Philosophy of GOD ?

I'm not going to name any names, or point any fingers, but some individual here is arguing in a very small circle.

Thalion, while I understand and agree with you conceptions about the nature of space/time and its unbound direction of time, I believe you are making a gross assumption in life's role in it. Just because our perceptions tell us one thing, does not necessarily make them true. Our experience- as hopefully conscious, living beings, provide a framework for which it appears to us that life has a direction in time. To say that life is not bound by the laws of physics is to mark it as special and apart. This of course may be part of your point. It does not, however, follow from your argument that this is necessarily the case. The Heisenberg principle applies to each and every quantum particle that makes up our bodies and the rest of the universe. If "life" is separate (and thereby special) from these particles, where is it? And how does it interact with that stuff that makes us up? It seems that your statements lead to a Descartian rift in dualism.

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What then would follow is that life is intangible (ethereal). That is the point of my arguement. Life is independent of matter.

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But if life is intangible/ethereal, how does one go about solving the interaction problem. If life is separate from matter, how does this life impose its pattern upon the matter? The hypothalamus? The pineal gland? Even if you go as small as quantum mechanics allows for, you still have a separation of stuff. How does life stuff interact with matter stuff?

Are our bodies not alive then, if they do follow the same rules as the rest of the universe?

Philosophers have been trying to negotiate this dualistic problem for centuries, with no real success. It seems that this line of thought leads down a path that dictates a response akin to "It is because it is." Or, as one of my favorites puts it

(something mystical happens)
Mind(Life) stuff + matter stuff = us

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The mind (as far as the brain and cognitive thought) is concerned, actually exists (as our brain.) However, self-consciousness cannot be dissected or removed from a person. So although existance and thought exist in physical localized areas, they do not exist as a result of their physical existance. If such were the case, we would know what was going to happen tomorrow or how the world would end, etc. So although our physical entities must be governed by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle and all of the other laws that ensue from it, consciousness must be intangible because it is apparently not subject to these laws. Therefore, it would follow that our bodies are not in fact alive, except as a medium for our consciousness.

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You still have not addressed the interactionist problem. How in fact does this mysterious mind stuff that you claim life consists of interact with our physical bodies. What magic trick does it use to manipulate the physical universe.

Also, it does not stand to reason that if life were governed by the same principals as the rest of the universe, that we would be able to see into the future. What we can perceive is often vastly different from what is actually going on. Just because we perceive time in a certain pattern, does not necessarily preclude our participation in what is really going on.

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This brings up my assertion in the existance of some other force that allows life to exist; namely my assertion that life is a gift from God. You have acknowledged that if consciousness is separate from matter, than it cannot affect matter, therefore acknowledging some non-physical connection. You state that although we experience life in a direction of time, it does not mean that we necessarily have a part in it. I feel that this falls into the category of free-will and self-determinism. If it is the case that we really have no part in our life, than what is the point at all?? This is usually the stance I take with the free-will arguement. We need to assume that we have free-will in order to examine life, because we can not analyze life and our role in it if we do have a part in it.

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Thalion wrote:

This brings up my assertion in the existance of some other force that allows life to exist; namely my assertion that life is a gift from God. You have acknowledged that if consciousness is separate from matter, than it cannot affect matter, therefore acknowledging some non-physical connection. You state that although we experience life in a direction of time, it does not mean that we necessarily have a part in it. I feel that this falls into the category of free-will and self-determinism. If it is the case that we really have no part in our life, than what is the point at all?? This is usually the stance I take with the free-will arguement. We need to assume that we have free-will in order to examine life, because we can not analyze life and our role in it if we do have a part in it.

It would make a LOT more sense to simply assert that there are many mysteries about REALITY and EXISTENCE -- and considering the very limit amount of knowledge we possess, to make guesses that include gods; no gods; duality; non-duality; or any of this other stuff is major over-reaching.

Don't you agree?

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True. This is the same point that you had made in your earlier comments. I admit that these observations do not prove the existance of God. Existance is truely a mystery (as these observations show) and one cannot definitely say what the answer is. One of these "mysterious" answers may lie in God, so the arguement may suggest the existance of God, but cannot prove it.

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Thalion wrote:

True. This is the same point that you had made in your earlier comments. I admit that these observations do not prove the existance of God. Existance is truely a mystery (as these observations show) and one cannot definitely say what the answer is. One of these "mysterious" answers may lie in God, so the arguement may suggest the existance of God, but cannot prove it.

I understand (and appreciate) what you are saying, Thalion, but I am not even remotely concerned with "proof."

I am simply saying that there is a mystery -- and that "the make up" of the mystery may be any of many, many different things.

To pick one possibility out of the myriad -- simply does not make as much sense (is not as logical) as just acknowledging that the essence of REALITY and EXISTENCE is an unknown at this time.

Why make the guesses?

Why guess there is a God?

Why guess there are no gods?

Why not just stick with "We do not know" -- and then continue to investigate the UNIVERSE to see if we can discover more about what all this is?

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truth
Frank, not to bore you with repetition, but I would rephrase your statements, "Why make the guesses?", "Why guess there is a God?" and "Why guess there is no God" with
Why make the hypotheses, there IS a God or there there is NO God at all, since we can't falsify or test them by any possible (or at least known) means? Why not just conclude "passively" that the God hypothesis is meaningless because it cannot operationalized or tested, or even described with any precision, at all?

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JL.
I guess your correct, then again, I think you are right, then again, I guess, when you are guessing you are thinking????

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Re: truth

JLNobody wrote:

Frank, not to bore you with repetition, but I would rephrase your statements, "Why make the guesses?", "Why guess there is a God?" and "Why guess there is no God" with
Why make the hypotheses, there IS a God or there there is NO God at all, since we can't falsify or test them by any possible (or at least known) means? Why not just conclude "passively" that the God hypothesis is meaningless because it cannot operationalized or tested, or even described with any precision, at all?

Okay.

If the words "hypothesis" or "estimate" seem more appropriate, I see nothing wrong with using them instead of guessing.

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JL- Well said!

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Re: Life experienced as linear time
This was an excellent post, Thalion.

Thalion wrote:

I was thinking about the idea of life and how some people say that life is only the process of existing and reproducing and do not attribute any great Creator or force to it. They say that life just came into being out of chance. I have a problem with this idea of the basis of how living beings experience time.

The universe does not experience time in the sense of living beings. We experience time in the order in which entropy increases. This is the only way we can define our "past" and "future" frames. The universe, however, does not need these references. Time is tied into matter. The laws of physics could work perfectly well "backwards" as they do forwards, although it would appear strange to us because we are used to seeing time in the order in which entropy increases. Quantum mechanics has shown us that observing something can affect its past. This clearly illustrates that time has no direction for particles and laws of physics; time is tied in with the universe itself. There is not direction of time for the universe.

I am not familiar with the Quantum mechanics experiment you alluded to.

Still though, I understand and agree with the thrust of the paragraph above.

Quote:

However, life has a direction. We experience events from "past" to "future", and never vice-versa. This is contradictory to how the rest of the universe functions.

How is the fact that we percieve time as moving in one direction "contradictory to how the rest of the universe functions"?

The universe simply is - it does not percieve time at all.

Also, the rules that you talked about earlier - of the laws of physics working both ways - are true for humans as well. Just because we percieve time moving in one direction doesn't mean we are somehow different from the rest of the universe. The same laws that apply in the universe apply to humans as well, it is only the matter of perception where we differ.

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Therefore, I believe that life most have a deeper meaning because of this excursion into linear time. We biological can have just "come into being" but that does not explain how we live in a life with direction, unlike the rest of the universe.

I think our biology can explain this rather easily. Our brains are designed in such a way to allow us to percieve the universe in a way that makes the most sense to us. Thats all it comes down too in the end - perception.

Quote:

This all might seem off topic. However, I feel that it proves that there is more to life than just chance existance. I feel that this departure into linear time demands a need for a Creator of Life to have started it. "God" must exist.

Hold your horses.

How does the fact that human beings percieve time uni-directionally mean there must be a God?

This is classic "God of the Gaps" anti-parsimony.

It is a glorified version of "we don't know how such-and-such happened, therefore, God must have done it."

In short, it makes no sense.

Its biggest flaw is that it fails in parsimony. Parsimony refers to the limiting amount of unsubstantiated positing necessary for a model to fit the data. Parsimony is a presuppostional tool designed to sort through competing frameworks for similar sets of data. It refers to the amount and degree of unverifiable assumptions necessary to underlie and/or fill in the gaps of a model. Without getting into the larger debate of what is unverifiable and why, I'll note parsimony does not guarantee truth; it is a philosophical tool that formalizes aversion to the unknown. It's purpose is to minimize explanatory risk, and by extension, at least in theory, probability of being incorrect.

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The problem with philosophy is that too much of it is making something sound true, when it isn't, or making something sound intelligent, when it isn't. It is the art of phrasing a question well, rather than finding an answer. Like the saying that "god is the space between our thoughts" It doesn't really MEAN anything, and that's why some people believe it. Or saying that god is nothing and everything. Anyone should be able to tell that that doesn't make sense. Bad philosophy is so annoying to people with common sense.

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SCoates wrote:

The problem with philosophy is that too much of it is making something sound true, when it isn't, or making something sound intelligent, when it isn't. It is the art of phrasing a question well, rather than finding an answer.

True.

But thats true of all kinds of discourse - politics, art, science - not just philosophy.

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You're right of course, but for some reason it seems the most irritating with philosophy. Maybe I just see more bad cases of philosophy than politics... or at least acknowledge more.

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