jkb

well considering the christian god at one time did supposedly reveal itself to people I think this destroys your premise that it would not reveal itself so as not to influence us.
Think Moses and the burning bush, Moses bringing down the ten commandments, putting plagues on the people of egypt, sending the angel of death to kill the firstborns, etc, etc. There are many more examples where the christian god has supposedly revealed itself, and they dont seem to be accidental. They all are on purpose to influence events.


oh btw, a fellow lurker here.

jkb

Jobar

Hello, NeoDeltaI, UU, VITS, and jkb- welcome to II, and I hope you enjoy the discussions here.

Virus, I used to live in Maryville, back in the late 70s. Do you by chance know John Manning, of Manning Lane?

First off- some of you may have read garthoverman's thread in this forum, "Atheism opposed to pantheism?" If not, I suggest it- you will see some of the thoughts of other pantheists who post here, and also the sorts of questions you will be asked by the non-pantheist atheists and agnostics who frequent these boards.

Philosoft

By "human characteristics, do you mean characteristics that humans possess or characteristics that humans can observe and understand?

<strong> Wait, how do we "realize" something about this God that has no characteristics in common with us?

<strong> Then how can we possibly know anything about it? Are there any plants or animals on this planet that do things God also does?

<strong> You seem like you fathom something about it. If you don't have any idea what it is, how do you know what it is not?

<strong> Heh. "Brain power"? What are we measuring with?

<strong> Again, I ask how it is possible you know these things about something we can't know anything about.

<strong> So is what you just described something we can accurately call "God" or is it just your anthromorphozation?

Keith Russell

NeoDeltaI said:
"Therefore, in short, we could be an experiment, God could be the scientist, and its silence is preserving the validity of the data collected. Any thoughts? I'm especially looking for criticism, since I've not been able to discover any errors in this thinking (since my mind suggested this to me)."

But, lacking any evidence of 'God', there is no rational reason to believe that God exists, and keeps hidden so as not to affect the 'experiment'.

Beliefs should be held rationally. To be rational, beliefs must be based on evidence.

Until I perceive some evidence that 'God' exists, I--as a person trying to be rational--cannot believe that 'God' exists. Until I observe evidence that 'God' exists but keeps hidden, I cannot believe that, either.

Keith.

[ September 18, 2002: Message edited by: Keith Russell ]</p>

K

Virus:

Your proofs try to inject mathematics into an essentially non-mathematical argument. It doesn't make any sense to say that I am equal to my eyes. That would imply that my eyes are a subset of me AND I am a subset of my eyes. The first part is obviously true. The second part is ridiculous. If you want a mathematical proof, you can't be playing fast and loose with "=".

I also think it's isn't at all clear that we're a significant part of the universe. If you're talking about humans, I'd say it's probably not true at all. If you're talking about all the life that may exist in the universe, who knows?

Marz Blak

[Edited to remove: there was actually a passage here I wished to quote into a thread on Pantheism ]

[ September 18, 2002: Message edited by: Marz Blak ]</p>

Goliath

*sigh* I despise seeing such a beautiful thing as Mathematics being abused and misused by laymen who think that they have the slightest idea as to what they're doing.

Does that mean that said definition *is* the only such definition?

What do you mean by "human characteristics?"

Since I have made no such claim, I have no burden of proof.

First of all, you would need to prove that a human having a characteristic implies that the universe has said characteristic.

Secondly, what do you mean when you say that something has a characteristic "on a much larger scale than ourselves?"

I have no idea what this means. Since you know *oh so much* about mathematics, you should know that mathematicians always like to rigorously define their terms.

Agreed.

Agreed.

Again, I don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean when you say that a cell or molecule is "aware" of something? What do you mean when you say that a cell or molecule is aware of something "in a primitive way?"

Keep in mind that there is no way--and no need--to refute the undefined.

I'll give you this.

Incorrect. My eyeball is not my right arm. My right arm is a part of my body.

Why don't you just say that our eyeballs are a significant part of our bodies? Why the equals sign abuse?

I call this extraneous use of symbols and terminology.

Well....what do you mean by "seeing our bodies?" My eyeballs can allow me to see--for example--my right arm, but my right eye cannot see my left eye, nor can it see my brain.

This should say "A significant part of our bodies allows us to see some parts of our bodies."

Again, I don't know what you mean by a part of our bodies "seeing" anything. Our eyeballs allow *us* to see things.

Since you've never really defined self-awareness, your "proof" crumbles to dust.

I have absolutely no idea what you mean by this.

Are you sure that such a view is possible? What do you mean by an "objective" point of view? Have you ever heard of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle?

Since you haven't defined what you mean by "equals," you certainly are not allowed to "substitute" anything (whatever you mean by "substitution" in your little world of vague notation).

What if they're not? Have you proven such a claim?

How about a devastating deconstruction of your "argument" by someone who actually knows something about mathematics?

Sincerely,

Goliath

NeoDeltaI

My theory is that God, if it did create us for an experiment, would not be omnipresent, or vengeful, nor any characteristic of the typical Apologetics' God, save that it created us and has a purpose for creating us. That way, any information leaked to us about its existence would be out of God’s power to control outside our universe’s laws of physics. Am I making sense? I’ve reread this paragraph and I'm confusing myself.

Ultimately, I'm trying to refute simultaneously the arguments that
a) Since God doesn't let its plans or existence known, there is no God.
And
b) The Apologetic Christian God is the only God which can be explained through the writing of the Bible.

In other words, I'm trying to apply some form of motive to why a God would be silent, and at the same time refute the argument that the Bible accurately describes the only God that could exist.

God wishes to study us in a natural environment, I feel, is a relatively straightforward motive for a creator to keep its existence hidden from its creation. This would successfully refute that a silent God, or creator, cannot exist.

My argument that God made an error long ago and that presented humans with a brief view (or knowledge of) God, is very shaky, I'll admit. My reasoning is as follows:

Let's say that several thousand years ago, a man was walking through the forest and suddenly saw a television on a tree stump. Forget that the TV needs electricity and a signal to operate (perhaps its playing a tape and is hooked up to a powerful battery, both out of view). It's turned on and displaying pictures of moving clouds and playing music. How would this man realize what the TV was?

a) He has nothing to relate the TV to something else he's ever seen, i.e. changing colors on a (relatively) flat surface.

b) He has never heard of music being reproduced electronically, therefore he cannot understand how the TV plays sound without enough room for instruments.

So here's this big black stone (a stone would be hard, and could be shaped like a TV, so I figure he'd use that as a very limited basis of what this object is), that's defying the logical limitations of a stone (it changes color, like no stone could, and it plays music, like no stone could). As we humans have a tendency to rely on how we think the world works to explain things, he'd most likely call this stone super-natural, since it works outside his understanding of physics.

Therefore, I'd assume that humans long ago, presented with an advanced object we'd easily understand, would create a whole religion, or super-natural explanation, of that object.

I'm asserting, also, since there is religion in this world, something that ancient humans couldn't explain must have produced the need to explain (Religion), therefore there's something above us, beyond our understanding. I know I don't present anything near an airtight case, that's why I'm presenting my hypothesis here.

Ahh, but if I understand you correctly, why would a God need our faith in it? This would make a good discussion, but it’s outside what I hoped to discuss in this thread.

My reasoning is that God wouldn't intentionally make itself known. The stories of the bible are good examples of a fundamentalist Christian God, however I feel the validity of the Bible comes into question at this point, and that argument will ultimately lead away from the thread's intended topic.

My idea was that one mistake by God, which humankind couldn't explain rationally, would set off a gossip wildfire, to the point that many different versions of the same events could exist in lore (Religion). I'm reminded of another PBS special, which I believe was entitled, "The Power of Myth". It showed many comparisons of stories from the Bible to ancient myths, but I don't know it well enough to quote anything, regrettably.

However, I feel you are right to assume that these mistakes made by God could possibly be intentional. I'll take it a step further and say they may even be a preparation step for the rest of the experiment, like adding one chemical to a mixture to see what happens. This wouldn’t mean that what God decreed in the Bible would necessarily be true, but would explain why we “received” the information (misinformation).

I agree that you cannot prove the improvable, however I feel you can prove the possibility. Once again, I'm trying to show that a silent God is indeed possible, even if not probable.

Sorry if someone asked me something, or argued something regarding the topic at hand and I haven't responded above. I get dizzy proofreading, and occasionally forget to put something in.

Edited for a simple grammatical error: wrote 'a' instead of 'and'.

[ September 18, 2002: Message edited by: NeoDeltaI ]</p>

Philosoft

Neo,

I'm a little confused. What's the purpose of replacing a poorly-defined, unobservable omnimax God concept with a poorly-defined, unobservable not-omnimax-but-still-quite-powerful God concept? It's silly to even consider the "possibility" of either one existing when the respective definitions a priori eliminate a zero possibility outcome. It is truly trivial to speak of the possibility of a method of "existence" for which we have exactly zero demonstrable examples.

VirusInTheSystem

Goliath: First of all, I'm sorry for offending your love of mathematics (or perhaps blaspheming the very goddess of mathematics, judging by your religious reaction) with my post... i came up with all of it on the spot in response to Neo's ides. Second, I don't claim this is mathematically *sound*... I only used it to show an interesting relationship between ourselves and the universe, and possible implications of that. I will certainly work on giving it more clarity and mathematical soundness. As I said though, I wrote it all "ad lib"... i didn't come up with this and have time to think about it or work on it. I just spit it out as I thought of it.
Also, I don't really believe that the universe is self-aware as we are, or that the universe is God, or that the universe is *not* self-aware, or is *not* in some way part of "God". I'm not trying to push any particular beliefs... just to open up interesting possibilities.

quote:Again, I don't know what you mean by a part of our bodies "seeing" anything. Our eyeballs allow *us* to see things.

Ok, for more clarity, I'll call it: Our optical system. This is our eyes, the optical nerves, and the brain. I know that our eyeballs alone do not *see* anything. But combined with the optical nerves and the brain, they do.

So our "optical system" is a part of us. It is us. I don't mean it literally *is* us in our entirety... It is *human*. It is the same substance that we are. It's a part of what makes humans, well, humans.

And by saying we are similarly a part of the universe-- first, it is hard to argue that we are a part of the universe. We are of the same *substance* as the universe (matter and energy). We live our lives in a certain role within the universe. So I believe we are definately a *part* of the universe in more than a purely physical sense. We are part of the universe's *mechanics*, part of its structure.

If you think the universe has no structure, no purpose, no direction... then I suppose you would have to limit our relationship to the universe as: We are part of the universe simply because we are in it. We are not a part of the universe's *purpose*, because the universe itself has no purpose.

But I am inclined to think the universe does have some purpose. Maybe I'm just fooling myself. Maybe the jokes on me... on all of us who think that existance has some sort of meaning.
-------------------------------------
quote:

Yet these molecules are somehow structured in such a way as to be aware of themselves as a personal entity, and aware of their surroundings in some primitive way.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Again, I don't know what you're talking about. What do you mean when you say that a cell or molecule is "aware" of something? What do you mean when you say that a cell or molecule is aware of something "in a primitive way?"

-----------------------------------------

I don't mean that individual molecules are "aware". I mean that molecules, when combined in a certain structure: our brains and bodies, become aware. I mean that collectively, the molecules and cells that make a human or an animal, are aware. Not individually.

"In a primitive" way refers to how humans percieve the universe. It refers to our limited sensory perceptions, unless you want to suggest that humans have the most advance perception possible. I would think that our sensory and mental perceptions, relative to what is possible, are absolutely primitive.

----------------------------------

quote: What if living organisms such as animals and humans are like the "eyeballs" and ears and fingertips of the universe?

What if they're not? Have you proven such a claim?

As I said, I'm not out to prove anything. I'm only trying to show the *possibilities*. So what if they're not? What if they are? I said "what *if*"?

Get it now? "What *if*"

What if you, Goliath, might actually be a sentient computer program, or a computer program that appears to be sentient (but we have no way of proving that you are sentient since we are not inside your mind). What *if*

It's philosophy, not mathematics. As far as my "mathematical" theories, I just thought it was an interesting way of laying out certain philisophical ideas.