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11 Mar 15
Originally posted by vistesdWell put and thought out as always.
Color me late to this party, but—
And to get some personal stuff out of the way before being questioned: I at present consider myself to be an agnostic non-supernaturalist non-dualist theist. I know that this puts me outside the conventional mainstream today, but it does not put me outside of a longstanding history of understandings of theos that ...[text shortened]... erm in discussion, just as it’s necessary to know what kind of god-concept one is talking about.
I have no substantive quibble with any of that.
Any question about reality that is coherent is open to, as you say, being
'considered within the purview of scientific inquiry.'
As a note: I tend to use belief [in a proposition P] to mean something like
"A firm conviction that P is true" [which would include feeling certain that
P is true as a subset]... Not sure if that maps exactly to either of your given
definitions, but it's in the ballpark.
It seems to me to be what people mean when they say they believe something.
I also am queasy about simply defining the supernatural out of existence...
Although I have not been very successful at arguing this to date.
So I will for the moment link to Richard Carrier who has made what looks to me
to be a reasonable argument for not throwing out the supernatural as being
incoherent as a concept, and aligns with the arguments I have been trying to
make on the subject.
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.co.uk/2007/01/defining-supernatural.html
There is a trend in science and law to define the word "supernatural" as "the untestable," which is perhaps understandable for its practicality, but deeply flawed as both philosophy and social policy. Flawed as philosophy, because testability is not even a metaphysical distinction, but an epistemological one, and yet in the real world everyone uses the word “supernatural” to make metaphysical distinctions. And flawed as social policy, because the more that judges and scientists separate themselves from the people with deviant language, the less support they will find from that quarter, and the legal and scientific communities as we know them will crumble if they lose the support of the people. Science and the courts must serve man. And to do that, they must at least try to speak his language. And yet already a rising tide of hostility against both science and the courts is evident. Making it worse is not the solution. ......
.....In short, I argue "naturalism" means, in the simplest terms, that every mental thing is entirely caused by fundamentally nonmental things, and is entirely dependent on nonmental things for its existence. Therefore, "supernaturalism" means that at least some mental things cannot be reduced to nonmental things. As I summarized in the Carrier-Wanchick debate (and please pardon the dry, technical wording):
If [naturalism] is true, then all minds, and all the contents and powers and effects of minds, are entirely caused by natural [i.e. fundamentally nonmental] phenomena. But if naturalism is false, then some minds, or some of the contents or powers or effects of minds, are causally independent of nature. In other words, such things would then be partly or wholly caused by themselves, or exist or operate directly or fundamentally on their own. ......
12 Mar 15
Originally posted by vistesdI'd intended experiment to include observations. The Hubble telescope or the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe are referred to as experiments but are purely observational. I think your point is fine with regard to that.
Color me late to this party, but—
And to get some personal stuff out of the way before being questioned: I at present consider myself to be an agnostic non-supernaturalist non-dualist theist. I know that this puts me outside the conventional mainstream today, but it does not put me outside of a longstanding history of understandings of theos that ...[text shortened]... erm in discussion, just as it’s necessary to know what kind of god-concept one is talking about.
The point of disagreement I have with your post is that even if your conception of God is testable, the conception of a supernatural god [1] isn't. Basically because we cannot do tests on things outside of the universe or even observe them [2].
I agree that the concept of a God should be logically coherent. Omnipotence, in the sense of "can do anything", is logically incoherent as it implies contradictions and can't exist. However omnipotent can also mean "has power over all things" or just "more powerful than any other entity". I'm thinking of terms like all-powerful and almighty. So a restricted comprehension of omnipotence does not strike me as logically incoherent.
There's an in-progress thread you might find interesting on omniscience and whether it is in contradiction with libertarian free will: Thread 163055.
Things in this universe are bound by the natural laws of the universe, but there is no reason to believe that things not in this universe are. A creator God would, of necessity, pre-exist [3] the universe. But I see no reason to believe that such a creator could intervene and not be able to circumvent the laws of physics. To illustrate this, suppose we live in a simulated reality. There is a higher reality, potentially also simulated, in which a computer in some higher reality university philosophy department runs a reality simulation which is what we live in. There is no particular reason why the operators of the machine could not intervene in the simulation in a way that breaks all the rules the simulation normally runs under - they could reset variables as they see fit, bring people back to life, turn the moon into green cheese, whatever. If that were true we would be none the wiser, unless the moon suddenly did turn into green cheese, and never have a hope of detecting it - if the simulation is good enough.
So I don't think that the concept of a God that is undetectable is automatically incoherent. Clearly, if God reveals himself that is a different matter but that is not under our control.
I'm still an agnostic by the way, both in terms of provability and belief, but to avoid horribly convoluted sentences I tend to talk about him as if he exists. I liked the footnote about belief.
[1] I'm afraid I don't really understand the distinction you are making. For the purposes of the post I assumed you meant somehow bound by the same rules of nature as we are. What is a natural god as opposed to a supernatural one? Feel free to point me to a Wikipedia page or other internet reference if you know of one. Possibly a reference about the stoic notion of theos would be suitable.
[2] My statement isn't quite true, various groups are looking at the WMAP data to see if they can detect collisions between the early universe and other universes. Whether what they are doing makes sense or will be successful is another matter. I don't think it alters the point I'm making though.
[3] If time started with the big bang then "pre-existing" is an expression lacking a well defined meaning. However, I'm a bit stuck for a word. In my simulation example it ceases to be incoherent as the higher reality would have it's own time dimension and "pre-existing" would refer to that.
12 Mar 15
3 edits
Thanks to both Googlefudge and DeepThought for your comments, which I will take some time to consider as I flesh out my own thinking.
DeepThought: I use the word supernatural to mean not of the natural order, or somehow separate from the natural cosmos. That is my understanding of the conventional usage—and perhaps to use both that term that way and also add the word “dualism” is redundant. EDIT: But I still have to take googlefudge's post and citation into consideration . . .
The Stoics believed that god was the natural cosmos, but understood in a particular way: logos was the rational principle, effected by pneuma—which they understood physically as either the fire element or a combination of the fire and air elements (which was their physics)—and manifest materially as phusis, nature itself. It was both non-dualist (pantheistic) and physicalist—even though pneuma is often translated as “spirit”. Whether they also thought that the gods of the Greek pantheon—e.g. Zeus, Athena—were actual (but natural) beings seems to be debated, but I would say not. Although it is also debated, the evidence on my reading is that they viewed the cosmos as an intelligent being itself. I think that can be dropped from the formulation by taking logos toi mean simply “coherent”.
But I also need to take googlefudge’s comments on the supernatural seriously, and examine that line of thinking.
Again, thanks both—especially as my thinking is a “work in progress”.
🙂
_______________________________________
EDIT: Thanks for the link to the free will thread. I think that libertarian free will is incoherent per se, according to its criteria. However, Agerg's formulation in the OP--which I was first introduced to by LemonJello--argues that there is a version of God's omnipotence which does not lead to fatalism.
EDIT 2: But the cited thread goes deeper into the logic than I have before, so anything I just said might be taken as provisional.
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24 Mar 15
Originally posted by RJHinds
You could argue that the Holy Bible predicted the internet and Al Gore invented both the internet and global warming. 😏
Exhibit A is Al Gore. People eager to lie about him continue to portray him as a liar. First lie, that he claims to have "invented" the Internet. Second lie, that he claims to have "discovered" the pollution of Love Canal. Third lie, that he falsely claims to be the model for Oliver Barrett IV, hero of Love Story.
Gore never claimed that he "invented" the Internet, which implies that he engineered the technology. The invention occurred in the seventies and allowed scientists in the Defense Department to communicate with each other. In a March 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gore said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."
Taken in context, the sentence, despite some initial ambiguity, means that as a congressman Gore promoted the system we enjoy today, not that he could patent the science, though that's how the quotation has been manipulated. Hence the disingenuous substitution of "inventing" for the actual language.
Inventing the Internet, Did Al Gore ...
http://www.perkel.com/politics/gore/internet.htm
24 Mar 15
Originally posted by googlefudgeNo, what he actually did was to actually read what you actually said.
Not in any version of English I know.
You are just making up post-hoc rationalisations for your mistake.
A question can have an 'actual answer' without anyone knowing what it is.
If you don't know what I mean you can [and should] ask me to clarify what I mean.
What you actually do however is assume you know what I mean, get it wrong,
and wa ...[text shortened]... o you should be causing you to alter
your behaviour so you don't keep making the same mistake.
And if he was assuming anything, it was that you actually meant what you actually said. So rather than inserting his own interpretation into what his eyes actually saw you actually saying, he was actually avoiding the mistake of assuming something other than what was actually being said.
did I actually say that?
24 Mar 15
1 edit
Originally posted by lemon limeI don't actually know if this is true, so I actually need to wait and see if DeepThought can (or actually will) verify this or not.
No, what he actually did was to actually read what you actually said.
And if he was assuming anything, it was that you actually meant what you actually said. So rather than inserting his own interpretation into what his eyes actually saw you actually saying, he was actually avoiding the mistake of assuming something other than what was actually being said.
did I actually say that?
24 Mar 15
Originally posted by DeepThoughtBut is there an actual answer to the question "Is there extra-terrestrial life in the galaxy?"?
But is there an actual answer to the question "Is there extra-terrestrial life in the galaxy?"?
So, your point seems to be missing some relevance. There is no actual answer to that question as far as human science is concerned.
It made sense to answer the question I thought you were answering in the post on the previous page (2) to s ...[text shortened]... e isn't a theory that is any use in trying to answer the question and so experiment is possible.
Three possible answers would be "yes", "no", or "I don't know", and the only relevant answer (known) to the alien question is "I don't know", or it's not known. So of those three possible answers the only actual (or true) answer would have to be "I don't know"... because it's not known.
I don't why so many scientists today try to avoid that particular answer, because in the past there was no presumed sense of shame associated with not knowing.