The Mold Theory of Person Gods
To begin, personal God means a God who is a person, either a human person like Jesus or Krishna, or an entity with personal attributes like Yahweh and Allah, who have wishes and wants (wishes us to be happy; wants us to behave morally). Some verses attribute anger to person Gods.
By mold theory we mean mold like a cookie mold, not like the fungus. Lets imagine an infant. After the infant learns there are people and objects external to herself, in time she naturally attributes certain properties to the parent(s), qualities such as source of comfort and protection, as source of knowledge and instruction, as able to do wonderful things (feed her, give her toys, take her to the ocean or mountains for vacation). As she grows, she learns that the parent isnt ideal, that the parent doesnt fit the mold perfectly. Sometimes the parent makes her go to bed early, eat her spinach, takes her to the doctor for a needle.
If the parent ceases to occupy the mold, it doesnt necessarily follow that the mold collapses. Quite the contrary, the child has built the mold in her mind where it may continue existing. But its empty.
In time, the person fills the mode with Jesus or Allah or Krishna. The mold is filled, complete. Theres no room for anything else. If a skeptic or atheist presents evidence which seems to argue against the idea that the mold-filler is truly God or God-like, theres just no room for the evidence. The present God-filler would have to be ejected from the mold, as the parent was, to make room for anything else, like evidence. But that would leave the mold essentially empty because a little bit of fact doesnt fill a God mold.
Of the many examples which could be given, Ill describe one. There is a story in the Bible of King David conducting a census, which so angered Yahweh (God the Father, to Christians) that Yahweh had an angel kill 50,000 Hebrews. Bad, but it gets worse. The story occurs in two places in the Bible. In one account, Satan provoked David to number Israel. In the second, Yahweh provoked David.
I think its natural to doubt the stories are genuine stories about God. Id say its natural to see them as ancient fables. Of course, I might be wrong. Maybe they are genuine, but then who provoked King David? Was it Satan or Yahweh? I once heard a Christian answer, Both! So, both Satan and Yahweh worked together to interfere with King Davids free will so that David would order a census? And then Yahweh had an angel kill 50,000 Hebrews to punish David for doing a census? Anything is possible, I suppose. But another explanation is that there just isnt any room in the God mold for the story. So, devise an explanation, believable or not. Offer it and then quickly change the subject.
I think what Ive written has some similarity to memes and meme complexes, but Im no expert. Maybe not. In any event, I think these ideas apply in a lot of cases.
A final thought: the last major God mode filler is now about 1,500 years old, in that about 1,500 years ago, Allah became known and assumed the position of a major God. I say became known to avoid the question of if Allah (and other person Gods) are fictions or not. In either case, Allah entered history about 1,500 years ago; Jesus entered history about 2,000 years ago; etc. Is it time for another God, perhaps a God that breaks the mold?
More info: https://adamford.com/NTheo/NewTheology.pdf
By mold theory we mean mold like a cookie mold, not like the fungus. Lets imagine an infant. After the infant learns there are people and objects external to herself, in time she naturally attributes certain properties to the parent(s), qualities such as source of comfort and protection, as source of knowledge and instruction, as able to do wonderful things (feed her, give her toys, take her to the ocean or mountains for vacation). As she grows, she learns that the parent isnt ideal, that the parent doesnt fit the mold perfectly. Sometimes the parent makes her go to bed early, eat her spinach, takes her to the doctor for a needle.
If the parent ceases to occupy the mold, it doesnt necessarily follow that the mold collapses. Quite the contrary, the child has built the mold in her mind where it may continue existing. But its empty.
In time, the person fills the mode with Jesus or Allah or Krishna. The mold is filled, complete. Theres no room for anything else. If a skeptic or atheist presents evidence which seems to argue against the idea that the mold-filler is truly God or God-like, theres just no room for the evidence. The present God-filler would have to be ejected from the mold, as the parent was, to make room for anything else, like evidence. But that would leave the mold essentially empty because a little bit of fact doesnt fill a God mold.
Of the many examples which could be given, Ill describe one. There is a story in the Bible of King David conducting a census, which so angered Yahweh (God the Father, to Christians) that Yahweh had an angel kill 50,000 Hebrews. Bad, but it gets worse. The story occurs in two places in the Bible. In one account, Satan provoked David to number Israel. In the second, Yahweh provoked David.
I think its natural to doubt the stories are genuine stories about God. Id say its natural to see them as ancient fables. Of course, I might be wrong. Maybe they are genuine, but then who provoked King David? Was it Satan or Yahweh? I once heard a Christian answer, Both! So, both Satan and Yahweh worked together to interfere with King Davids free will so that David would order a census? And then Yahweh had an angel kill 50,000 Hebrews to punish David for doing a census? Anything is possible, I suppose. But another explanation is that there just isnt any room in the God mold for the story. So, devise an explanation, believable or not. Offer it and then quickly change the subject.
I think what Ive written has some similarity to memes and meme complexes, but Im no expert. Maybe not. In any event, I think these ideas apply in a lot of cases.
A final thought: the last major God mode filler is now about 1,500 years old, in that about 1,500 years ago, Allah became known and assumed the position of a major God. I say became known to avoid the question of if Allah (and other person Gods) are fictions or not. In either case, Allah entered history about 1,500 years ago; Jesus entered history about 2,000 years ago; etc. Is it time for another God, perhaps a God that breaks the mold?
More info: https://adamford.com/NTheo/NewTheology.pdf
Comments (56)
Just wanted to point that out.
2. Moreover, a Christian might view the OP as explaining how a "God-shaped hole" arises in individuals.
3. I respect people but don't respect ideas which I believe to be false, some of them obviously false. A talking serpent, God drowning the entire world - babies, the elderly, kittens and puppy dogs - everyone except Noah & Company, God stopping the sun in the sky so the Hebrews could finish killing their enemies? Get real. I do not respect such ideas.
4. The last 3 lines of your 5 line paragraph are ad hominem. Just wanted to point that out.
Religious believers do not deserve any kind of special respect above others.
Perhaps we should look at the issue taking into account the following.
1. Regarding the Hebrew God any inconsistences having to do with God (omnibenvolence) and violence (as recorded in scripture to have been divine commands/permitted by God) were either absent (God is good)/ignored (it made zero sense, but the matter was swept under the rug)/unnoticed (no one checked).
2. Coming to the OP's main thrust, I'd say what we're looking at is inconsistencies were absent. God is both good and violent was the position adopted and the genocides committed were probably viewed as campaigns in a just war (ordered/permitted by YHWH Himself).
To get straight to the point, God fitted like a glove with reality.
3. That said, it's worth noting that God as an idea is one of the most powerful in the ideaverse. Imagine if God implied all swans are white. People see a black swan. Rather than admit God isn't real people would prefer to believe the black swan only appears black, but is actually white!
I made comments referencing your arguments, not you personally. So they are not ad hominem arguments. You shouldn't use jargon you don't understand.
Quoting I like sushi
As I noted, I said nothing about Art48, only his arguments. Perhaps I smeared his ideas, but not him personally. The argument in the OP is weak, as are both of your responses to my comment.
Humans create narratives to explain the world. Some of these stories are less persuasive than others. Today the Judeo-Christian god story isn't one of our more convincing tales, especially if one takes a literalist view. A literal account of Yahweh points to this deity as a grubby Mafia-style boss who uses intimidation, slavery and mass-murder to maintain control. If true, this is a god to boycott. This view is hardly an original position.
But many Christians see the Bible as a vast completion of allegories. I grew up in that tradition and we were taught that the stories of the Old Testament were myths - stories designed for teaching larger truths. Truths I might add I happily ignored as superfluous to requirements. There's a reason many Christians ignore the OT and focus on the ethical teachings of JC.
Overall I think to pillory the Bible for being taken as some kind of positivist text is too easy and for atheists, highlighting the absurdity of fundamentalist's beliefs and interpretations is also undemanding work. This is the shallow end of the pool. There is much more sophisticated theology by people like Paul Tillich or David Bentley Hart one could consider.
What tradition was that?
Were the mythical stories of the NT - literal resurrection of Jesus, literal healing of a blind man, literal raising of a dead man, Jesus being literally born of God, etc. - similarly taken as myths?
Was the focus on the ethical teaching of JC to the exclusion of the Pauline gospel?
I'd genuinely like to know.
Interesting. Sounds like rather than an Australian Baptist tradition per se, it was the tradition of the individual church that you attended? Perhaps more accurately, the tradition of a subset of its congregation? Do I understand you correctly?
I'd like to find a church with a tradition that believes in the gospel preached by Jesus rather than the Pauline gospel. But from what investigation I've done, there are none.
Again, this is an empirical claim as to how people react when faced with Biblical inconsistency, yet you offer no sources showing that this is how they react. It's in fact plainly wrong. If you're interested in how the various traditions have responded, you may look it up, as you may also look up how secular biblical scholars have addressed those issues. You act as if no one has taken more than a cursory glance at the text and has taken seriously the challenge of interpretation. Quoting Art48
You act as if the attributes of God haven't varied over time and over denomination,, as if the Mormon concept of God is the same as the Southern Baptist, the Branch Davidian, the Hasid, and the Universalist God. You also act as if Allah is easily definable and you've been able to distinguish that definition from various other God definitions.
Just a very simplistic post.
You should take a look in the Shoutbox. @Hanover and I were just discussing a right wing commentator who wrote that casting a black woman as the lead in "The Little Mermaid" was scientifically inaccurate. I think your comment is almost as dumb.
To be fair, this "right wing commentator" has a point. Not a lot of sunshine in the depths and that would translate to lighter skin tones.
I have seen black fish though.
:confused:
You will get no response from me again until mid-October.
Only to the extent that there are no black mermaids because there are no mermaids. But that's probably not what the commentator meant. There was a view that women should not be allowed to become bishops in the Church of England because there should be no bishops. That gay marriage is wrong because marriage is wrong. Etc.
The idea that God is not a personal being is widely debated:
[quote=Stenmark]Among philosophers and theologians today, one of the most important dividing lines is the one separating those who advocate a personal conception of God (personal theism) from those who embrace the idea of a God beyond or without being (alterity theism). There is not much dialogue between these groups of scholars; rather the two groups ignore each other, and each party typically believes that there is a fairly straightforward knockdown argument against the other.[/quote]
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272037572_Competing_conceptions_of_God_The_personal_God_versus_the_God_beyond_being
Islam is another matter again:
[quote=Legenhausen]The most striking difference between Christian and Muslim theologies is that while, for Christians, God is a person, Muslims worship an impersonal deity.[/quote]
https://www.al-islam.org/articles/god-person-muhammad-legenhausen
God as not a personal being is not a new concept. These thoughts leaped out to me from the OP link:
[quote=D'Adamo - link in OP]New Theology aspires to be a universal theology. [...] New Theology values a different type of faith: faith in the facts, faith in the truth no matter how unattractive truth may be.[/quote]
Which makes it, from point of view of epistemic attitude, the same old theology as most others. "I have the truth. Believe it or be a fool."
If you read further, you'll see no claim that "I have the truth" is made.For instance, the section "The Nub" has "If and when it is shown that no fundamental entity, in fact, exists, New Theology will have to be abandoned or seriously revised." And the section "New Theology: Way of Knowing" has "To find the truth, New Theology would employ, as far as possible, the best epistemological method known today, sciences way of knowing. Like science, New Theology could have no beliefs above question, no eternal, unchangeable dogma."
What do you see as the advantage of Tillich's use of what Heidegger called the ontological difference, the difference between Being and beings, the claim that God is the non-existent ground of what exists? Perhaps "God" is an attempt to ground what needs no ground.
Hart seems to make a similar a priori assumption. He makes the distinction between what is necessary and what is contingent and applies it in toto to existence, as if what is true of the relationship between things that exist must be true of the relationship between what exists and God. Since everything in the world is contingent, there must be something non-contingent which they rely upon. There is here a shift from ontological necessity to logical necessity.
I agree. But the shallow end of the pool is occupied by, lets say, 100 million people whereas the Tillich and Hart end is occupied by, lets say, 100,000 people (using arbitrary numbers to make a point). Id say addressing the shallow end is worthwhile, especially because such people vote.
Well put and I agree. But perhaps here on a philosophy site it's a little rudimentary.
You tell me - I don't claim to understand it. To argue, as Tillich and Hart seem to do, that God is being itself but not a being leads us where? For me the notion that God is not personal but 'the ground of all being' is where you end up when the mainstream 'fairytale' no longer has traction. Is this a retreat into a type of symbolic mysticism, or is it a more sophisticated, existentialist construction of old ideas? For Tillich, when one tries to argue that god exists, you are denying him - I think that's the quote. I come to atheism as someone who has no sensus divinitatis (with apologies to Calvin). Arguments like this are fun but often seem to be like a pissing competition to redeem the idea of god by embracing greater and greater abstractions.
What do you make of Bentley Hart?
I don't claim to know what Tillich or Hart have in mind, but "God is being itself but not a being" suggests to me that God, like the Hindu Brahman, is existence itself, the ultimate ground of all existent beings, not a "being" in the sense of a separate, individual entity.
That is how it seems to me as well. It is as if he looks at all the problems that arise when claims of God are made and ends up defining God out of existence.
Quoting Tom Storm
From the little I know of him, he looks to me to be a classical theist, although I am aware that he is frequently at odds with the classical theist Edward Feser. As I mentioned above I do not find his use of the classical argument based on the distinction between contingent beings and a necessary being at all convincing:
Quoting Fooloso4
Finally, at least that's a philosophical question, not a physical "how" question. So, it's appropriate for The Philosophical Forum. It's so important to humans that sages have been trying to answer it for thousands of years. But, it's even more difficult than a moon-shot, because we know exactly where that shining orb is located. So maybe, Art is trying to suggest a new way (a logical extension ladder?) to get closer to that ancient quest. Remember, "they said it couldn't be done". But then, someone said we'll do it, "not because it is easy, but because it's hard".
Perhaps we tackle the hard questions, because we like challenges. Maybe it's because you and I exist, and we have no better explanation for temporal contingent existence, than something self-existent, hence not subject to space-time attacks. If the god-question does not interest you, perhaps an empirical science forum would suit you better. Philosophy is about immaterial Ideas, not material objects. It's reasonable to be skeptical of unsupported ideas, but the only support for philosophy is logical reasoning (i.e. other ideas).
Is philosophy a pointless pastime? Or is human Reason a way of seeing without eyes, and Knowing without direct experience? Are the posters on this forum just talking cartoon animals? Or, is there a good reason for speculating beyond the limits of the senses? Are we on this forum just pounding words, for no better reason than a quick snack?
I know you know better than that. And you have seen plenty of tired Old arguments before. But Art's argument is philosophical, not empirical, rational, not religious. It's not necessarily true, but maybe, he has some good points, that are not easily defeated by tired old "show me the money" retorts. Logical relationships can only be deconstructed by better logical arguments. Admissions of exasperation don't count. Just sayin. :cool:
Quoting Gnomon
I think we are just pounding words, and testing ideas we are cartoon animals and searchers for truth.
OK. Fair enough. Though dismissive of word-pounding Philosophers. But, when philosophical searchers go looking for truth, is there any good reason to explore beyond the limits of human senses, and their mechanical extensions? That's what Art seems to be doing with his "mold theory of personal gods". I'd never heard of that particular argument, but it seems reasonable enough. Not necessarily true, but worth thinking about.
Ancient humans knew nothing about modern Science, so they depended on Intuition for answers to questions that were not obvious. The only causal actors they were familiar with, were intentional animals & humans. So, they could be forgiven for assigning personal intention to the invisible forces of Nature. We now call it "Energy", but the ancients called it "Spirit", using an analogy with invisible breath, that can leave the body at death, with no measurable physical changes.
We now know more about internal physical changes at the precipice of death, but none of them individually accounts for the undeniable difference between a living willful human and an inanimate inert physical body. So, what is that difference? Is it some physical Quanta, as Reductionists tend to assume? Or some non-physical Qualia, as Holists postulate? If the latter, then the notion of an "invisible bodiless spirit" animating & directing Nature might make sense.
In my own postulate-pounding, I propose Enformed Energy (Enformy : energy + information) as a meaningful description of how the random directionless accidents of Evolution, chosen & collated by Natural Selection, eventually produced intentional creatures who wonder about their own origins. That's how Evolutionary Programming works to design things that are difficult to define in advance. And that may also be the kind of abstract/mathematical/logical Creator (empty enforming mold) that Art is proposing. So, let's hear him out. :smile:
In terms of application, Evolutionary Programming is most commonly used in constrained environments such as scheduling and routing, power systems, and designing systems
https://towardsdatascience.com/unit-5-evolutionary-programming-cced3a00166a
As a designer myself, I am acutely aware that design is an open-ended art. Hence difficult to define, except by describing a desired end-state (teleology). Computers are much better than humans for pounding-away at seemingly pointless mathematical computations of value & probability.
We mold clay into a pot, but it is the emptiness inside that makes the vessel useful. We fashion wood for a house, but it is the emptiness inside that makes it livable. We work with the substantial, but the emptiness is what we use.
___Tao Te Ching
What's wrong with that?
Quoting Art48
Luckily, god exists or not, totally beyond the number, opinions, and fervency of believers scatter'd around on our globe and in the Universe.
I read this or similar on a different philosophy website: Incredible amount of works have been written on the nature of god, without any real indication of consequence communicated by god to humans about it.
God is used among many things to support ideologies, and as such, it can SUBSTANTIALLY support an agenda. This is a very useful use to use. That's why.
This has so many practical verification as many practical denials. Empty statement, lacking wisdom. But it is with wisdom that the followers fill it with, and therefore the followers of Ching work with the substantial, but it is the voidful emptiness of this aphorism that they use.
I would add that a (typically) a parent occupies a overwhelming position of power in relation to their child. The parent decrees what is right and wrong, dispenses reward and punishment, at their whim as does the God of the OT. This power differential creates in your terms a mold which inevitably the parent cannot actually fill. But as you say, the mold remains, and is fulfilled by personal gods.
Reading the texts of personal god religions, the parental character of God the Father is hard to overlook.
As noted earlier by myself and others, no evidence has been provided that this is really the way things work. It doesn't seem likely to me.
I'm not aware of any practical empirical way to verify the usefulness of emptiness, except to put stuff in it. Then it's simply a rational conclusion from experience, that empty space is a place to put things. This is the basis of the old glass "half-empty" vs "half full". That's not a true/false statement, but a matter of opinion, depending on how you see the future : pessimistic vs optimistic.
When realtors advertise a house for sale, do they promote the physical studs & bricks, or the beauty of its organization & the utility of its spaces? Because there's nothing there, and some people can't imagine filled emptiness, many sellers use rental furniture to assist their imagination, to "fill it with wisdom". Homebuyers pay good money for such insubstantial non-things as Beauty & Utility. Perhaps because their future usefulness is only apparent to those who can "see" what's not there. Due to "quantum weirdness", even pragmatic Scientists have been forced to redefine common-sense "empty space" as "potential energy".
In psychology, it's called "figure ground perception". And in architecture, the empty space between buildings is known as "negative space". That's because some short-sighted people are biased to view emptiness as nothingness, instead of potential usable space. Faithful Materialists have a practical prejudice against nothingness, because it is commonly equated with spirits & ghosts. But Neuroscientist Terrance Deacon has developed a detailed theory, that is just as reasonable as Darwin's Evolution of living organisms from non-living substance. But it fills the gap between Matter & Life, with a modern computer analogy for the power of Potential to create something new & meaningful from something that is not-yet-real. Don't judge without knowledge. Read it for yourself. :smile:
The Power of Absence :
[i]There is a glaring gap in modern science, and Terrence Deacon aims to close it in part by explaining how material things can have aims, and how absence can serve to fill functional gaps. He is a neuro-scientist whose expertise straddles the borders between Classical & Quantum, Physics & Metaphysics, and between Science & Philosophy. Deacon says, we need a theory of everything that does not leave it absurd that we exist. Ironically, his central thesis sounds absurd on the face of it : that non-existence can affect existing things. Although absence may be irrelevant to inanimate things, it is a defining property of life and mind. So, he hopes to open a dialogue between our currently incompatible cultures of knowledge, the physical and the meaningful. He laments that scientific knowledge is viewed with distrust by many, as an enemy of human values, the handmaid of cynical secularism, and a harbinger of nihilism. He aims to regain that trust by showing that Science is relevant to heart-felt human interests.
Although Deacon's theory challenges the philosophy of Materialism, he takes great pains to avoid the slippery slope into Spiritualism as an explanation for meta-physical phenomena. Instead, he offers a naturalistic account for Life, Mind, Soul, Sentience, Consciousness, and most other immaterial features of the world. My own thesis of Enformationism also attempts to bridge the conceptual chasm between Physics and Meta-physics. But the main difference, is that I didn't automatically reject the possibility of a supernatural agent to serve as the First Cause of everything. Instead, I proposed something like a LOGOS, who created the plenipotent Information system that enforms the world via teleological power : a plan for the development of a cosmos. Of course, the deistic inferences I'm drawing from his evidence are precisely the ones he's trying to avoid. And I view his Absence as a religiously neutral term for causation that used to be known as incorporeal Spirit, but is now known as incorporeal "Energy".[/i]
http://bothandblog4.enformationism.info/page17.html
Universal Negation :
All roads are blocked to a philosophy which reduces everything to the word no. To no there is only one answer and that is yes. Nihilism has no substance. There is no such thing as nothingness, and zero does not exist. Everything is something. Nothing is nothing.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nothingness/
FIGURE - GROUND vs NOTHING - SOMETHING vs REAL - POTENTIAL
Consider this evidence: The relationship of extreme power between parent and child is more prevalent in more conservative societies and households, and far more prevalent in the past. The more this extreme relationship holds, the more religiosity we observe. Corresponding with liberalization, and the softening of the parent-child relationship, we see a corresponding trend towards secularism.
Not dismissive. Just charmed and sometimes exasperated by our attempts to wrest control by non-stop talking and writing.
The OP is my attempt to understand a phenomena I've witnessed many times. It contains the example of King David's census, but multiple similar examples could be given. The OP presents a thesis, a possible explanation, but doesn't not present a proof.
Question: can you offer a better explanation?
I don't see that as evidence for your point at all.
I don't understand how you can observe this personally. It may be based on observation, but it is made up mostly of assumptions about children's motivations and thoughts, which are not directly observable.
Quoting Art48
Quoting Art48
I have no problem with that, although I think you're theory is probably wrong.
I forgot to answer this. I don't know if this is better or not. I think a direct experience of transcendent phenomena is common, although obviously not universal. What does that mean? For me it is a sense that I belong in the universe. That we grew up together. That the world is a welcoming place. A sense of gratitude. I think that could be called a god, although not a personal one. I have talked to Christians who have what I would call similar experiences, although they probably would disagree.
I recognize that is no kind of rigorous evidence.
Oh? Great. Why don't you elaborate?
The experiences may well be common. Do you have any idea how an experience of a non-person God could translate into accepting a religion with person Gods?
I described my personal experience and how I might interpret it. Other people could experience and interpret it differently. As I noted, I don't make any claim to certainty.
I don't see any necessary connection between the conditions you describe and the results you claim.
You just restated more verbosely. Do you agree the correlation I describe exists?
I don't know and I don't think you do either, but that's beside the point. As I noted, even if it exists, it isn't evidence for your position.
How no?
Large parental power differentials over their children leave an impression of an almighty parent after that differential is outgrown. The absence of the fictional parent-as-god is fulfilled by religion. If this were so, we would expect more religiosity in cultures where that power differential is larger, in cultures with paternalistic God figures.
I like the metaphor of a god-mold, filled with locally-available god-stuff. Which historically, has been mostly based on personal experience with physical human people in political positions of near-absolute power. And, it seems to be a novel take on the old "god shaped hole in the heart" argument.
The OP begins with some examples of questionable behavior by "person gods". Presumably, the intent is to suggest a viable alternative : a non-person god. But that concept may not make sense to most on this forum, especially those with an unimaginative Materialistic worldview. So, they react as-if you are proposing just-another-anthro-morphic-god. Perhaps, you could get it back on track by presenting your thesis without reference to the Judeo-Christian-Islamic traditions, and without reference to individual personal experiences. Though, that may be too abstract, and too non-sciencey, for those same Realist/Materialists. Law courts are often tied-up for days with "what did you know (i.e. experience) and when did you know (experience) it?"
Maybe you could shift the focus to the art of transfer molding. That would avoid getting personality traits & behaviors confused with the notion of god models. With no physical human example to create the mold from, any resemblance to a "mere" human would be lost. And the artist would have to create his mold-model from scratch. :smile:
AN ARTISTIC IMPRESSION OF ARIES, DAVID ???
Yes, the OP can be taken as describing the origin of the "god shaped hole in the heart"
Daoism, some say, utilizes the metaphor of dihydrogen monoxide (water) when it describes itself. Water (liquids and even gases) is adaptive i.e. no matter what the shape, no matter how many tiny nooks and crannies there are, water will never fail to adjust its own shape to the vessel. The point Daoism seems to be making is fit in wherever, whenever, you are. Don't be a square peg in a round hole. Does the God piece fit with reality as we know it. The problem is that the God that we want is incompatible with reality and the God that is compatible is one we don't want. Wicked!
Good point! That's the problem with presenting a philosophical god-model that "fits with reality". Most people don't like Reality -- it hurts -- so they want their G*D to be ideal, like a knight in shining armor. Taoism was intended to be more realistic than that. Lao Tse did not describe the TAO as a conventional prayer-granting ancestor deity, and the word for "God" only appears once in the Tao De Ching. Nevertheless, the popular religions that sprang from the Tao root did include a variety of deities to be worshiped and prayed to.
So, I interpret the Tao, as more like Spinoza's impersonal-god-of-the philosophers (i.e. deus sive natura) The point you noted is that that the typical worshiper doesn't want an abstract nature-god, they want a god with the super-natural power to adapt capricious reality to their personal needs & wishes. Instead, Lao Tse faced the facts, and advised that we adapt ourselves to the reality of Nature. Such a nature-god is "compatible with reality" and with empirical Science; but not with human desires for a more perfect world. The "real world" is as good as it gets*1. And the natural "Way" follows the "path" of least resistance*2. Which is also a basic principle of Physics.*3 *4
Even theistic religions have been forced by centuries of poor response to prayers, to postpone perfection to a New World and a second Life. Consequently, parallel to their idealized & romantic god-models, most religions also offer pragmatic advice similar to that of Lao Tse's golden rule : " If only the ruler and his people would refrain from harming each other, all the benefits of life would accumulate in the kingdom. Tao Te Ching. :smile:
*1. best of all possible worlds, in the philosophy of the early modern philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (16461716), the thesis that the existing world is the best world that God could have created.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/best-of-all-possible-worlds
Note -- a perfect world would be purely deterministic ( a heaven), but a world with rational free-will physical creatures must be less than perfect, in order to allow options. So Leibniz' "best" compromise solution to the Freewill within Determinism paradox was to make a good, but imperfect world. For example, the metaphorical Garden of Eden was perfect, but the humans were mere instinctive animals, with no way to reason between Good & Evil. After expulsion into the Real World, they had to learn to adapt to a less-than-perfect environment. If they felt cold, they learned to killed cold-adapted furry animals, and to wear their skins as clothing. Their food no longer hung low on trees, so they learned to eat the flesh of those cute furry animals.
*2. The path of least resistance is the physical or metaphorical pathway that provides the least resistance to forward motion by a given object or entity, among a set of alternative paths.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_of_least_resistance
*3. Principle of Least Action :
"That is what we are going to use to calculate the true path. "
https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_19.html
Note -- "Tao" = path of least resistance
*4. The Principle of Least Action says that, in some sense, the true motion is the optimum out of all possible motions, The idea that the workings of nature are somehow optimal, suggests that nature is working in an efficient way, with minimal effort, to some kind of plan.
https://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/nsm10/PrincLeaAc.pdf
Note -- "Tao" = Stoic acceptance of imperfections
Excelente! All this while, for aeons on end, each living organism has been adapting to its environment, both living & nonliving and that's been the secret of our success. The long and short of it, our Mars ambitions, let them be fulfilled not by terraforming (adapting the planet to us), but via evolution (adapting us to the planet). It'll be slow ... real slow, but slow & steady wins the race. Of course if time is not our side, we'll havta take the other route, its obviously faster, relatively speaking.
The rest of your post, superb! I wish I had time to reply.
In the Sci-Fi TV series Expanse, Earthlings who lived for generations on Mars, became adapted to its low gravity. Unfortunately, upon return to Earth gravity, that evolved change became a mal-adaptation. :gasp:
Aye, that be the downside. Best then to use technology to help us live on different planets.