The Concept of 'God': What Does it Mean and, Does it Matter?
Some people seem to be able to come to a clear answer to this question and describe themselves as theist or atheist. To be unable to come up with a clear answer seems to lead to agnosticism, which is a possible form of impasse. At times, I side with theists and at times with atheists and some agnostics. I find that the idea of 'God' and what it means for such a being to exist to be one of the most extremely perplexing philosophy problems.
The concept of God may have different meanings and how this meaning is established may lead to various aspects of the understanding of the nature of reality and what it would mean to find 'proof' of God's existence. I grew up as a theist, and at age 12 chose to move to a Catholic school because I couldn't cope with the theory of evolution. Later, I discovered that the teachers at the Catholic school were struggling with the theory of evolution and trying to understand the symbolic understanding of the Bible, in relation to scientific thinking.
I have questioned my religious upbringing and the way in which ideas of 'sin' have led to guilt and how religious beliefs have often led to conflict and war. Marx and Nietzsche have shown some of the negative aspects of religion. However, I am not sure about concrete materialism and see the God question as so complex. I am left wondering what it means to be a theist or an atheist, or something in between? Having been reading and writing on this site for a couple of years, I have wondered if I have not read as much as I should on the philosophy literature on the idea of 'God' and various arguments for an against the existence of God.
Recently, I read 'Five Proofs of the Existence of God', by Edward Fiser(2017). He looks at the various ideas for the proof of God, including the Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Augustinian, Thomist and Rationalist perspectives. The general gist of the book is probably slightly biased in favour of God. However, that particular conclusion is not my main concern but what seems important may be the various reasons why the arguments for and against God's existence may work philosophically or not. He argues that the God spoken of by the philosophers may be so different from that of the ordinary religious believer.
My aim in writing this thread is to try to develop greater clarity of what the concept of 'God' signifies, as well as the essential aspects of what the idea of God's existence entails. There are various forms of theism, including that of the Judaeo- Christian tradition and one writer, Huston Smith, writing on comparative religion queries the anthromorphism of ideas of God.
I am aware that some people see religious views as systems of belief and atheism as an absence of such beliefs. I wonder about the logic of this. However, logic is important in rational thinking, and possibly in connection with empirical science. Many religious believers speak of faith. I am uncertain of the basis of faith as opposed to rational understanding and its relationship to the everyday existential aspects of faith, and fear, in human life. I am trying to explore what does it mean, philosophically, to argue that God does or not exist?
The concept of God may have different meanings and how this meaning is established may lead to various aspects of the understanding of the nature of reality and what it would mean to find 'proof' of God's existence. I grew up as a theist, and at age 12 chose to move to a Catholic school because I couldn't cope with the theory of evolution. Later, I discovered that the teachers at the Catholic school were struggling with the theory of evolution and trying to understand the symbolic understanding of the Bible, in relation to scientific thinking.
I have questioned my religious upbringing and the way in which ideas of 'sin' have led to guilt and how religious beliefs have often led to conflict and war. Marx and Nietzsche have shown some of the negative aspects of religion. However, I am not sure about concrete materialism and see the God question as so complex. I am left wondering what it means to be a theist or an atheist, or something in between? Having been reading and writing on this site for a couple of years, I have wondered if I have not read as much as I should on the philosophy literature on the idea of 'God' and various arguments for an against the existence of God.
Recently, I read 'Five Proofs of the Existence of God', by Edward Fiser(2017). He looks at the various ideas for the proof of God, including the Aristotelian, Neo-Platonic, Augustinian, Thomist and Rationalist perspectives. The general gist of the book is probably slightly biased in favour of God. However, that particular conclusion is not my main concern but what seems important may be the various reasons why the arguments for and against God's existence may work philosophically or not. He argues that the God spoken of by the philosophers may be so different from that of the ordinary religious believer.
My aim in writing this thread is to try to develop greater clarity of what the concept of 'God' signifies, as well as the essential aspects of what the idea of God's existence entails. There are various forms of theism, including that of the Judaeo- Christian tradition and one writer, Huston Smith, writing on comparative religion queries the anthromorphism of ideas of God.
I am aware that some people see religious views as systems of belief and atheism as an absence of such beliefs. I wonder about the logic of this. However, logic is important in rational thinking, and possibly in connection with empirical science. Many religious believers speak of faith. I am uncertain of the basis of faith as opposed to rational understanding and its relationship to the everyday existential aspects of faith, and fear, in human life. I am trying to explore what does it mean, philosophically, to argue that God does or not exist?
Comments (163)
Have you considered the conception that God is truth? Literally? Truth as in that which corresponds to reality? Reality as in based in facts, sound evidence and sound reasoning? Anthropomorphism does not apply. Interestingly this conception of God fits reasonably well with the God of the gospel preached by Jesus as opposed to the God of Christianity which is based on the Pauline "gospel".
Before I reply to the OP directly, I paste the link below to an old post replying to you on a related topic last year, just to add some context to a later post that illustrates those "other possibilities" you suggest.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/599848
It means nothing in itself - just whether you accept a story or not. The problem is not in the belief, but where the belief may take people. Eg, where would Trump or the Taliban be without theism? Or where would Albert Schweitzer be without Christianity?
For me god/s have no explanatory power. To say god made the world is no different to saying the world was made by a fairy. There's no texture or nuance to such a claim and in general the idea seems to be maintained by fallacies like an appeal to ignorance or an argument from incredulity.
:100: :up: "Goddidit" is babytalk.
If you read the right philosophy you will see that the concept of "God" actually has great explanatory power. Understanding the nature of reality reveals that the Idea, or Form, of a material object necessarily precedes in time, the material existence of the object, as cause of that material object being the unique object which it is . We understand the reality of this process, as to how the Idea precedes the material existence of the object through the understanding of the human will, final causation. And since we understand the earth, and the universe as unique material things, which must have an Idea, or Form, which precedes them in time, as cause of their unique being, the Will of God provides that explanatory power.
As Pascal points out, (the/an actually worshipped) "God" =/= "the Idea, or Form, which precedes ... in time". Just meta-babytalk, MU. :sweat:
Start a thread on this if you like. I suspect it will come down to whether one is susceptible to those arguments.
I appreciate there's more premium thought out there that constructs a version of theism with greater nuance and texture. I enjoyed Paul Tillich some decades ago. In clarification - I guess I'm saying that the versions of god in the marketplace have no explanatory power. But to be frank - I am not really in the explanation business. It's religions which seem to want certainty. As an atheist, I am quite happy to say 'I don't know' about any number of subjects.
I definitely began with the perspective that God is 'truth'. I came from a Catholic background but with an open mindedness to other forms of Christianity initially. However, I began looking at other religions, especially Eastern ones and that was when it all became much more complicated. It was also when I saw some of the negative impacts of religious beliefs, especially guilt, and so many contradictions. Then, I found that I began deconstructing what had formerly appeared to be 'truth'.
Religious beliefs can be used in all kinds of ways, especially politically. That realisation was a motivating factor which I found important for questioning theism. However, at the same time it is a little separate from the actual question of whether there is a God or not. I found Gnostic interpretations of Christianity more workable than the literal ones. I have come across Tillich, and Whitehead, as well and that kind of approach seems to make more sense. Generally, I don't consider myself as an actual theist, but I do find my ideas shift, especially in relation to whether there is some purpose behind the scenes. However, I am aware that it may be magical thinking.
I am probably more inclined to wonder about the possibility of God when things are going well for me and others than when everything is going wrong. However, I do still pray at times and have religious friends who often advise me to pray. My own kind of prayer is probably more a kind of silent meditation rather than the more conventional kind, like the ones recited out loud at church.
I would say rather, it comes down to whether or not one understands the principles involved. Denial, and refusal to take the time and effort required to understand, intellectual laziness, renders one not "susceptible to those arguments".
Quoting Tom Storm
You seem to have this backward. Faith is in no way certainty.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Ridding oneself of guilt is central to Christianity. Love thy neighbour, confessions, forgiveness, are all principles tailored to help free us from the burden of guilt.
I can remember thinking some time just over a year ago when I was using the forum, why are there so many threads looking at the existence of God. I was reflecting that it was a matter of choice whether people choose to believe that there is some kind of higher force in the cosmos. I was thinking how futile the arguments for and against it. I tried to pay less attention to the threads about God. However, I have to admit that it does still niggle in the back of mind as one of the toughest questions. If anything, I do query why people get fierce arguing for and against God when it is difficult to prove one way or not. But, it is probably because it is an issue which is emotional, because it is central and some see clear reasons to believe in God and others for seeing it as so destructive. I am happy to hear both sides and I am more inclined to have battles in my own mind about the matter rather than with other people.
The issue of guilt is central to Christianity, especially with the idea of original sin. I definitely struggled with guilt at times, but I am not sure that guilt is the main problem in life and wonder if as Schopenhauer and Buddhists argue that the hardest aspect of life is suffering.
Because god'/s are hardly ever the point of these debates - it's value systems supported by belief. As the Trumpists demonstrate.
"Suffering" is a very broad term which is used to refer to anything which life's difficulties brings about. So "suffering" is not really the hardest aspect of life, it is just the general term for what all the different hard aspects of life may produce.
[quote=Meister Eckhart]I pray to God to make me free of God.[/quote]
Once upon a precocious youth I'd been a Catholic teen apostate, an undergraduate negative atheist and then postgraduate positive atheist. Decades on, finally I suspect, I am an antitheist in theory and practice.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/403860
Speculatively, however, pandeism appeals to me.
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/718054
Not long ago my devout Catholic mother, who turns an alarmingly youthful 80 this Friday (Sept 2nd), found a letter I'd sent her when I was 25 to reply to her nagging that without "god" or "the church" I must "believe in nothing". I wrote to her ...
More than thirty years later, though my arguments have been significantly refined, my realist position, enriched by life experience and greater understanding, remains substantially the same. Still, when I take her to Mass (most Saturdays), waiting in the car for her and before she goes into church, I remind her to "pray for me" and she nods, and sometimes squeezes my hand, with a quiet "Always". :flower:
Another point about the concept God that seems to get lost in many of the discussions, is that you don't need a precise definition to understand the general idea behind the concept, at least in the western world. In fact, even a vague notion of the concept still has its uses. Many of our concepts are like this, but that doesn't mean there is no use for the concept. For example, the use of the concept game, depending on context, has very different properties from one use to another. This is where Wittgenstein's family resemblance comes into play.
That said, even with my belief in metaphysics, such as they are, I see no argument, deductive or inductive that supports the belief in God. That doesn't mean that God doesn't exist, it just means that as far as I can tell, there is no evidence, or there is weak testimonial evidence to support such a belief.
Do you also consider the existence of Zeus or Hormaz or Shiva as one of the toughest?
I think you see my point. The reason this question is especially relevant to you understandably is because you have been raised in the Christian faith and live in a predominantly Christian culture.
Well yes, that is where I began at about age 8. I have attempted to know all the different understandings of God with the hope of determining what is true. Kind of like the Romans took all the common beliefs and brought them together into one religion with one God.
With what we know today, I do not understand how anyone can read the Bible and believe those stories are better than the stories of Zeus and other gods.
Ultimately, it is about representations. There is the question as to whether God created human beings in his own images or whether humans created God in their own image. In this way, it is like the relationship between the microcosm and the macrocosm. Some people have argued that God is like a person. The OT image of Jahweh was as a person, and wrathful, with Jesus being the figurehead of compassion.In a lot of ways it as of the gods or God is a projection of human understanding and changes. Now, it may be that science has taken over where religion left off. The only thing which has to be remembered is that even science is models, and like the images arising in religious perspectives we are still left with models and representations as approximations.
Your own development of ideas, including pantheism, is interesting in the sense that it goes beyond the shallow aspects of atheism. Both theism and atheism can be fairly shallow, backed up with very little sound logic. In some ways, some accounts of Buddhist metaphysics make a lot of sense to me as being neither based on ideas of an actual God or scientific materialism. However, I do understand there to be some debate between idealism and materialism.
My own mother died last September and was extremely religious right until the end, although she was so extremely afraid to die. When I told her about a thread on the forum about religion she said that she didn't know that philosophy included thinking about religion at all.
Most of my friends in real life are theists. One gets cross with me for even raising any questions about the existence of God, as if it is as obvious that God exists as the world is round. Some of my friendships go back to when I was a teenager and, at that stage, I was far more of a devout believer than they were. I even have one friend who became a Jehovah's Witnesses and a couple of Muslim friends. I do have one friend who is an atheist and I found talking to him helpful as a balance with having so many friends who are Catholic or Christian.
When I was working in mental health care I was often surrounded by African Christians and they really were inclined to preach. I found it just too much and really don't like it when people begin preaching because it seems so authoritarian. Really, I do find that the discussions on religion on this site useful in general but there are times when there are just too many 'God' threads dancing around on the front page.
That's an interpretation, sure. But then "greater reality" is really what you're discussing, no? Why use "God" or "Shiva" or "Blue Unicorn" and argue about whether "it" exists, knowing the connotations? Just inquire about a greater reality, and we can talk about what that means and whether it exists.
Quoting Jack Cummins
We're left with human beings, with human brains and senses and perspectives, yes. But that doesn't make every perspective equally true or equally valid. It doesn't mean we have to take every claim seriously. I could claim right now that there's a god called Yojimbo, with 5 eyes and 7 arms, who created the world and controls every thought we have. Should we argue about whether or not it exists?
We give extra attention to stories and myths we were raised with. That's understandable, but there's little need to continue with it straight to the grave. There are others ways -- in my view better -- to spend our time. For example, better to inquire about the human being itself, the being interpreting the world in various ways -- the being that says it's created by this or that god, or is infinite, or material, or natural, or whatever.
If that's what we mean when we're arguing about "God," fine. But I'd still say that there's so much baggage associated with the word ("God") it leads to unnecessary confusion.
Quoting Jack Cummins
Quoting Jack Cummins
Quoting Jack Cummins
Exactly...so it's no wonder you care so much about the issue. Hard not to when you're surrounded by people who think alike.
I think it boils down to this.
There is a concept of agenthood. Like most concepts it is not binary, it is a continuum. Humans are highly agent, though debates over free will attack this. Rocks are not. Animals are, although their degree varies with the animal and with the person considering them.
Events and objects are similarly the product of agents, by proxy, to various degrees. Paintings are very agent-by-proxy. Cities are as well, though perhaps somewhat less, as there is an element of blind process in their development over time. Thunderstorms are not agent-by-proxy at all.
To be theist is to adopt a radical worldview where, in the deepest sense, agent-by-proxy is applied to everything, to the maximal degree. To be atheist is the opposite, nothing is agent-by-proxy in the deepest sense, everything ultimately results from blind process. There is a whole spectrum of worldviews in between.
What are "the shallow aspects of atheism"?
Babies are not as stupid as you think
I am sure that if I had not been surrounded by so many people who come from religious backgrounds I would not have thought about the issue of God like I do. I remember when I went to primary school there were not that many other religious children. Some religious teachings were expressed, in school assemblies mainly, but it was in the background. I remember when they knew that I went to church and catechism classes they often couldn't relate to it. At age 12 I chose to go to a Catholic school and I had been confirmed as a Catholic at age 11, having had my first 'holy communion' at age 7.
So,it is probably not surprising that when I got to doing later studies that I ended up with clashes of ideas. I really did struggle making sense of it all and I had friends who developed religious psychoses. Strangely, with a couple of friends who I am still in touch with, when they are well they do not question religion philosophically. I know one who believes in the literal story in Genesis, including a 7 day creation and an actual person called Adam and Eve. I stopped thinking that while I was still at school.
Even in the hospital where I worked with so many African Christians, there were many patients being admitted with religious psychoses. Somehow, the extent of ideas about God, heaven and hell do have far reaching effects on the development of core beliefs. I do know a couple of people who grew up in schools where philosophy was taught, and not just religious studies and these couple of people are theists. Even though there is a certain move towards secular society there are very strong religious systems of ideas. It is hard to know what direction people will go in the future because religion and the idea of God is so strong in captivating and affecting human understanding.
Can the existence or non-existence of God be determined by argument?
Or is it a matter of finding reasons for or against believing?
Or is it a matter of the possibility of God?
What hangs on the existence or non-existence of God?
I expect to show that theism is an irrational belief system.
Theism can be shown not to be true or conceptually incoherent which entails that any theistic deity is fictional.
It's a matter of exposing making explicit the insufficient evidence or unsound arguments in reasoning "for and against believing".
For me, it's a matter of the truth-value of what believers say about what they call "God".
Only a conception of reality.
The issue isn't about whether god 'actually' exists. It's about the idea of god as being a source of ethics. The murder of god by logic and science has left a vacuum of fleeting Christian morals.
For example, the idea of value for the Samaritan, that is, finding value in people other than your own tribe, is a fairly radical notion and seems to be a religious idea, particularly when you consider that the reward for such arguably stupid selflessness is eternity in heaven. Without the promise of heaven to motivate us, why would we bother to go outside our tribe? Why would we bother with something like humility if there is nothing but ourselves? What can humble the average person? Please don't say science, which is largely ignored by the average person.
In a world of rapid globalism, I would argue that we need this Samaritan, universal ethic more than ever.
Even without god, as an atheist, I still rely on the societal remnants of Christian morality and ethics, which has dominated the west since it took over the west. I was also raised Christian. So try as I might, I am a product of these ethics. Not all of these ethics are good and not all are bad. I have tried to do away with the ethics that I don't like - but I can find no materialistic basis in certain, very useful ethics. Of course there is the issue of making sense of this hellish reality and meat sack that I'm stuck in - humanism has little say about meaning and purpose other than telling you what you already know - that you've got to figure it all out for yourself. Some help that is.
The question is what we do next as a secular society. Of course, we aren't truly a secular society, but perhaps this speaks to our fear about what to do next. I don't believe in god, literally, but I often wonder if a symbolic belief in ritual, community and spiritual ethics is required to make sense of the radical Samaritan ethic. Of course, this just depends on what kind of world you want to live in.
So to believe in god might mean to pursue faith in direct opposition to all the evidence for the purpose of living a meaningful life. To reject god is to reject that the Samaritan ethic requires justification, it is resigning oneself to a life of searching for reasons for Samaritan ethics, of searching for meaning and justification. Or of course, just a plain old embracing of quasi-darwinian ethics.
Now, claims of existence/nonexistence vis-à-vis God have to be in accord with our intuition & reason as outlined in the previous paragraph. To spell it out if God exists, then it must be in the same sense as the Eiffel tower does and if God doesn't exist, it must be in the same sense elves don't.
Something worth pondering upon is that, within the domain of our senses, all we have are necessary conditions & not sufficient conditions for existence [re hallucinations (insanity) + illusions (hyperbolic skepticism)] i.e. it's impossible to prove God, anything else for that matter, exists).
That's actually hard to justify if you consider it. Christians have no objective basis for morality. What they have is subjective or personal preferences regarding 1) who they think god is and 2) what they think their version of god wants. This explains why Christians (and other religious folk) have absolutely no agreement on core ethical questions and are all over the place. Take any issue, from gay marriage to abortion, capital punishment, stem cell treatment, the role of women - whatever - theists are all over the place, from fag hating to rainbow flags of diversity. In the end all anyone has is personal judgement about what is right. A Bible or the Koran are only an impressionistic springboard for selecting a personal preference via interpretation.
When I spoke of shallow atheism, I was referring to scientism and materialistic determinism.
I think that your post asks some important questions about the nature of human beings reflecting on understanding it all. In particular, 'What hangs on the existence or non-existence of God' It is not easy to answer and it may be more rhetorical rather than anything else. However; it was the sort of way which I was thinking when I wrote the thread outpost. It is more about what was signified in the emergence of the idea of God in human consciousness.
Even though it is slightly aside from most discussions about the existence of God, one book which I think is important in connection with the development of ideas about gods or God is Julian Jaynes' 'The Origins of the Bicameral Mind'. That is because Jaynes looks at the evolution of thought in human culture. He sees the development of picture representations and language through the form of song and poetry initially. He also sees the way in which human beings in ancient times had a less clear distinction between inner and outer reality. Thoughts were projected outside as coming from gods, and Jaynes sees Moses receiving the ten commandments in this way.
Human understanding is so different from ancient times and, generally, belief in God is used as a source for rational explanations. This goes back to Aristotle's idea of God as the initial form of causation. The idea of both cause as well as the way of understanding reality, including the development of differentiation of subjective and objective realms may be important in thinking about the initial basis for belief in higher beings or 'the divine' emerged in human understanding.
I wonder if the element of differentiating between 'objective and subjective' puts the cart before the horse when looking at earlier views of the divine.
The desire to win the favor of gods is closely linked to not wanting to piss them off either. Shamans, priests, and smarty pants of all stripes, point to advantages of accepting that certain agents are calling the shots. The traditions that give one a map of this kind are not propositions or credos so much as markers of feedback loops. The desire to know the environment we are operating in is prior to what we call natural or supernatural.
These conceptions are independent; neither are necessary properties of or entailed by atheism. To my mind "shallow atheism" denotes a lack of belief in some gods but not others (i.e. all gods).
It is interesting that you resuscitated this thread because I have been thinking about the theism/debate recently. It is an extremely complex area and I am sure that there are many forms of 'shallow' theism. I know that you have read Spinoza and interpret it slightly differently from his initial position of pantheism.
Part of the issue which I see is the question as to whether there is a 'higher power' or not, which may come down to whether spirit or 'the supernatural' exist in any meaningful way. Or, are they mere projections of the human imagination? I am inclined to think that there is a transcendent realm. I was also interested in the ideas of Whitehead, as described to me by @Gnomon in my recent thread on panpsychism. This involves an emphasis on the transcendent and the imminent as processes. There is nature but does anything exist beyond this, as source.
Generally, I am interested in comparative worldviews, especially Buddhism, which does not believe in a specific deity, but allows for some kind of transcendent levels of consciousness.
Also, I am interested in the evolution of magic and religion as topics in anthropology and religion, especially shamanism. Of course, I am aware that there is a danger of getting carried away with this but I see the shamanic model of reality as one worth considering. Fred Alan Wolf saw shamanism as comparable with the energetic nature of 'quantum reality'.
I agree with Feuerbach: projections.
More plausibly than not, a "transcendent realm" is an example of a "mere projection". :sparkle:
If "nature" has an edge, or limit, then "beyond" makes sense. Afaik, "nature" does not have an edge, or limit (i.e. is finite yet unbounded), therefore, imo, your question, Jack, doesn't make sense. Explain why "nature" requires a "source" (that is, why isn't the "source" itself also "nature"?)
How is that different from reality? "Quantum reality" seems to me another woo-woo phrase that doesn't make sense.
Fuererbach's 'projections' raise the question as to whether God created man in his own image or vice versa. Ultimately, this is a matter of speculation, and problematic, as AJ Ayer argued. But, the question of source does seem important and is connected to the issue of how did something come from nothing?
Separating mind and matter is an issue as the two are bound up intricately. That is why I go towards the position of non-dualism. I have been rereading Iris Murdoch's 'Existentialists and Mystics' recently. She shifts her views at various points from reading diverse authors, including Kierkergaard, Sartre, Plato and Simone Weil. The general gist of her exploration comes up with a form of nature mysticism, which does not involve belief in 'God'.
Murdoch does not get into aspects of physics as such, but her writing does hinge around the nature of explanations, including language and images. Here, the issue of 'quantum physics' can be questioned in relation to 'woo woo' philosophy.
If quantum physics is taken literally, as a definitive description of 'reality' it becomes as fanciful as many religious arguments. Quantum physics is only a model, but one which takes into account the 'virtual' nature of -reality'. It replaces clockwork, mechanistic explanations including a 'God' out there, heaven 'up above' and 'hell below'. But, it does point to an unknown 'invisible source' from my point of view. If nothing else this may mean that I am a mystic in the Platonic sense.
I am currently reading a voluminous book written by a quantitative scientist, James Glattfelder : The Sentient Cosmos, which he labels a "synthesis of science and philosophy". About half the book is about immanent & empirical topics, and the other half are transcendent & theoretical : what would call woo-woo, based on his prejudice against the notion of transcendence. Apparently, his non-transcendent religion is Scientism. But, philosophers, such as Whitehead, do not limit their philosophical explorations to the material world, or to empirical methods.
Glattfelder seems to be amenable to Panpsychism, but he tends to avoid the fraught term "God", and substitutes more ambiguous terms such as "Source", "One", "intelligence", etc. Personally, I don't agree with his top-down notion of the the human brain as a kind of receiver tuned-in to the wavelengths of the Cosmic Consciousness. But, he is an extremely well-informed scientist, mathematician, and philosopher. So, I hear him out. And I'm learning a lot about various historical & modern attempts to understand where the immanent world came from, and why it is as it is, and how Life & Mind emerged from the random roilings of atoms. :smile:
PS___ Comparative Religion : Glattfelder also discusses an array of ancient & recent attempts to understand the place of Man in a material world : Shamanism, Hinduism (Brahman/Atman), Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism, Kabbalah, Christianity, Sufism, Sikhism, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, etc. This variety could be confusing, but he finds a common theme among them. I am not religious in any sense, but I am philosophical. And a broad knowledge of philosophical concepts provides a time-tested foundation for your personal worldview.
Quoting Jack Cummins
I have a problem with believing God is a being with a personality, likes, and dislikes, just like a real person. For sure, this is a humanized god, but originally it is not the personal god many people want, so Jesus is deified and created as the "loving god" we want. Jesus replaced the jealous, revengeful, and punishing god, who was feared, along with fearing Satan, for over a thousand years. Not until our bellies were full did we think god is a "loving god".
Quoting Jack Cummins
All the gods are concepts. Whenever the ancients realized a new concept, they created a god to explain that concept. This got completely out of control, and an Egyptian pharaoh's grandfather ordered a search of the archives for the real god. This led to the pharaoh building a city for this new god and forbidding the worship of all other gods. That made things very bad for all those priests who profited from the belief in many gods, so they attempted to wipe that pharaoh out of history. They ended up preserving his memory when they crushed and buried his city.
However, I am not sure that the energy from the moment of the Big Bang is not also a unifying energy evolving into self-consciousness.
Again, I say: Explain why "nature" requires a "source" (that is, why isn't the "source" itself also "nature"?)
Why assume "something" is not uncaused? not infinte? not eternal?
Besides, 99.9% of every "something" consists of empty space "nothing" so they are complementary, coexisting, physical states (like e.g. atomism's 'atoms & void' or daoism's 'yin & yang'). Iirc, both Aristotle¹ and Spinoza posit that 'the universe is eternal'.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternity_of_the_world#Aristotle [1]
And don't forget: 'why there is something and not just nothing' is because nothing causes or prevents something from Coming to be And Continuing to be And Ceasing to be. :smirk:
No, he answers "the question": man creates god.²
https://philosophynow.org/issues/85/Feuerbach_Love_and_Atheism [2]
A religious person would point to the promise of eternal life. That requires a God of religion: one requiring worship and perhaps a moral life, and providing a life after death. The problem is that this package is rather implausible.
By contrast, the traditional arguments for God's existence only (provisionally) establish a creator and ontological ground of reality (i.e. deism). [B]So what[/b] if such a being exists? The only reason I can imagine is that it statisfies a curiosity about the nature of existence. But does it? Should it?
At best, these arguments only define a coherent metaphysical framework. Being coherent means its possibly true. But the frameworks that entail a God necessarily depend on questionable metaphysical assumptions. Why should this satisfy anyone's curiosity?
There are metaphysical frameworks that don't include a God. Similarly, they depend on metaphysical assumptions - so they can't be established as true either. But...
No metaphysical theory can be tested, verified, or falsified. Still, we can compare different theories in terms of explanatory power and parsimony. A deistic theory can answer all questions (magic can explain ANYthing), but it loses parsimony by assuming something as complex as a deity just happens to exist without cause or explanation. To me, this seems sufficient reason to assume a deity does not exist. One can still explore metaphyical systems to satisfy curiosity, but the theistic ones seem rather far-fetched.
That said, in my experience debating these issues with theists- they tend to embrace the deistic arguments because it helps to rationalize what they already believe, or want to believe.
Square this circle for me "non-dualism" + "the Platonic sense".
I am trying to square the circle for myself of the issue of non-duality with Platonism. That is why I am in the midst of reading Murdoch's interpretation of Plato. I have read Bohm's ideas on the idea of the implicate and explicate order. However, this would correspond with an interpretation of the Forms aspects of invisible metaphysics.
With the idea of non-duality, or substance dualism there is still a question of emphasis on the physical or the spiritual. That is where it gets difficult. That is why the notion of God may be useful, but not necessarily in the form of the deity of mainstream Abrahamic religions. It may come down to the idea of The Tao, the unity at the paradox of all dualities.
With the question of God (or gods) as a Being, that is where the idea of the supernatural realm comes in. Some religious thinkers even posit the idea of a 'divine hierarchy', including realms of angels and archangels as intermediate between God and human beings.
Some cognitive thinkers, such as Jesse Bering, speak of as the 'God instinct' as an aspect of evolutionary psychology. The idea of God may even be hardwired into the brain, although critical reason has led human beings to question the existence of God or gods. There were atheists amongst the ancients though, just as there theists in the twentieth first century.
Generally, one needs to step into the frame of ancient human beings in considering this. .One significant book is, 'The Bicameral Mind: The Origins of Consciousness' by Julian Jaynes. He maintains that ancient people's religious experiences were comparable with those of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Of course, this cannot be proven empirically. However, what Jaynes is arguing is that at some point, human beings did not have a distinct separate sense of inner experience and the objective world. The figures of inner experience, such as Moses' sense of receiving the Ten Commandments amidst a burning bush were taken as 'real' in an objective sense.
Such a picture would be compatible with the poetic visionary descriptions of Homer, and it is possible that Plato also came from this angle. Myth and religious experience arose in conjunction with the development of song, poetry and language. Graham Hancock suggests that the idea of the supernatural corresponds with the development of the symbolic dimensions of human experience.
Following what you just said, our knowledge is limited to our language. I prefer Eastern concepts to Western ones. I resent making the Trinity a trinity of God because that forces the authority of God as separate from our being. That is opposed to the notion of Tao. We are part of Tao. Not separate from the Tao. The authority is within me. It is not separate from my being. I do not fear being rejected by a God, because I am part of God/Tao.
I think our separation from God is an illusion made essential to our being, which is ego. I know I am not one with God because I have so many imperfections. Now I have a choice. I can let go of my ego and be one with God/Tao, or maintain my ego and separateness.
David Bohm's conjecture is, I think, much closer to Spinoza's 'substance & modes' than to Plato's 'forms & appearances' because "the explicate order" (à la natura naturata (e.g. waves)) is immanent to does not transcend "the implicate order" (à la natura naturans (e.g. ocean)) as the forms do transcend appearances ("Plato's Cave").
What about this post, Jack ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/1009977
If pressed, I don't label myself as Theist or Atheist, but as Deist*1. That's because I am uncertain & ambivalent about God, but convinced that some transcendent creative power is necessary to make sense of our contingent world. Deism is not a religion, but a philosophical position*1. Regarding who or what created the Cosmos, all I know is that empirical cosmological knowledge only goes back to the black box known as the Big Bang Singularity. Any information prior to the beginning of space-time is pure speculation, based on hypothetical reasoning, not empirical observation. If you don't care about such perennial philosophical questions as First Cause & Prime Mover though, then peace be unto you.
I am not a Pantheist or Panpsychist, but I do postulate an alternative Pan-power : Energy, or as I like to call it : EnFormAction*2. In that view, the creative power to transform is universal, and responsible for all developments since the initial Bang. Whitehead's Process philosophy*3 also presumes some kind of universal directional causal power to explain complexifying evolution sparked by the Bang. But he didn't call it Panpsychism ; others added that label. In the quote below, "matter and experience" may be similar to Aristotle's Hylomorph (matter + form).
Since Matter is subject to the degradation of Entropy though, it cannot be eternal, but Form is an abstract mental/mathematical concept that is not subject to thermodynamics. So, the power to create and transform matter may be the transcendent force that is necessary to explain the Big Bang. What would you call the Source of that Cosmic Causation? And in what sense could it exist prior to the emergence of space-time? :smile:
*1. Deism is the philosophical belief in a creator God who established the universe and its natural laws but does not intervene in its ongoing affairs, particularly human events. Deists rely on human reason and the observation of nature, rather than divine revelation or religious scriptures, to understand the divine. This belief system, prominent during the Enlightenment, views God as a supreme architect or "divine clockmaker" who created the world and then left it to operate on its own.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=deism+philosophical+position+on+god
*2. EnFormAction :
[i]Metaphorically, it's the Will-power of G*D, which is the First Cause of everything in creation. Aquinas called the Omnipotence of God the "Primary Cause", so EFA is the general cause of everything in the world. Energy, Matter, Gravity, Life, Mind are secondary creative causes, each with limited application.
# All are also forms of Information, the "difference that makes a difference". It works by directing causation from negative to positive, cold to hot, ignorance to knowledge. That's the basis of mathematical ratios (Greek "Logos", Latin "Ratio" = reason). A : B :: C : D. By interpreting those ratios we get meaning and reasons.
# The concept of a river of causation running through the world in various streams has been interpreted in materialistic terms as Momentum, Impetus, Force, Energy, etc, and in spiritualistic idioms as Will, Love, Conatus, and so forth. EnFormAction is all of those.[/i]
https://blog-glossary.enformationism.info/page8.html
Note --- EFA is similar to Schopenhauer's Will to survive (biological evolution), and to Nietzche's Will to power (physical Energy), and to Bergson's Vital Energy (self organization). Matter is made of Energy, but what is Energy made of????
*3. Alfred North Whitehead developed a form of process panpsychism, a philosophy suggesting that all reality is composed of fundamental "actual occasions" with both mental and physical aspects, rather than inert material objects. This process-relational view holds that everything, from quanta to galaxies, has a "subjective" or experiential "inside" and an objective, physical "outside". He didn't use the term "panpsychism" himself but argued for a system where matter and experience are equally fundamental, with matter as the objective pole and mind as the subjective pole of these underlying actual entities.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=alfred+north+whitehead+panpsychism
Note --- Whitehead's term "experience" may be misleading. I think it's more like Wheeler's "bit" of Information.
I agree with both mind/matter as essential and wonder about how this totally may be 'God', Human beings could be conceived as cells of consciousness, as well as all the varying lifeforms.
Bearing in mind the ambiguity of Whitehead's term 'experience' as equivalent to 'information' I wonder how he regards the symbolic dimension. Is it like part of a computer? I once had a friend, who in the midst of 'psychosis' banged his head on the floor and exclaimed, 'God is a computer'. It struck me that he had made an important statement. The idea of 'God' could be seen as a model of information, as known to us in the age of 'virtual reality'. Similarly, the nature of computer simulation could be seen as an alternative to the anthropomorphic conceptions of absolute reality, as the sum of all parts, or 'God'.
It is interesting that Bohm's model may be nearer to Spinoza's model than to that of Plato. I do struggle with reading Spinoza and it is possible that not enough attention has been paid to him due to the obscurity of his writing. It almost seems 'esoteric', although I admit that it may be my own shortcoming that I find him difficult to read. I only have a downloaded copy of 'Ethics' and, perhaps, if I got a paper version I may get on better with it.
Yes, the concept of something from 'nothing's does give rise to the idea of 'the void'. I have always seen this as a parallel between the idea of the unconscious, after I came across a book, 'God and the Unconscious' by Victor White, when I was at a teenager. The book is based on a dialogue between Victor White, a theologian, with Jung.
Of course, I know that I am so influenced by Jung, as you are with Spinoza. I wonder how can the Jungian worldview can be compared and contrasted with that of Spinoza?
I've never seen "is there a god" to be one of the significant, or difficult, philosophical questions.
Whether a deity exists is a simple claim in itself, and doesn't actually affect much.
It only becomes important by association. Eg if we claim God is the cause of everything existing, then God becomes important because how / why anything exists is an important (and difficult) question. It's like if I were to say Whether midiclorians exist is the most important philosophical question, because midiclorians are the source of morality.
Otherwise it's just the claim that there's a big daddy figure. That there's no evidence for, and it's pretty easy to explain where the concept came from in terms of human psychology.
The question of separation from 'God' is interesting and I also can relate to Eastern metaphysics. For example, Buddhism doesn't speak of a specific deity. However, it does believe in a spiritual dimension, which could be described as the symbolic dimension. This is only realised in the human mind, due to the limits of human knowledge of absolute 'reality' Of.course, it may be relative as opposed to some absolute 'mind's eye' of 'God'.
Some Eastern thinkers speak of an 'overself' or 'oversoul' which may be about the stream of consciousness arising in experience. I think that this is how William James understood religious or spiritual experiences. Here, spirituality may be about numinous experiences, such as depicted in the arts, as opposed to just those categorised within the domain of 'traditional 'religious beliefs and thinking.
I am aware that the angle which you come from is a slightly different one of asking how important the question is. This may really be the central one for thinking about as some would question the significance of the philosophy of religion. To what extent is the concept of God outdated and mere speculation?
I started out with an interest in how to live even when I had not fully questioned religion. I had issues about the nature of reality and about ethics. I was not sure to what extent ethics and issues of religion were separate. However, in my reading I came to realise that whether we believe in God or spiritual reality affects one's entire approach to life.
That is not to say that ethics only matters to religious believers at all. It is not as simple as 'if God does not exist everything is permitted' (Dostoevsky). Some of the secular humanists have constructed ethical frameworks which are not dependent on the existence of God or spiritual reality. Morality doesn't rely on a belief in punishment from God in an afterlife.
However, whether or not one believes in God does affect one's approach and interpretation of all that happens in life. That is why I think that it is still an important question and will still matter as long as philosophy exists.
The issue of God's existence is one which has gone on and on in philosophy. It can go round and round in circles to the point of being boring. Equally, it remains a heated matter, and may show how philosophy can become justification of preference of beliefs. It can be asked does it still matter whether 'God' exists. I maintain that it does, because how it affects one's stance to understanding life. It is a recurrent philosophical issue and will remain so, even though it cannot be proven for or against the existence of God.
That double negative indicates non-dogmatic uncertainty and moderate skepticism. I too, am uncertain about The Hard Problem of Consciousness, because the (yes/no) empirical & reductionist scientific method is inadequate to the task of objectively observing the subjective (self-conscious) observer. Yet some scientists & philosophers are using holistic (both/and) methods to make sense of the simplicity in complexity, and the order in chaos*1*2. They hope to shed light on the mystery of how Life & Mind emerged from the random roilings of matter.
I too have developed a philosophical theory, based primarily on Information Science (Complexity, Systems, Holism, etc). It postulates that the "unifying energy" of evolution is a combination of Information (direction) and Causation (Energy) : like a guided missile instead of an aimless bomb. It's not Deterministic (absolute certainty), but Probabilistic (optional). The theory has little to do with proving the existence of God. But it does point toward the the necessity of a First Cause/Prime Mover/Programmer of some kind to light the fuse of the Big Bang bomb. :smile:
*1. From Matter to Life: Information and Causality is a 2017 edited collection of essays by experts in various fields, including physics, biology, chemistry, and philosophy, exploring the role of information in the transition from non-living matter to life.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=from+matter+to+life
*2. Information and the Nature of Reality :From Physics to Metaphysics is an edited collection of essays by scientists, philosophers, and theologians, published by Cambridge University Press in 2010 and reissued as a Canto Classic in 2014. Edited by Paul Davies and Niels Henrik Gregersen, the book explores the growing importance of information as a fundamental concept in understanding the universe, moving beyond traditional views of mass and energy.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=information+and+the+nature+of+reality
*3. The EnFormAction Hypothesis :
Postulates that immaterial logico-mathematical "Information" (in both noun & verb forms) is more fundamental to our reality than the elements of classical philosophy and the matter & energy of modern Materialism.
https://bothandblog3.enformationism.info/page23.html
This is a comment about the book made by the online used book store ThriftBooks.
That seems to explain what I experienced this morning. For sure, I was emotionally unstable and I thought of using shrooms to enhance this trip, but it is not easily available to me. However, for a lot of money I can, and if I have another experience like I did this morning, I am going to lay out the money. Now we are getting into a question of consciousness. Of what can we be conscious, and how do we know it is real if it is beyond our everyday experience? What if what we think is real, is more of a delusion than we believe? Does any of this matter?
My little comment was addressed to the consideration of the existence of God. I feel it's futile to discuss whether God exists. That question, if it is a true question, won't be answered. How or why the universe exists is a question which may be usefully discussed, but if it can be answered it will be answered by science, not by philosophers thinking about it really hard.
What the concept of God means and whether it matters will vary from person to person, I think..
Wow, that is delicious. I have a big problem with binary thinking. I did not know that holistic thinking is being practiced by some scientists. That makes me hopeful.
Quoting Gnomon
I need more information about this. I am limited to ancient Greek thinking of cause and effect, and I am quite sure a better understanding of math would improve my ability to think, but my brain just won't cooperate. The story of evolution seems tied to probabilistic thinking. For sure, plants and animals are not created by a god's whim of what they should look like and how they behave, but they follow the rules of what is possible.
I love the idea of understanding creation as patterns of information that may or may not manifest as matter and life forms. I bookmarked a page for future reference. My brain shuts down when I try to understand too much. I have a book on a shelf that I need to check to see if its information will work with this new information from you.
Are you familiar with "A Beginner's Guide to the Construction of the Universe" By Michael S. Schneider? If you are, what do you think of it?
I'd like to point out that in general the metaphysical arguments for a deistic god create an entity untouchable by logic and metaphysics as a way to solve logical and metaphysical problems. At best this defers the problem, but even if we consider it to be a legitimate solution to the origin of the universe, it follows that nothing could ever be meaningfully be said about this deity anyway.
I just came across this video ("synchronicity?")
(27½ mins)
Who or what is your god? It is not a question much asked now, as we have become obsessed with mere existence. But it used to be psychologically informative. A worshipper of Zeus puts power at the centre of their life. A worshipper of Athene or Sophia puts wisdom at centre. Eirene - peace, Hephaestus - crafts.
So in this sense, to say one has no god is to say one has no purpose or function at the centre; one lives for nothing, stands for nothing and will die for nothing.
But modern atheists are of course not saying this, they give the word 'god' some other meaning, and then deny its reality. There is probably something they stand for, and something they will stand against, but the word 'god' has become an obstacle they cannot pass by. They stand, in fact, against religion, but do not see that as a religious stance.
So if I perhaps say that I stand for nature, for wisdom, and for love, then people will find that acceptable, as long as I do not use capital letters.
Here is a song, that I like that expresses the unimportance of my life to me in relation to the world. What I know, what I do, my life and death are of no significance in themselves, but become significant in relation to everything else. Alas, many will be deceived by the silly clothes and the extravagant setting. They cannot see past that to an expression of the unknown, the unknowable, a vastness that gives meaning to even this feeble, handwaving post. At this level it is not mere factual truth, but the very idea that god died for me - that an unknowable love is what life is about, that gives meaning to all this human nonsense and horror.
Consider 2 scenarios:
1) deism is true: a "God" created the universe, but is indifferent to everything that occurs in it. There is no afterlife.
2) naturalism is true: there is no being that intentionally created the universe.
Would you approach life differently in scenario 1 vs scenario 2?
Modern Holistic thinking began in the 20th century along with Quantum physics : entanglement is holistic. But most scientists avoid the term "holism" due to its association with New Age "nuts". Other related terms are Cybernetics (control & communication in complex systems) ; General Systems Theory (interrelated parts that work together as a whole) ; Complexity Theory (systems that are too complicated to understand by analysis into parts) ; Emergence (novel features of whole systems that are not found in the parts) ; Synthesis (combining isolated elements into interrelated systems) ; Synergy (energetic interaction to produce an effect that is more than the sum of parts).
You might be interested in the book that introduced that New-Agey term : Holism and Evolution*1. As the title implies, it was focused mainly on evolutionary mysteries, such as how Life & Mind emerged from the muck of a nascent planet. It inspired Hippies & meditators of the 1960s with hope for a new Age of Aquarius. The holistic god-concept of New-Agers was an impersonal, cosmic life force or consciousness that is one with the universe. Disclaimer : despite some accusations, I am not now, and never have been a New Age hippie.
Another book that is more focused on Consciousness & god-concepts is The Sapient Cosmos by James B. Glattfelder : a thick encyclopedic book "that synthesizes modern science and philosophy to explore the emergence of information, consciousness, and meaning in the universe". It's intended for intelligent laymen, but includes a lot of technical stuff that you may not be interested in. However, it has chapters on "woo-woo" Shamanic traditions and Psychedelic cultures, that may be more appealing to you.
I, personally, have no experience with mind-altering substances, or out-of-body experiences. So my interest was more in the Holistic philosophical worldview, summarized as Syncretic Idealism : "a novel philosophical proposition that merges various idealist philosophies with insights from information theory and physics, while also integrating concepts from other belief systems like shamanism to create a unified, non-isolating worldview about the nature of reality, consciousness, and existence". :smile:
*1. Holism and Evolution :
Unfortunately, Holism is still controversial in Philosophy. That is primarily due to the practical and commercial success of reductive methods in the physical sciences. Methodological Reductionism attempts to understand a composite system by breaking it down into its component parts. And that approach works well for mechanical devices, but not so well for living things. . . . .
https://bothandblog8.enformationism.info/page33.html
One of my favorite philosophers is James Williams, and he was good with Holisticism. He is also a hard read for me, but says things my brain really likes. He was an education authority, and education is a subject I am passionate about.
I checked my favorite second-hand book dealer, and the book The Sapient Cosmos by James B. Glattfelder is more than I usually pay. I will have to think about it. I already am behind in my reading.
God is defined as the first creator. God does not matter when it comes to a normal life since it seems that He left us on our own.
I do agree with you that the idea of 'God' varies in meaning, or meaninglessness, from person to person. The definitive arguments for or against the existence, or non-existence, is problematic. That is because meaning is constructed culturally and individually. The idea of what is 'absolute reality' is relative to a large extent.
Throughout history and throughout the world there may be underlying ideas, such as the idea of God but it is only interpretation. Initially, a person is taught a set of beliefs, which they may accept or reject. In the information age of twentieth first century there is so much choice of perspectives and ideas. A person may choose on the basis of what seems to make sense from a rational, emotional or intuitive level. It may be about pragmatic navigation of life experiences and choices.
The idea of God as the first cause is one amongst many others. This is so different from the idea of a personal relationship with God which is held by many religious believers. The idea of prayer only makes sense from that perspective.
Yes, who is or what is your god? That is a good question if the capital G of God is removed. It doesn't matter if it is nature or a higher, transcendental reality but what it stands for in terms of values and motivation, especially the power of wisdom or love.
Whether one's ideas about reality are 'delusions' or not is culture dependent. The standard idea of delusion is if one's ideas are not shared by others. For example, if someone believes oneself to be a Messiah it is usually thought to be delusional. Generally, those with unusual beliefs are regarded as eccentric, or referred to a psychiatrist.
Even within psychiatry, mental health professionals ideas vary, ranging from fundamentalists to hardcore atheists. This affects the way the professionals interpret the ideas of psychosis and delusions. Nevertheless, one common ground is thinkers about the impact of the ideas. If a person is seen as a risk to oneself or others there is more concern about delusional beliefs.
Of course, it is is possible for people in power or an entire nation to be delusional, in a 'harmful' way. Politics involves ideas about reality, ranging from leaders fighting for religious beliefs to Marxism based on dialectical materialism.
And to which God should one pray?
Obviously, I am sure that many people in philosophy circles would scorn the process superstition. For those who pray, it is to whichever God one believes in but prayer is central to the Judaeo-Christian tradition. It may be about focusing on one's own deepest self. A similar process occurs in traditions of meditation, although meditation is not 'inner speech' with any figure but more about stilling one's thought processes. Both may involve going beyond the surface of ego consciousness.
In the two scenarios which you describe it is possible that there is no difference. So, it may be that the idea of an afterlife, which often is associated with the idea of God plays a major factor. Personally, I am inclined to think that the question of life after death matters more than the existence of God. I admit that I have spent more time wondering about the various possibilities of life after death. That is because if one doesn't continue in any form what is the significance of God in relation to one's own personal identity. It becomes rather abstract and more about being known in 'the mind of God'.
That could lead to an unpleasant discussion.:lol: I have a few words to say about delusion and political problems, but that would not be philosophical. However, AI's explanation of "Plato's Allegory of the Cave and Political Delusion" is perfect. We should not base our decisions on popular opinions but on truth. That is where freedom of the press and the media comes in. Our journalists were supposed to keep us well informed, and many took this very seriously. But lately, the media has catered to popular interest. Resulting mass delusion.
But I will keep working on improvement, just in case the Egyptians were right about the trinity of our being.
According to Epicurus, while death is final, "the gods or God" represent moral ideals to aspire to and live by (re: aponia, ataraxia ... "bliss").
Thanks for the explanation of being free. I think I will pursue knowledge.
"Personal pain and suffering" define you?
E.g. friendship (vide Epicurus), solidarity (vide Camus) ...
Well, unless you're an Advaita Vedantist, you are not "God", so ...
You're welcome, though I don't believe I've explained anything. Anyway, I do agree with Spinoza that understanding makes one "free" and Einstein's quip "Any fool can know; the point is to understand". :wink:
I agree that the question of an afterlife is more relevant than the existence of a God.
The thought of an afterlife is certainly appealing, but wishful thinking seems to me a poor guide to truth. And AFAIK, there's no evidence of it (unless you buy into claims about houses being haunted). Still, believing in an afterlife is not usually harmful (unless it leads one to risk or forgeit his life, or that of others), and it could be emotionally beneficial.
Sure. Quite a while ago, I read that we know who we are by checking our feelings. Recently, I came across the notion that our default mood defines who we are. Others know us as basically light-hearted, frivolous, crumpy. Whatever our default mood might be. Explaining this to you makes me think those thoughts are a little crazy, but it works for me right now. Daily, I check in with myself, and think, yeap, I am in the right body. It feels like me. :lol: From there, I work on improving myself as much as I can. My life is driven by eating the right food, getting the right amount of rest, and exercise. And mental exercises that all the vogue right now.
You must understand, I am not the old lady in the mirror. Most of us are not that old person. Our bodies are old, but our personalities solidify around age 30, and we tend to think of ourselves as that person. We know a lot more than we did, but I think our egos tend to solidify in our 30s. Then our egos take charge.
I returned to the forum this afternoon to watch the Spinoza video again. I have played with being egoless with Buddhist thoughts but I think Spinoza's thoughts might be more useful. I can't believe everything my head tells me about me, and I would like to silence some thoughts that have quite a negative effect.
I am quite sure the deceased have communicated to others through me. I am not positive of that, but there is no other way to explain some experiences. So I am sort of on the fence. Maybe there is life after death, and maybe not. Maybe reincarnation is possible, and maybe not. Becoming senile could be the perfect way to prepare for a new life. Like it wouldn't be a new life if we continued to be the person in the old life. :lol:
I am concerned about our souls needing this planet, and what happens if we destroy it? Will we become like refugees looking for a new home?
Indeed, but it seems that memories can be stored in other ways. For instance, Saint Augustine goes on at length about memory in the Confessions but he also recounts many of his early memories. And yet now these memories are, in a sense, stored in a text that millions have read and shared in. Likewise, if we write a reminder note for ourselves, and it prompts us to act, it is serving as a sort of medium term memory storage device. A pen and paper do the same for short term memory when doing arithmetic.
Augustine's memories were originally recorded in parchment and velum, but have since spread to paper, hard drives, etc. They are recorded as sound waves on magnetic tapes and optical disks as well, and in a sense, in the bodies of all those who have experienced these and now also remember them. Yet physically, an optical disk is very different from paper which is very different from a sound wave, which is very different from sound waves. The physical substrate does not seem to matter much. It is the information (form) that matters, and arguably this is "immaterial" in a number of senses.
I appreciate your interest in this, for it weighs on my mind as well. But thoughts here get so bound up in extraneous and historical content that has no business in this matter of God. Before moving forward, onw has to ask what God IS first, and then a great deal of what troubles this issue simply vanishes. So what do you think God IS?
Sure, this is logically possible, but it's an ad hoc hypothesis that lacks supporting evidence. If this is something that occurs, I wonder why the deity bothers at all with brain-storage of memories, and why she fails to help out dementia patients with access to this resource.
I agree with that logic, but I am not sure that we know all there is to know.
Years ago, someone I PM lost her husband, and I had a strong urge to ask her if the words "red" and 'bucket', meant anything to her. She wrote back "no". Then, a few days later, she said her husband used a red bucket in his room as a trash can. I have no reasonable explanation for that.
When a neighbor died, after her funeral, I got on the elevator and it would not go up, but the lights began flashing. I almost ran off the elevator, but everything returned to normal, and I went up to my apartment.
Obviously, that was an elevator malfunction, and it is just a coincidence that it happened on the day of her funeral. So what if in over 15 years, nothing like that happened before or after. Now I could buy that, but having to ask my PM buddy if the words "red" and "bucket" meant anything to her is harder to explain away.
Yes, in thinking of the idea of God, it is worth considering what that would entail. When I was a teenager (Catholic) I conceived of it as the Trinity. This 'mystery' involved The Father, Son and Holy Spirit. God was the invisible source, the Son, was God embodied as Jesus Christ, and Holy Spirit as the invisible force giving rise to the manifestation of Christ, and Christ-inspired action, or healing. I can remember a school teacher, a feminist, challenging this masculine conception and referring to God as 'she'. Many pupils and parents were shocked by this and my own conclusion was that God was beyond gender, apart from Jesus being a man.
I also came to see the idea of Brahman and Atman in Hinduism as important. Even though there are many gods in Hinduism, Atman is the supreme godhead, with the human (Brahman) who realises the presence of Atman. With an interest in comparative religion, I also came to recognise the idea of The Tao, the Supreme Reality behind everything.
Now, when thinking about God and the question or meaning of such existence, I see it as being fairly fluid in human conception, but as the potential, or force, underlying all manifest existent forms in the universe, and possibly beyond.
According to Spinoza God is the universe. God is nature. God is all that is and ever will be. We are made of by nature, and nature is God. We are not separate from nature/God.
Epicurus is correct to see the gods as representing moral ideals. This is the foundation of mythic reality. Within Christianity, for example, the 'imitation of Christ' and discipleship has been prominent. It may have got lost, or been ignored, by some individuals in history, who got caught up religious imperialism.
The question is whether the immortality of God and, any form of mortality, is about symbolism and archetypes, for humans to follow. Even cultural figures, like Jim Morrison, Elvis and Marilyn Monroe may have a 'God-like' symbolic quality, as significant beings who existed and continue to be inspirational icons. Jesus existed as person, and so did Krishna, but the foundation of all gods may not be based on an actual person, or as something living on in the 'heavens'.
As for the metaphysical nature of immortality, beyond the human imagination, it does depend if heaven (and hell) are seen as having an objective foundation. The belief in immortality, beyond role models, depends on how this is seen.
Heaven and hell exist in the human imagination, and may be experienced in this embodied life, but as to whether they are an experiential reality in it's own right is open to question. Some see near death experiences as pointing to such forms of immortality but it is hard to know if they are simply brain states of the person, while still embodied. So, the immortality of God(gods, angels and human spirits) depends on whether there is a dimension beyond embodiment. Ultimately, arguments for and against it are a matter of speculation.
I have been watching an explanation of Spinoza and I like all is God. For me, telepathy means there is an energy that is different from our other forms of communication, which are all physical. If there is another energy other than physical energy, that makes life after death possible, doesn't it?
It does lead thought to a very strange affirmation about the world, these basic questions. The Tao famously tells us to refrain from speaking, as does the Buddhist's censure when insight is taken up in thought by the clueless neophyte. It is argued that the real trouble lies in the way language is taken for a means to to truth, which it generally is, of course, but what is most often not understood is that while language speaks amidst a world, the speaking and all of that out there that constitutes the presence of a world have to first be understood as very different things. As Rorty put it, truth is a function of propositions, and there are no propositions "over there" on that hill or wherever. The proposition is here, in this utterance, and the hill over there. This is a strong position, Rorty's: a complete discontinuity in a naturalistic, causally determined world, between all things.
I don't mean to go this way here, but it does relate to the matter of God: when we speak of God at all, can we ever hit, however "fluidly" or obliquely, the target of divinity's Being? Or does language inevitably take that divinity and impose a concept, a description, a definition on it, thereby bringing God to heel in a finite system of thought? So the only way to be free is unhinge language and thought from God. This is what meditation is essentially about, I argue, and what the Hindu concept of maya is about: the illusion lies in the everydayness of language habits. Kierkegaard said as much in the Concept of Anxiety: when we engage in the world, and we give our thougths and feelings to all the things language articulates, the various cultural institutions in our daily lives, we thereby turn away from God (unless one has mastered the terms of the knight of faith, which K himself confesses he cannot do, who can do both).
If telepathy is real, why wouldn't it be physical, given that both sender and receiver are physical? To assume there's something nonphysical means the brain can have a causal relation to the nonphysical. More assumptions = weaker justification.
That is a tricky business since you are doomed if you don't believe in the correct God!
Yes you are right, but that is not the whole story.:starstruck: You got my youthful thoughts all excited and I feel young and alive in the moment. In the past, I got all the information I could about what some call consider non-scientific thinking.
Do you know people's hearts can synchronize? Why and how does that happen? For sure, there is an emotional cause.
I have to use AI here because (bad word) it is necessary information.
I think this next explanation explains telepathy, my messages from the dead.
Have you heard of people using shrooms having the same hallucinations? I have been watching history videos, and it appears some people had sacred cities and, evidently, huge gatherings where psychedelics were used. For some, using shrooms is a spiritual experience that is life-changing. I think Western prejudices have kept us ignorant. It was the prejudice that killed my interest, but here we are, and that interest is rekindled.
AI says this.
I think this information needs to go with the information about electromagic energy. What are these brain waves? What creates them? Music can effect our brain waves, but exactly why?
THANKS, JACK, FOR THIS THREAD. I AM ENJOYING IT SOOOO MUCH. :hearts:
There is, you know, an inroad into telepathy that perhaps you haven't thought of. It is a philosophical inroad, not from empirical science. It begins with a question: How does an object, event, person, etc., make its way into my mind such that my thoughts about this are indeed about it? The light shines on my cup, some parts of the spectrum are absorbed others reflected, those that are reflected make their way to the eye, through the lens, back to the rods and cones in the back of the eye where they are converted into neuronal stimuli via the optic nerve brings them into the brain turning them into mental events and seeing is complete, roughly speaking. But note: all of these physical relations are causal, and causality has nothign epistemic it; that is, in any model you can imagine of a causal sequence, there is nothing of cause that survives in the effect. light reflects off the cup, but reflected light is nothing at all like a cup, aso according to this physicalist thinking, the system of relations that deliver an object to the brain are completely absent of the object. And this applies to any and all thinking about causal sequences.
So if the good scientist is going explain knowledge, she fails before she even begins, because science's bottom line is causality, and causality simply does not deliver knowledge. BUT: it is plain as day that I do know this cup is here, on the table, just as I know the sky is clear, the trees green, and so on. Clearly I DO reach beyond the horizon of what a physical brain can do, so how is this possible?
Simple: perception is not localized in a brain. To think like this leads to madness (See the argument Hillary Putnam has with Richard Rorty, where the latter insists that Putnam never really has seen his wife, for causally grounded knowledge is impossible. His wife is rather acknowledged and conceived in localized propositions and brain events). It must be the case, in order to explain knowledge relations, that perception itself epistemically "extends" to its objects, beyond the delimitations of the physical.
It is the only way for knowledge to be possible: the perceptual interface with an object must be such that the object is allowed to intimate its appearance in the interface, and thus perception cannot be conceived as impossibly distant from the object. Put simply, the cup is both over there AND intimating its existence to me. This aligns with telepathy in that it is knowledge at a distance, if you will. What makes telepathy so repugnant to most people is that it violates the locality of the brain: how can one enter into another's thoughts and experiences? But it should be evident that this locality leads to a disastrous epistemology, and cannot be right. Once it is abandoned, one has entered into a post, post modern grounding of our existence. To observe at all is to be already IN the locality of the object as well as IN the locality of one's self.
I am going to jump to another post and share a video about math and manifestation. I want to hold what I said in reply to you separate, in case I need correcting. I am not sure of my understanding of what you said, and I plan to contemplate it when I go to bed. I am trying to visualize what goes into our eyes that becomes our vision. I have so much to learn. I am sure in my college days we studied how the eye works, but thanks to what you said, I am not sure of how the eye works.
The brain not only uses clues coming from without but also uses clues from within, such as memory and experience in expectation of what is a cup.
:monkey:
[quote=Carlo Rovelli, theoretical physicist]It is with sadness that every so often I spend a few hours on the internet, reading or listening to the mountain of stupidities dressed up with the word 'quantum'. Quantum medicine; holistic quantum theories of every kind, mental quantum spiritualism and so on, and on, in an almost unbelievable parade of quantum nonsense.[/quote]
What if the basis of All is the permanent quantum vacuum and you are a temporary arrangement of it? What if you disperse back unto it?
:up: :up:
It does; the nose has receptors that can receive some molecule shapes that turn into smells; a dog has many more receptors.
Michael returned, feeling very much recuperated and feeling totally blessed. Im back. Id never known of such pleasant fragrances.
Smells alert the ninja in the dark even as much as sound, the sub categories being aroma, fragrance, scent, perfume, redolence, bouquet, stench, fetor, stink, reek, and whiff.
So you gave me roses to enjoy the pleasure of.
Yes, but I am attracted to you, too.
The inverse also applies.
Good. Everyone appreciates the fragrance of fresh-cut flowers, but the stench from the paper mill across town is usually unwelcome. Both have a distinctive smell, which is the most general of these words for what is perceived through the nose, but there is a big difference between a pleasant smell and a foul one.
You can say that again.
That.
Ha. What about odours, the British spelling that Austin likes over the American odors, which somehow has an unpleasant connotation to him.
An odour may be either pleasant or unpleasant, but it suggests a smell that is clearly recognizable and can usually be traced to a single source, like the pungent odor of onions, which by the way, should be planted with potatoes since their eyes will water and nourish the crops.
Good explanation, and joke. Ive done aroma-therapy.
An aroma is a pleasing and distinctive odor that is usually penetrating or pervasive, like the aroma of fresh-ground coffee, while bouquet refers to a delicate aroma, such as that of a fine wine. Here, have a glass. Dont forget to swirl, sniff, sip, swallow, or spit if you are just wine sampling.
The five Ss. What about the scent of a woman like you?
A scent is usually delicate and pleasing, as I try to be, with an emphasis on the source rather than on an olfactory impression, such as the scent of balsam associated with Christmas.
I now believe in Santa Claus. I chose a lilac fragrance from my quarters; it reminds me of my early youth in England with Molly McGuire under the fragrant bush
Yes, fragrances can take you back in an instant to their source in a remembrance from the past. Fragrance and perfume are both associated with flowers, but fragrance is more delicate. A perfume may be so rich and strong that it is repulsive or overpowering. Of the lilac it is said:
Loves first emotion rose from the Lilac,
For it blooms when Nature is first aroused;
It is loves youngest dream to us come back,
Where it will neer again remain unspoused.
Indeed, fragrances are among the infinite variations of energy in nature. Energy may be the one thing, but it has many pleasant faces. But then there were the pigs, which, of course attractive to each other in their own way.
Stench and stink are reserved for smells that are foul, strong, and pervasive, although stink implies a sharper sensation, while stench refers to a more sickening one: the stink of sweaty gym clothes; the stench of a rotting carcass.
Thank you for the teachings.
However, then comes Jose Arguelles' book "The Mayan Factor" and Michael S Schneider's book "A Beginner's Guide to Constructing the Universe", and all altogether there is a lot I want to learn. Especially Arguelles's book is hard to understand and seems to say totally ridiculous things, but I think I should go back to reading it in light of what the videos I posted say.
Language may not capture the full nature of the divine or numinous experience. The silence of meditation experiences may capture this, as does those who speak of mystical experiences. Of course, understanding in the rational sense is important, but it is limited. This is with or without the notion of God. The emphasis on the limits of language and silence were spoken of by Wittgenstein. He did not speak of God and it may be that the idea of God symbolises that which lies beyond the realm of knowledge.
Telepathy, like premonitions, is an interesting phenomena. There are science explanations but they only show the hardwiring. They may point to the way in which everything is aspects of the larger system and interconnected. The idea of the microcosm being a reflection of the macrocosm goes back to Plato. It may be that hallucinogenics enable tapping into this in altered states of consciousness. Also, the anthropologist, Gregory Bateson, spoke of people in certain states of consciousness; such as that of shamanism being able to tune into patterns in the larger scheme.
Oh my goodness, he has a few books that appear to be complementary to Spinoza's ideas of nature and mind. These thinkers appear to me more appealing than quantum physics. However, quantum physics opens the possibility of all things being connected, and what we think is reality is an illusion and only one of infinite possibilities.
I want to go back in time to when people in South America had huge gatherings where it is likely psychodilics were used, so I can experience what they were experiencing. Along with going to India and learning the truths of Hinduism. Those truths are not so different from the Mayan beliefs. Philosophy has different sources of the notion that life as we know it is an illusion and the true reality looks like quantum physics.
Oh my, that is different from believing there is one god and our material reality and our lives are in his hands.
I wonder what Spinoza, and many of us philosophers would have made of quantum physics. I won't deliberate on this because it comes down to models of 'reality', especially the dialogue between religious/ spiritual metaphysics and science. I can see why some question the validity of 'metaphysics' in the dialogue between the arts and sciences.Bertrand Russell spoke of a 'no man's land' to describe philosophy and this may correspond with the ongoing issues of relationship between religion and science in shaping ideas of religion. The worldviews of the philosophy of 'reality'. The dea of 'God' may seem outdated, but it is an extremely complex area of philosophy, and may not be dismissed easily in human understanding..
Of course, the concept of 'God' had been used and abuse for various ends in arguments. One question may be what are the benefits and disadvantages of throwing the idea of 'God' aside in philosophy?
True. But memory all the more puts distance between oneself as an epistemic agency, and the object, for what stands before one is now not only causally distant, if you will, but being a memory object, is compromised by memory in what it IS. In other words, I see the cup, but if memory crowds the perception, what actually unfolds before me is no longer the cup but a qualified memory perception of a cup. The cupness never was the object, but memory informing me that "that" there is acknowledged AS a cup.
The problem of getting to that which is before me in a knowledge claim has to do with an analysis of what "getting to" is all about. How is the "distance" between me and the cup closed so my thoughts about the cup are really about that over there called a cup?
I want to go back to your statement, "The worldviews of the philosophy of 'reality'. The idea of 'God' may seem outdated, but it is an extremely complex area of philosophy, and may not be dismissed easily in human understanding."
I think by using the term "worldview," you might be working with a Western worldview, which does not include the Mayan, Hindu, or Chinese understanding of reality. Interestingly, the Chinese I Ching matrix fits perfectly in the center of the Mayan matrix. The Chinese matrix is equal to the 64 DNA, and the Mayan Matrix includes the universe. The acupuncture points are found in both. I think there is a lot we have to learn before our understanding of "worldview" includes other points of view, that are not dominated by the God of Abraham religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Those religions will not bring us to an understanding of quantum physics.
What we want is the truth; seeing quantum physics as God's truth is something we need to consider.
My guess is that he would have concluded, as Einstein & Penrose have, that QM is an incomplete physical theory (à la "Schrödinger's Cat") because it is incompatible with deterministic, local reality (re: EPR paradox, Bell's Theorem) because Spinoza is a strict determinist and realist.
One benefits by dispensing with 'substance dualism' and superstitious connotations of the (non-explanatory) 'supernatural'. The primary disadvantage of a 'Godless' philosophy is that one must struggle with to overcome despair / nihilism / scientism. Philosophical naturalists, like classical atomists and Spinozists for instance, rationally avoid these disadvantages.
Quoting Athena
Why "consider" this when "God's truth" about "quantum physics" is not revealed in ANY of thousands extant sacred texts? :eyes:
I don't think it can be, for the brain 'paints a face' on the cup as the noumena becomes phenomena.
One time I saw a fire burning at the base of a far away road sign; a closer look showed it to be some ribbons dangling and waving in the breeze.
Religious faith is no more than hopes and wishes for there to be a supernatural realm, which doesn't grant it, leaving one but with the wishes and hopes one started with.
I picked up someone from church and apparently the pastor had been talking a long time about the 'foundation of faith', as if it was something, and then he built many more unknowns upon it!
Quantum Field Theory is by far the most successful truth in the history of science, its scientific model very well showing what goes on.
The quantum 'vacuum' has a base zero-point energy that is never zero and a base zero-point motion that is never zero. Philosophically, we would also conclude that Nothing and Stillness wouldn't have prayer of being so.
Generally, there has been so much harm done by religious beliefs although some find great comfort in them. It is not just religious wars but religious psychosis. I know people who have fears, such as being the devil or the Antichrist. I understand that Marilyn Manson believed that he was the Antichrist at one stage, until he came to the conclusion it was symbolic.
I remember how as a teenager I got so freaked out by some Christian people saying that there were demonic backward messages in certain music. One big example is Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven', in which there is meant to be the words 'Satan is God' if the song isplayed backwards.
I was reading Bertrand Russell's summary of Spinoza and thinking about how interesting it is that Spinoza speaks of evil being a necessary aspect of God. I can see why he is radical and can be interpreted as an atheist. His ideas, whether he is regarded as a pantheist, or whatever are a radical departure from the religious ideas of the masses, but different from materialism.
Whether one is a materialist, pantheist, or an existentialist there is the confrontation with ultimate fear. The nature of existentialist fear is about facing the starkness of bitter truths, especially death and the unknown. Fear exists inside and outside of religious framework but is just in a different way.
I am inclined to see patterns and synchronicities in life experiences but that may be about my own narrative story making tendency. It is interesting how different individuals see life and the ideas of purpose and destiny so differently. It may be partly based on what wishes to believe, or some innermost subconscious conditioning, or even the nature of one's own life experiences, or a mixture of all of these. In some cases, some challenging experience, as well as philosophical reading and thinking, may lead to profound shifts in religious or non religious interpretations.
Actually, I don't think language has any limits at all. Only when one takes language to be something it is not is there an error. If one calls something a tree and thinks thatin the calling there has been some kind of seeing what that IS, apart from the calling, then there is a misunderstanding of the nature of language. Language, rather, takes itself by the tail, like an oroboros, in every utterance. It seizes upon the world, bringing it to light, but in doing so, imposes upon the world an existence that is foundationally indeterminate, meaning language does not ever "penetrate" itself into the being all around it. Ask me what anything IS, and I can consult a dictionary: more words and sentences. BUT: it is IN language that the possibility to penetrate, so to speak, itself is raised. Language inquires "beyond" itself. The question, that "piety of language" Opens into metaphysics, "real" metaphysics, not the contrived stuff of ancient minds. All of this around me is formally tables, chairs, lamps, rugs., etc., as eidetic structures of intelligibility, but it is also, all the metaphysics of the commonplace. And so, back to limitations and language: This cannot be realized outside of language, this sense of alienation from ordinary things that discloses Being as such, any more than my cat can do logic. Language itself belongs to metaphysics, and by this I simply mean all realizations are born out of thought and its logic, and in order for the insight into its own questionability to be possible, language must be on, if you will, the other side of this question. Recall Wittgenstein saying that for something to make sense, its contradiction has to make sense, and hence, as I remember, metaphysics is doomed. But what apparently did not register with Wittgenstein (this is early on) is that this threshold of inquiry is a real "space" for thought to enter. Don't know if you've read any Heidegger, but his idea of space refers to the way thought rises into proximity when one encounters something, like entering a classroom and knowing instantly all about desks, chairs, lecterns, etc.; language games? Sure, but much more. The question is, can language "talk" not about what is beyond language, but what it is to "stand before" what is beyond language, even when what stands before language is language itself. Meister Eckhart comes to mind.
So language seems both finite and infinite, if you will. And in this, its limits are, well, weird and indefinable. A waiting-to-see is where we are. It puts us on the cusp of what-is-not-language.
That is very different from believing there is nothing between the plants, and what is in space is perfect orbs, and nothing in space changes. Seeing spots on the sun was heretical because that would make the sun imperfect. It was not only the church that did not approve of Galileo, but all the academics who held the explanations of Aristotle as true. I read it was the academics who spurred the Pope to take action against Galileo.
I am dumbfounded by the religious folks clinging to their mythology despite how much our understanding of reality has changed.
I like your post, however, I will argue, as long as there is an argument we need to argue. Forums do not restrict membership to those who have an agreement supported by the owner of the forum. :lol: Well I was once evicted from a science forum because I used the word "God". Fortunately, most forums are not so narrow-minded.
The art of debate is worth developing, and we can do that by arguing both sides of the argument.
Also, Jose Arguelles mentions galactic beams as compatible with the Mayan cosmology. Thanks to the Spanish and Christian fanatics, we don't have Mayan textbooks. However, Jose Arguelles gives an interesting explanation of how these beams affect life on Earth. His explanation is rather fantastic, but trying to understand the Mayan concepts is interesting to me. Communicating my understanding and receiving replies is part of the learning process.
Whats Fundamental has to be partless,
Permanent, and eer remain as itself;
Thus, it can only form temporaries
Onward as rearrangements of itself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqQBHH_u5Vw
That there is always some form of physical substrate is the point. There is no "immaterial " information.
Information is like currency...fungible... in that it has to be in some form of physical substrate or other, but is endlessly interchangeable.
:up: :up:
Are you familiar with any of the physicists who suggest that information is ontologically basic and that matter and energy emerge from it? Sometimes it is dependent, but sometimes it is put on par with energy, or even prior to it, which is a pretty abstruse conversation. Suffice to say, I am not sure how matter could exist without the other, so if it is prior it, it must be a sort of logical or ontological priority (unless one holds to the idea that information is a sui generis product of mind and perspective, which some do).
If mass/energy is the potential to receive form, it's nothing without some informing determinacy. But we have no (observable) potential as such, but always a certain sort of potentiality in fields, even "void" being filled with all sorts of activity (which seems, by definition, to include information). Indeed, nothing could be measurable without information (one of the better arguments for why it cannot he a sort of "illusion" produced by mind; the "difference that makes a difference" seems to be prior).
If memories and persons were "nothing but information" this would be the case. It follows from many versions of computational theory of mind. We could even be reinstantiated in a clever information processing system made up of paper towel rolls and rubber bands, if it had the same data structure. I actually find this a bit absurd, but it's not an unpopular idea. On a classical view, Laplace's Demon (or any Omega Point) should be able to resurrect us at will in any media of sufficient complexity, although the media we are formed from would have nothing to do with our experience of ourselves and our environment (a knock against such theories perhaps, since it suggests a sort of skepticism, and a greater ubiquity of Boltzmann Brains or stray Boltzmann thoughts flitting through the aether under dual aspect theories).
I am not convinced that the exact substrate for producing minds is not important. Note that, while Augustine's experiences might be passed around in innumerable ways, they are only experienced when human minds interact with these records.
I won't speculate about God except to say that the existence of a regular third person substrate through which we can affect one another, and yet not simply merge into one another, seems to be a prerequisite for us to be individuals at all.
The idea makes no sense to me since information, as far as I know, is always carried by a material substrate. Also science informs that for the majority of its existence the universe contained no interpretants, which would mean that although there was a physically existent universe, there was no exchange of information. That said, some semioticians advocate for pansemiosis, and it really depends on how attenuated you are prepared to allow the concept of 'interpretant' (not to mention 'mind') to become.
That something can be a sign for something else is a process which cannot be modeled entirely in physical terms, but it does not follow that the processes involved are anything other than physical, it just follows that they cannot be a matter of mere efficient causation.
As @apokrisis often reminds us, there is an interplay in the physical world between global conditions and local causation, or in Aristotelian terms, final (and/or formal?) causation and efficient causation.
As a pansemiotician, it is heartening that physics has arrived at this dichotomy of information-entropy. An Aristotelean tale of form and matter that speaks of a reciprocal local-global order to Nature that can be measured or weighed in fundamental Planck-scale units.
Information is physical in being the global holographic horizon on the Cosmos. The lightcone causal structure. Entropy is then the other thing of the local material fluctuations or degrees of freedom.
So it is holomorphism made science. It is the systems view after it has been modernised by special relativity and quantum mechanics.
Although the physicists who push the informational turn in physics dont quite understand that this is what they have done. Or at least in the popular accounts, information is spoken of as the very stuff of reality - the new substance that replaces the old material substance.
As ever, when dichotomy such as hylomorphism arises, it is treated as a dualism that needs to be reduced to a monism. And the systems approach says that instead the dichotomy is the path to larger whole that is a hierarchical structure. The triad of an upper and lower limit to reality, with reality then being the stuff - the informed being - to be found inbetween.
Then another confusion is that biosemiosis is the further step that is an organism that models the world in terms of a semiotic system of interpretance. A subjective point of view gets inserted into the pansemiotic or hylomorphic physics. A physics that is ruled only by its completely general finality of thermalising.
So physics has moved to a pansemiotic story. Yet a lot of effort continues to go to making it sound like the new monism which a reductionist metaphysics must arrive at.
And yes, semiosis and pansemiosis are the same thing at a deep level, yet also completely different in that physics has no internal model or internal point of view. It just emerges in a regular dissipative structure fashion.
While life and mind can take a personal interest in how entropy is produced as organisms can encode the information to impose their own mechanical constraints on the physics of the world. Organisms can have habits of interpretance that are the behaviours freely emitted when the organism feels it has been given the right signs by Nature.
One step further: That phenomenon which is a cup cannot be conceived as apart from its noumenality if 'noumena' can be made sense of at all. There can be no "other side" of noumena, for one would have to draw a line upon the noumenal itself. All that is metaphysically sustainable, is so because its ground lies IN the world before us. Noumena is a term that abstracts from the given of the world. That cup as it is before you IS the metaphysics of the world. The question then goes to how phenomena sustains the positing of noumena.
Qualia are the brain's own invented language?
As far as I understand in biosemiotics it is the membrane which is the basic interpretant. So, I wonder what serves as interpretant in the pansemiotic conception. Hoffmeyer seems to think of the evolution of the membrane as the origin of 'minding'.
I don't have any kind of grasp of holomorphic functions (my general understanding of mathematics leaves a lot to be desired). Is there any way you can make "Information is physical in being the global holographic horizon on the Cosmos" understandable to me despite my being math-challenged?
The idea of entropy as local material fluctuations or degrees of freedom is new to me. I think of entropy?the omnipresent tendency to dissipate? as the most universal global constraint.
The idea of information as substance has never made much sense to me?some like to think that information, since it can be manifested in different media, is independent of any substrate?but that seems to transform information into a ghost. Can we make sense of the notion of a ghost as substance?not the ghost in the machine, but the machine as ghost?
The membrane is certainly one of the expressions of a biosemiotic relation. But what does it represent? It speaks to the organismic imperative of being able to separate self from "other". And so the immune system is also frontline in that. It is constantly making judgements about molecules and whether they are part of the self or an intrusion on that self.
Is the viral particle part of me? Is that arthritic bone spur part of me? Is that mushroom I ate something to be digested or violently rejected?
So a membrane is a general barrier. But it is also a system of gateways pores that just passively regulate the molecular traffic for the simple stuff or actively manage it for the critical stuff. And interpretance would be that general orientation of the organism to being able to maintain its integrity, plus then the further thing of acting from that position to achieve its larger purposes.
With interpretance then, the membrane would only be basic in the sense of creating the most physical level of separating the me inside from the world outside. It all then gets much more complex even just with the intelligence built into the pores that do the actual trans-membrane regulating based on a larger traffic of signalling.
Quoting Janus
A holomorphic function is something else. It is a function that is "holistic" in the sense that it uses a number base that is more complex than the reals. Instead of counting points, you are counting something else like rotations.
Holography is the idea in physics that the dimensionality of the world is just as real as the material events it contains. If you have a dimensional boundary such as arises due to the speed of light at the horizon of a black hole or the cosmic event horizon then that becomes a necessary element of the physics. It imposes constraints on what can even occur in terms of the local material events.
So if you imagine space and time in the classical Newtonian fashion as an infinite Euclidean void, then they are just a passive backdrop that place no constraints on what can happen physically within them. You just have atoms banging about and a vacuum which plays no causal role in that.
But once you relativise spacetime, then the speed of light c becomes a bounding limit. No causal connection can exceed c. And that then forms horizons that are perfectly real. A part of Nature with its own measurable consequences that the physical theory can't ignore.
So when matter falling into a black hole passes a threshold, even the radiation can't escape. Radiation moves at c, but the gravitational gradient is sucking it down faster that that rate. The radiation thus disappears from the lightcone which defines our physical reality. The light that has gone over the black hole's horizon can no longer affect us causally, just as we can no longer interact with it.
The same with the cosmic event horizon as a global boundary on our small corner of the Universe.
In a Universe being accelerated by dark energy, an event horizon forms where even light that crosses the boundary can no longer return. Like a swimmer stuck in a rip tide, it can strike out towards us at c, but the tide of space under it is now moving away at a superluminal rate. Like the Red Queen's race, the horizon becomes the spot where light is running is fast as it can just to stand still.
The current event horizon is sat about 16 billion light years from us. That is the cut-off. Light emitted by stars to the other side now can't reach us anymore.
So the horizon isn't particularly material. It just reflects the fact that the relativistic view of spacetime creates a structure of boundaries that then have direct consequences in terms of the decoherence of quantum events. The Universe rather than being causally continuous and infinite is instead holographically finite. Able only to impose its light-speed causal connections within a finite region and so only able to decohere or collapse a finite number of local events.
Its sort of like if you buy a fish tank. For a certain size tank, you can safely house a certain number of fish. Container and content are in a physical relation. And for physics, the relation between the two becomes mathematically exact.
A difference would be that over-fill your fishtank with entropy or local quantum degrees of freedom and the gravity of matter content would collapse the tank into a blackhole. It is more dramatic than the fish just dying.
Alternatively, endow your fishtank container with an accelerating expansion and the fish will find themselves becoming lonelier and lonelier as all their tankmates get physically carried over the horizon that is the threshold speed at which any fish could swim. No matter how hard they might struggle to remain together in a fishy school, spacetime itself would look to be carrying them off away from each other at an ever greater rate.
So holography is a holistic view on causality. It says dimensionality is just as much a causal player as the supposed contents. It is as real as the local particles are real.
Even if the vacuum is driven to its heat death, it will still have its dark energy content because there is a cosmic event horizon. The horizon will in effect radiate with a last faint sizzle of photons. Just as a black hole also evaporates so that all its gravitationally bound matter eventually escapes (the black hole horizon contracting, and the evaporation speeding up, in proportionate manner.)
So the physical meaning of "information" is very different here to the lay meaning. It is a way to count physical degrees of freedom the bits that are the atomistic contents of some spatiotemporal container.
Qualia is very much to the point. The brain is not. I argue that true qualia is not the appearance absent its concept (what Kant would call the "blind" intuition). For such a thing, like "being appeared to redly" is nothing at all, just being there which is the same as "being" as such. Its "thereness" lacks categorical distinction. But what it really lacks is affective categorical distinction---Qualia as it is discussed so disparagingly in analytic philosophy, is an abstraction from the original experience which is saturated with meaning, call it "value qualia," the importance and interest the color red is invested with in the perceptual event, this is what makes qualia a meaningful concept. The cup is possessed by the interest, however small, I have when I observe it, and this makes this relation between myself and the cup a singularity that stands apart from mere empty being. This is my position on qualia.
The brain? Hard to fathom this, I guess, but look at it like this: what does one do with the qualia we call the brain? Qualia, recall, does not have any particular object, rather, any and all objects are first qualia in the bare phenomenon. We tend to think the brain is first, the source of the conscious event in which the brain is seen, but this is not what is shown. Rather, we see the brain appearing as an appearance, and this appearance therefore is the real ontological ground for consciousness. Put plainly, consciousness and its appearances is PRIOR to any idea of a physical brain. The true ground for all existence is consciousness.
Put in Kant's terms, the brain itself is just a representation, like everything else. It has no privileged ontological status.
So, the consciousness implements our reality and its experiencing, through qualia-appearances; it is the messenger - whose message seems to be existence and being. Even though it is movie-like, its happenings are identical to what would go on if all events were what we would call 'real': if there is no qualia gas in the qualia car, then the qualia car won't quaila run.
An implementation difference that makes no difference to the message itself is truly no difference, but is still of interest to those who want to know the mechanics of our reality.
Thanks for the interesting and allusive (not to mention elusive) explanation. 'Holographic' was either a typo or an outcome due to predictive text. And I'm afraid I don't at all understand imaginary numbers or the importance of counting rotations rather than points, beyond a vague feel.
Did you mean to use 'holographic' rather than 'holomorphic'? I understand the holographic idea to be that every part in some sense contains the whole. Do you think that could be related to quantum entanglement?
Anyway a good bit of it is somewhat over my head, and because of my mathematical shortcomings I have remained reluctant to enter into philosophical discussions involving QM and Relativity. At least I get the point about the liveness of relativistic spacetime, where space is not a mere container, but a real contributor to cosmic events.
I am drawn to the idea that science offers a pathway out of inveterate anthropomorphism, and that there is no better guide, even no other guide, to metaphysical speculation than science.
I wish I could offer a more adequate response.
:up: :up:
Did I say holomorphic? I could have quite easily as my head is full of spinor maths at the moment and thus how complex number magic does lead on to holomorphic functions and a twistor-based view of spacetime.
Anyway, I think what matters about holography is that it is an example of the holistic approach to understanding causality. Things - events, objects, happenings, particles - are shaped by contexts. If we start by presuming everything is possible, then somethingness can start to emerge as everything else is being cancelled away or generally suppressed. A context arises that comes to define what is possible or allowed within the limitations of that context.
And this is the relation of quantum to classical reality. The quantum level still contains more unsuppressed possibilities, And the classical level arises when we feel all those possibilities have been collapsed to the point that now there is just some completely particular something.
So quantum and classical are not different except to the degree in which a confused everythingness has been boiled down to an exact somethingness. When two particles are entangled, no one can really say which one is which. But when the particles are further constrained by the decoherence that is some further act of measurement, then each is fixed by that new context, that new point of view.
So it is story about creating the context sufficient to fix the event. And that is a sliding scale. When thing are either very hot or very small, there isnt even the room or the stability to frame events within contexts. But at a human scale of observation in a world now both very large and very cold, a massive amount of context restricts almost everything we encounter to a state as decohered and particularised as possible.
And that is the holistic view that holography is speaking to. It is a concrete way of putting a number on the weight of cosmic context that now impinges on every smallest point of fluctuating vacuum. You can measure the surface area of the sphere and say this cashes out as some matching number of fully resolved quantum particles or bits of entropy.
So it is not a hologram in the sense that the boundary somehow encodes every individual detail of a scene. Instead, it is a hologram that imposes the same general weight of constraint on every possible location - but doesnt specify beyond the quantum level of things.
If entangled particles are up/down pairs, then holography is saying there is some collective total of up/downness that a holographic horizon is surrounding and thus conserving. But the horizon doesnt have information about which particle is the up or the down. Or anything really about this particular particle pair.
That extra information has to be created as the next step of adding some local context - such as an experimenter creating a set-up that forces a known choice onto particles as now as fully individuated as they can get in that regard.
So it is all about contexts being a real part of the physics. And the quantum to classical transition is about being able to model the evolution of contexts - the jump from the highly constrained state of a system prepared in some globally general form described by quantum field theory in a relativistically fixed dimensionality, to a view of that system as it has become fully individuated in the local sense of a decohered particle.
The electron could have been up down as there wasnt yet even the information to say which of a pair of electrons it was. But then an experimental set up insisted on some counterfactual definiteness. And suddenly each electron owned its own orientation - at least until it wandered off and got re-entangled some other way.
by making an observation?
Observations don't make the world. Reading the numbers on a dial don't change anything except how you might think about the state of the world. But making a measurement poking a switching device into the flow of the world will come with some probability of the switch getting flipped. And you may have arranged things so that a different number then gets displayed.
So sure. To be modellers of the world, we have to split ourselves off from that world and just have it become some idea in our mind. But then we must also interact with the world in a way that has some meaningful degree of correlation. And we like taking measurements employing the counterfactuality of a switching device as that makes the resulting maths tractable. The switch at least is either on or off. And that is the observation we can record in our log.
And then out there in the world, things are happening in ways that more or less conform to our mathematical models. We are getting a pay back on our efforts to predict its future events.
So if you want to get realistic about observations, you need to understand them in terms of a pragmatic modelling relation we can form with the world. Our skill at tying abstract mathematical models to precision instrumentation.
Opening your eyes and reading a dial is not where the action is at. At that level of world modelling, you only want to be able to move about without bumping into things.
Implements? Consciousness implements our reality? Not that consciousness takes up reality for some useful purpose, but rather that consciousness is itself an activity, and objects in the world are temporal events. Thus, familiar activities, driving, walking and all the rest, are activities the ontological foundation of which is an activity.
Nothing is done through qualia experiences. To talk of qualia, one has to look to pure phenomenality. When one does something, qualia designates the presuppositional ground of all that is there in the doing. Everything that is in the normal and familiar way of things possesses deeper analytic into the existence of this. This is discovered by asking basic questions, and suspending the familiar to find the answers to these. What is time? for example. It could said that there is a qualia of time that found when the vulgar linear structure of time is put aside, and time is revealed to be hic et nunc: a singularity which is intuited in the pure phenomenality of of the self.
A messenger, the message of which is existence and being? Now you're talking, though messenger is just a metaphor. But I agree: qualia is just a term that conveys, reveals, being as such. All language reveals being in the apprehension of beingS which it makes possible, but qualia, pure phenomenality, makes possible the essence of being to be shown--language shows, opens, brings forth meanings, and in the "saying" of something, the saying opens Being, brings a thing to light. Qualia is an extraordinary term that belongs to ontology: it opens Being.
Qualia gas, qualia car, and the rest: Think of it like this: there is the world of ordinary events and objects, and cars and gas have their place. But the discovery of qualia requires a suspension of this language, and this is not unlike suspending the language of physics to talk about knitting or sailing. One contextual setting is simply different from others. Qualia has its own contextuality, such that normal language designations across the board are suspended.
Quoting apokrisis
My question about entanglement (which I have only a superficial understanding of) was whether it might be plausible to conjecture that all particles in the Universe are already entangled. If that were so, then everything might be connected much more so than seems likely based on our macro-observations and their understandings.
There is a Universe. And that is a constraint that gets plugged in by hardwiring Poincare invariance - the symmetries of special relativity - into the quantum field description of nature. You have already defined the box which contains any form of entangled content. And furthermore, this box has now grown very large and very cold. And so its energetic contents very disconnected.
This dramatic expansion in scale says the current state of affairs - a void with a bunch of crud, the gravitating mass of the stars and galaxies of the cosmic web - is about as thermally decohered as it can get. If everything was once maximally entangled, it is now likewise maximally disentangled. There is no reason to worry about spooky correlations between some rock on Earth and some rock on another planet circling a star in some other galaxy.
Given holography came up, the Heat Death of the Universe will result in a return to a highly entangled state. All the material crud will be recycled to radiation with a temperature of absolute zero and so a wavelength the scale of the visible Universe. Photons as a single beat stretched billions of lightyears long.
But even then, special relativity has to be plugged into the quantum description and so classicality gets smuggled in the back door to put actual hard numbers on what it could mean for there to be a holographic space of entangled particles, let alone the current topologically emergent structure that is the disentangled comoving cosmic web doing its gravitating inertial mass thing.
Is everything much more connected than it seems? Well yes. But that is as much because it is all crammed into a classical box as because particles can form their fleeting states of entanglement.
It is weird. The photon emitted by a distant star is absorbed by the retina of your eye. And in some sense, a space of all possible paths was collapsed only when that happened. There was a ray that arrived exactly there, and exactly nowhere else in the entire Universe, as all those other possibilities just got erased. A story of instant effect or superluminal connection that seems completely outside of our regular notion of space and time.
But in a cold and large Universe, this is just what happens. Almost every quantum choice that exists as a degree of freedom at the start gets decohered in just the very first few seconds of cosmic existence. Things get rapidly boiled down to a crud - a gravitating dust of atomic matter - that now barely interacts at all anymore. The void is swept so empty that a photon can travel a very long way for a very long time in classical spacetime terms before it goes pouff all of a sudden in an act of probabilistic collapse. A collapse that acts as if no intervening space or time ever existed.
And yet the photon is dreadfully aged, it was released at 5000 degrees - the average temperature of a radiating star - and now might be so cold and stretched that is only some radio wave as far as our instrumentation is concerned, As a radio wave, it passes right through us in fact. We need some kind of antenna and amplifier to know that it was there.
This is what happens with cosmic microwave background. At 380,000 years after the Big Bang, electrically neutral atoms could form and there was the sudden release of a hot flash of light. All the photons left out of this matter formation had nowhere to go except stream off towards the end of time, redshifting forever. But our radio telescopes could pick up this crackle that now has a temperature just 2.7 degrees above absolute zero. We can end the trajectories for the tiniest number of this photon flood and so put a concrete classical number on their individual quantum adventure.
So the point is that quantum maths is really useful for telling us about reality in terms of its free possibilities. But it has to be constrained by the classical maths that tells us how cosmic history comes to weigh on that. Entanglement is a thing. But for us in our own view of reality, it is the general degree of disentanglement that is the more remarkable fact.
Connection is in essence uninteresting. It results in the hot and maximally featureless vacuum. But mix in disconnection as a contrast and now you can have a world made of definite things. The world that we really want to know in terms of how it got here. How it could have evolved and have such a robust classical structure.
A last thought to add is that nobody much talks about how weird classicality is. There you don't even have a quantum wavefunction feeling its way over all possible trajectories. Somehow classicality just knows the shortest geodesic path that minimises the action. It hops straight to it without any fuss.
Classicality also brings in all the weirdness of contracting lengths and dilating durations. At least in the direction of motion. You have the weirdness of the speed of light as a constant. The weirdness of inertial motion. The weirdness the Universe only being able to exist if its mass contents are in an exact flat balance with its gravitational deceleration and the critical mass that we can see is only 5% of what is required.
We know that some "dark matter" adds another 23% as that is what fits with the gravitational waves now imprinted on the cosmic microwave background. And 72% has to be "dark energy" as that amount buys us sufficient flatness right at this point of cosmic existence, but comes with the price that it will only keep growing and eventually overwhelm the very container it exists in and that is why a fixed holographic bound will form around the visible Universe while all its material content is whisked over the horizon as if disappearing into an inverse black hole. One that sucks any remaining energy density out of our small corner of an ever expanding metric and leaves only the quantum sizzle of the least hot photon excitations possible.
Again, a lot gets made about quantum mechanics being the ultimate mystery. But classicality looks just as strange if you don't also get the logic of its inner mathematical symmetries.
The hope of course is that the mysteries of the quantum and the mysteries of the classical are arranged such that each cancels the other one out. The mystery is zeroed as they are the two faces the yin and the yang of the one greater symmetry maths.
That project is going quite well. It all looks kosher down to the first billionth of a second after the Big Bang at the moment. And even the first trillionth if we are right about inflation.
Quoting apokrisis
Seems an interesting counterpoint to the usual predictable spiritualistic story where it is disconnection that is considered to be merely an illusion, where the classical picture is entirely a construction of the mind and where the promise is one of salvation or liberation from suffering brought about by the delusion of separation.
That would make things too easy. It takes us back to Newtonian physics. We wouldnt have quantum tunneling or superconductors or lasers or other technology. We couldnt even have electrons and photons as we know them from the entangled symmetries of particle physics.
For sure. And, perversely some take great comfort from the harm done - as an elderly woman said to my gay friend and his partner, "It makes me feel better knowing God will burn you both in the afterlife."
Ive worked with a lot of people who were brought up in religious orphanages, and many of them were abused by priests, brothers, nuns, and other clergy. Not just the sexual abuse, but also the power games, bullying, and physical violence. Many "victims'" remain religious and think of god as a violent thug who must be obeyed. It's sad. Many also think they are possessed by Satan or demons when it's clear they're just haunted by religious charity.
As far as what that means, hinges solely on the individual. But no, it's not that murky. Not that roughly or poorly defined. Not that vague, no, not quite. It has very real meanings that come along with such a belief. With any belief, really. Just ask any person who found out they were adopted. It leads to unanswered questions. Often leading to journeys one would never undertake otherwise. As to whether these journeys lead to what one's mind considers "beneficial" and if they were better off left alone, as some paths are best left untraveled, just as some some sleeping dogs are best left to lie, well, I suppose one would never know until they take the first step into the unknown, now would they? :smile:
:fire:
In a word, pantheism. The concept that of all of the universe is God, that all that exists is holy and worthy of reverence. Here's the basic principle of pantheism:
[i]Reverence, awe, wonder and a feeling of belonging to Nature and the wider Universe.
Celebration of our lives in our bodies on this beautiful earth as a joy and a privilege.
Respect and active care for the rights of all humans and other living beings.
Promotion of non-discrimination, religious tolerance, freedom of and from religion and complete separation of state and religion.
Realism belief in a real external world that exists independent of human consciousness.
Strong naturalism without belief in supernatural realms, afterlives, beings or forces.
Respect for reason, evidence and the scientific method as our best ways of understanding nature and the Cosmos.[/i]
Spinoza says Deus, sive natura, not 'natura deus ist'. (Contra popular misreadings: acosmism.) To wit:
[quote=Spinoza, from letter (73) to Henry Oldenburg]... But some people think the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus rests on the assumption that God is one and the same as Nature understood as a mass of corporeal matter. This is a complete mistake.[/quote]
(Emphasis is mine.)
It does seem that the idea of 'God' is often accompanied by ideas of divine justice, especially the idea of punishment for wrongdoing in the afterlife. This may be a comfort for those who feel injured by injustice. The idea of God often involves a sense of an underlying moral order and accountability for 'sin'.
Yes, I am unsure of the exact differences between pantheism and pansychism, beyond the labels. Both seem to point to some kind of underlying consciousness pervading nature. I am still trying to think exactly what pansychism exactly. I started a thread on panpsychism fairly recently but did not end up any clearer on how thise who regard themselves as pansychists see the idea of spirit.
So many discussions about the idea of 'God' hinge around the way in which spirit and matter are seen. It can be about mere abstraction of philosophical ideas or some kind of personal meaning of how 'reality' seems to work. A large part of this is about subjective interpretation of the objective aspects. The question may be to what extent may an objective picture of the 'absolute' be found within the diversity of subjective experiences of the 'absolute' and renderings of the idea of 'God'?
Spinoza says Deus, sive natura (i.e. call reality "God or Nature"). NB: 'Quantum foam' works for me (an antisupernatural pandeist :wink:)
What is wrong with the idea of the 'supernatural'? Is it because it is disembodied? I can see the problem of disembodied existence, especially in the form of Plato's idea of the afterlife.
However, I am not sure that embodiment is as simple as as physicalism. I know that you go back to the philosophy of Spinoza but even that may not capture the subtle aspects of the physical or non- physical. I am not sure whether this is captured best in Western or Eastern metaphysics.
I also wonder about the nature of the symbolic and what it stands for. It could be argued that both ideas of God are metaphorical. However, I am left wondering about metaphor and metaphysics. Metaphysics seems more concrete but metaphor seems too reductive. This is how I see the conundrums of the philosophy of myth and religion. In other words, I am not sure what myth and symbols stand for. Anthropology is important but, still, the understanding of the mythological and symbolic aspects of human understanding seems important.
Nothing except it's an incoherent idea that lacks any natural referent.
More or less.
Agreed.
I don't understand what you mean by "too reductive". Are you referring to a 'particular metaphysics' or 'metaphysics itself as a topic'?
From 2021 ...
https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/544753