The philosophical conception of god in the age of reason and science.

I might have. But I also love a crisp clean equation. I get off on the notion of Turing machines as well. Give me perfect clarity. And also give me the beauty of a woman, to use an example we can all relate to. Does the beauty of a woman on planet Earth reduce to sentences or equations? I think not.

Oh, c'mon. No it doesn't, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean. Does the taste of cheese reduce to the taste of curds a whey? No, it doesn't. So now, can we go on. What is this? Lit. 101?

Hey, I know how simple the idea is. But I think it's significant. We hammer away at questions of god and science forgetting that none of these linguistic/mathematical explanations have much to say, really, about the most important aspects of life. Science can help us achieve certain technical goals. And myth can point toward better values. But life remains life, beneath all these abstractions.

Hey, I know how simple the idea is. But I think it's significant. We hammer away at questions of god and science forgetting that none of these linguistic/mathematical explanations have much to say, really, about the most important aspects of life. Science can help us achieve certain technical goals. And myth can point toward better values. But life remains life, beneath all these abstractions.

They have something to say, but it is after we have already had raw experience. We can learn a lot by thinking about ethical issues, but we better have seen them in action and felt the emotions. And literature and such can widen our view.

Oh baloney! anesthesia when you need surgery is the most important aspect of your life, at least for then. And an antibiotic when your child has a severe infection, is more important than any book. All of us are above the fray until we get into the fray. And understanding and analyzing is at least as important as myths, and for my money, a lot more.

See, no matter what rational explanation you give a spiritualist, they will immediately denounce said rational explanation in favor of believing in something which is beyond their intellect.

I agree with all of this. No argument.

---------- Post added 05-23-2010 at 10:54 PM ----------


I'm not saying that technology is unimportant. By the way, your mention of anesthesia is a great example of how something ineffable like pain is hugely important.

What is ineffable about pain? I can describe my pain to a physician. Not as well, perhaps, as professional wine taste like Robert Parker can describe the taste of his wines, but he has had a hell of a lot of practice at it, and wine tastes have built up quite a rich vocabulary by which to describe the taste of wines. Certainly wine-tasting is not ineffable. If anything, it is too effable.

Any scientist worth his salt is painfully aware of all the things we don't know.

But what reason is there to think that descriptive laws have a purpose?

I submit the concept of god (western monotheism) as originally formulated by the medieval scholastics is not adequate or coherent in an age of science and reason. The traditional, orthodox or classical attributes of god were derived from a fusion of Greek philosophical notions of perfection and Hebrew conceptions of the divine.
From the Greeks we got such attributes as omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence and eternal, changeless and impassive. This was at least partially based on Plato's notions of eternal changeless forms and Aristotle and the conception of the heavens as perfect spheres in circular orbits.
From the Hebrews were derived a personal god, judge, ruler, lawgiver but also a god offering protection and seeking justice and mercy.

The underlying worldview on which this classical notion of god was founded has been dramatically altered in the age of reason and science and yet the classical conception is still the dominant portrayal of god in established western religions.

In the old world view-
- the earth was young
- The species were fixed and specially created
- The earth was the center of the universe
- Man was the crown and purpose of creation.
- The universe was 3 story, heaven, earth and underworld
- Natural events were unexplainable mysteries

In the new world view
- the earth is ancient 4.5 billion yrs and the universe 14 billion years
- species are not fixed and mass extinctions and emergence of new species occurs
- the earth is an ordinary planet around an ordinary star in no special location
- Man is just another and recent species who recently appeared and evolved from lower primates
- The universe is unimaginably vast and there is no location for heaven or hell
- Nature is perceived as operating according to fixed immutable laws and revealed religion and supernatural intervention are largely rejected.

I am interested in altered conceptions of god which do not conflict with the modern worldview. I am primarily interested in philosophical conceptions of god from people who still allow for theism as a rational possibility. Is it possible to formulate a rational philosophical conception of god which does not conflict with experience, reason and science? Remember speculations do not have to be confirmed or even confirmable by science to remain possibilities. This is god as a philosophical speculation or conception not god as a scientific hypothesis.

As a start: I will suggest that god acts through nature and natural process. That nature is inherently self organizing and that order, complexity, life, mind and experience have emerged as part of a divine purpose or divine plan. God is not all powerful but very powerful. The primary divine value is creativity, to bring value from the primordial chaos and the formless void. Creation is an ongoing process not a completed act.

Oh, we can say "it hurts!" Obviously. If a paramedic felt the pain of an accident victim directly, though, s/he might not be able to get the wounded out of the car. As far as wine tasting, I wonder if we would all be happy sharing one glass of wine. The poetic guy could drink it and the rest of us could just listen to his description. It's quite economical, too. We could also stop wasting money on concerts. Let's just read the reviews. No need to fall in love, either. We can just read about it.

---------- Post added 05-23-2010 at 11:28 PM ----------


.

You just think that something is ineffable because the experience cannot be produced in others by words. If that is what "ineffable" means, then sure. But whoever thought (except for you) that unless the words actually produce the experience you have in others, what you taste or feel is ineffable? Only you. Of course, if you make it impossible for the taste or for the feeling to be effable (by definition) then, presto! It is ineffable. But that is not because it is ineffable. It is because that is how you have defined it. You made it ineffable. "I simply cannot describe it. You had to have been there!" Well, maybe, But maybe not.

Science doesn't explain everything, it's capacity and our capacity for understanding the world is limited. Our ability to figure out the world by reasoning is also very limited. Religion and certain kinds of philosophical thinking attempt to reason about what what we can't know. Why attempt to reason about something that's out of our reach? Why have beliefs about it?

He who really ascends so high annihilates himself, and all his previous knowledge seems ever less and less; his knowledge so increases that he knows nothing, all science transcending.

This knowing that knows nothing is so potent in its might that the prudent in their reasoning can never defeat it; for their wisdom never reaches to the understanding that understands nothing, all science transcending

This sovereign wisdom is of an excellence so high that no faculty nor science can ever unto it attain. He who shall overcome himself by the knowledge which knows nothing will always rise, all science transcending.

And if you would listen, this sovereign wisdom does consist in a sense profound of the essence of God; it is an act of His compassion, to leave us, nought understanding, all science transcending.

We can't predict the future very well, hardly at all. So why believe that our horoscope is meaningful?

And jeeprs, I still don't understand what you think about the law/lawgivers thing. Descriptive laws don't have a lawgiver, and the laws of nature are descriptive laws.

I read a bit in SciAm where they showed that they could eliminate (I think this was it) one of the 4 basic forces of the universe, and by tweaking another the universe could still theoretically exist.

I think Augustine said it best: God is radically simple.

The Father of phenomenology himself, Edmund Husserl, began as a mathematician, then switched to philosophy after he began understanding the power of universals throughout history, and this was as recent as the early 1900s.

Math could very well end up being the most perfect vehicle for the universal truth.

I didn't make it ineffable. I didn't make myself, or my ability to experience sensation and emotion of every kind, and learn to call this experience "me."
I feel you are dodging something here. Clearly our experience does not consist only of thought, which your post here seems to imply. Life is more than thought. It is also sensation and feeling. No metaphor or equation is even of the same "substance" (I am forced to use some word or other...)
What does an abstract answer, be it scientific, mystical, or literary, have in common with sensation/emotion? Clearly there is a relationship. Human experience is perhaps even the collision of concept (discrete) and sensation/emotion (continuous).

Like I said, it's a simple thought. But indeed, all of our sensation and emotion has an aspect that is ineffable. To "live in the moment" is largely to live with a sensitivity to that which our abstractions cannot communicate. I also mention that envy and hatred are largely related to abstractions. However, I don't want to sidetrack this thread. So we can discuss this in "ineffable."

well you're on the far side of philosophy at this point, heading into the mystical. Mysticism is the direct awareness of the radical simplicity of God. There are not many other mystically-inclined contributors on the Forum.

In keeping with the Augustinian quotation above, the best source within the European (as distinct from Oriental) traditions is undoubtedly Meister Eckhardt. I am pleased to note that he was indeed mystical enough to have been called a heretic by the Catholic Church.

"Nothing hinders the soul so much in attaining to the knowledge of God as time and place. Therefore, if the soul is to know God, it must know Him outside time and place, since God is neither in this or that, but One and above them. If the soul is to see God, it must look at nothing in time; for while the soul is occupied with time or place or any image of the kind, it cannot recognize God." (Excerpt from sermon: "The Nearness of the Kingdom," translated by Claud Field, Christian Classics Ethereal Library)

'reasoning about what we can't know' - religious philosophies of various kinds claim to provide a relationship with 'the origin of being' or 'the source of being' or 'The One', or 'The All'. So you seem to be saying that even though we know science doesn't know everything, and that there are limits to what we can know by way of reason, we nevertheless know enough to know that such notions, or indeed the very idea of 'revelation' itself, cannot be trusted.

Do you think that is a valid conclusion?

Who mentioned astrology?

The argument from 'law' to 'lawgiver' is an example of abductive inference, that is, reasoning from effect to cause. I don't think I will open that particular topic at this point, as it is a very large area of debate in its own right. BUt I think that abductive inference is quite valid, especially in this context.

I wonder how you would test that out? Wouldn't you need to create a universe to verify it? Last time I checked, we can't create a cure for the common cold. Why think we could create a universe?:bigsmile:

What we do know points to them being false. But we have limits on what we know so there is no certainty in concluding that.

Do you think astrology is false?

[re: abductive inference] Is this a fancy way of saying it's a hunch? I don't think it's a real argument.

Reasoning from experience and linking cause to effect developed over several centuries and became a recognized scientific method of causal inference. It has been a part of science since the Scientific Revolution..... Over the course of the development of modern experimental science, Western culture learned to rely on sensory experience to gain knowledge about natural phenomena. By following experience scientists learned to infer causes from effects, i.e., to work backward from the character of the effects to the cause.

A cause is that necessary and sufficient condition that alone can give rise to the occurrence of a given event. And it does not matter if the cause is natural or intelligent. In the words of David Hume, who gave a formal analysis of this approach, "From causes which appear similar we expect similar effects." Later in the same book he added, "the same rule holds, whether the cause assigned be brute unconscious matter, or a rational intelligent being."


The inferential methods we usually learn in school are deductive, i.e., inference from the general to the particular, and inductive, i.e., inference from the particular to the general. There has always been a third method of inference, though not clearly described and formally analyzed until the 1870s, this being abductive, i.e., inference from experience. The method of abductive inference is particularly important in the historical sciences, reasoning backward from phenomena to the cause.


...The abductive method gives us a way to approach phenomena and be completely open to either natural or intelligent causes. The assignment of causal category depends on the character of the effects. To illustrate the method, suppose we are detectives investigating someone's death. Is this a case of death by natural causes (accident) or death by design (murder or suicide)? We do not know the answer in advance. We must investigate and find out. If we announced before beginning our investigation that death must have been accidental (natural), others would be justified in objecting that we had illegitimately restricted the field of possible causes.


An important purpose of the investigation is to determine whether this was a case of intelligent cause (murder or suicide) or natural death. We need a method that is open to either possibility. The abductive method of reasoning backward from the effects considers and evaluates various candidate natural and intelligent cause hypotheses, and eliminates those that do not agree with experience. Such openness to the full spectrum of natural and intelligent cause scenarios gives confidence that the abductive inference does yield the best explanation.


Despite the above explanation, some people, especially among scientists, suggest that science may not entertain intelligent causes. This notion is certainly mistaken. The abductive inference is very much at home in modern science. Retrospective causal reasoning is routinely used by NASA scientists as they explore the heavens looking for signs of intelligence in their SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) program. If signals from space conveyed artificial electromagnetic pulses sent in code to give, for example, the first thousand digits in the transcendental number 3.14159..., this would be considered so improbable an occurrence that we concur that intelligence had sent it. If scientists ever receive radio signals that are distinguished from noise and have the indicia of intelligence, we can surely expect a jubilant announcement from Washington.

Now you want to test things? That is your standard?