might well have been a robot, or something unintelligent working at the direction of a powerless but intelligent being. Or, given the bloodthirstiness of nature and human history, the Designer was obviously something that is stupid and revels in cruelty. There are lots of options for any "Designer," and almost none of them embrace something that is greater than us in any way.

Michael

d'naturalist

Am I a millionaire? I wonder because I have zero million dollars. (Actually, it would be an infinitessimal decimal, but we need not bother with my finances)

The point is, to say that a thing is immaterial is to say that it is composed of zero amount of physical stuff. When you have zero amount of something, you don't have that thing. So, to say that something exists when there is zero amount of it is an absurdity. Or fraud.

Love is a perfect example. It has no physical form -- it's composed of zero amount of physical stuff. Love is not in the air. It cannot build a bridge. Love does not exist! Independently, that is. Love is a phenomenon produced by the electro-chemical processes of the brain, which is composed of a greater-than-zero amount of physical stuff. So, a thing can exist without physical form if it is the by-product of something with a physical form.

As for this alleged deity and other noncorporeal agencies. Either they are composed of physical stuff (and I'll be generous and say that that stuff need not be atomic matter) and are thereby physical beings (and thus not supernatural -- aliens perhaps?), or they are composed of zero amounts of physical stuff and simply do not exist.

Of course, I could be wrong... the real question is, where can I buy a nice Porche convertible with my millions?

Heleilu

Love is an idea, a state of mind if you will, and only exists in our own minds. "Love" exists in the same manner as "liberty" or "three". It's an idea, and can't influence the physical world except by means of minds and bodies.

Maybe this is the right place to clarify my beliefs on the subject. I believe that there is an objective universe consisting of matter and energy (at least, though I haven't seen anything else), although most of it cannot be directly apprehended by the human mind. If there's something immaterial out there like a soul, I'd like to know if anyone has a theory on how it can work. In other words, I'm a materialist looking for arguments to the contrary.

1. Where did this Creator come from?
2. How can something materialize at will?

I was hoping for some other theist responses, but apparently not.

ohwilleke

There are certainly immaterial things out there . . . at least to the extent that they lack mass. Electro-magnetic fields, for example. Or, "the Government of the United States of America" or "General Motors", you can touch manifestations of these things, talk to people who are associated with them, but the entity itself, viewed as an entity, is immaterial.

Jamie_L

I'm with Heleilu (and I think d'Naturalist) on this one. The things you mention all exist in a material sense. We haven't really defined "material". Traditionally, this might not include massless things like energy or fields. In the context of this discussion, however, such things are material. That is, they are physically demonstrable parts of the universe. Energy and matter are basically the same thing in different states. Fields are the result of their interaction with the universe (more or less).

As for things like "General Motors", these are labels or ideas for organizations of physical things, as defined by the physical brains of human beings who create these organizations and labels. Still basically a material thing or an idea.

Jamie

IvanK

In particular, electromagnetic fields (at least in theory) couldn't exist without electrons, which are material particles that have nonzero mass.

Similarly, I'd argue that "love," "duty," "patriotism," "three," "good and evil" etc. are all concepts that would not exist without humans or some other material, conscious beings to experience them.

Amos

But Heleilu, humans do it all the time!

It is our humanity that is the illusion and our soul is real. Our soul is in charge of our body to a large extent because it is after all the unconscious mind that controls all of our body functions. There is no God other that this 'true identity' retained in our own soul of which our ego consciousness is just an isolated extension for the purpose of testing the environment of this present generation for the purpose of adaptation. Yes, this means that we as humans are not part of our soul but only exist as an "immaterial intelligence" to learn about our immediate environment through our senses via the conscious mind to become tied down in our soul (subconscious mind).

This makes your existence the "idea" you speak about and your physical existence not part of your "idea" because it has a mind of its own. This mind is what is commonly referred to as God and the challenge of religion is to come to a full understanding of your own mind (soul). From a religious perspective are you temporal in this "idea" and eternal in your "soul."

Amos