is it possible to find God by reason?

[Godless]

I just changed reality when i turned my heater on. It got a lot warmer in my house.

You didn't change reality, by turning on your heater, you merely conditioned your enviorenment, thus you still had to do a physical act in order to change that enviorenment, you couldn't have posibly done that with the mind alone. If heaters didnt exist, you would burn wood and get the same effect. That's not changing reality. Reality is unchangeable it just is, whatever you do physically to attain a certain goal, has to be in accordance with the laws of physics, and reality. You coulnd't do nothing if you physically do nothing, you have to act, thought alone won't change a thing.

As lerxst said about xrays and humans, and i said about carbon dioxide and plants. It is really not that simple.

Only because it was an unknown phenomena, but it was postulated, it was proven to be factual, it exist, now we know of it. It is simple. KISS! Keep It Simple Stupid!.

Godless

 

[Lerxst]

In another attempt to put the sticking point as simply as possible:

The question seems to be:

"Are there such things as true statements that *in principle* cannot be known by human beings?"

Godless (and several others) would say "Of course not."

I would say "It would seem reasonable to answer yes."

I've provided example scenarios for why I answer with a "yes." (Multiverse, or physical properties at energies that are simply too high to probe, etc. Also events in the past that happened but were not observed in detail. In addition to logically possibly situations such as the Simulation Argument or the BIAJ where the answer is quite clearly "yes.")

There is also the pragmatic angle to this - "if we cannot know about x, then pratically x does not exist." I admit I have to agree with this. But it doesn't seem fair or honest, to me, to expand the realm of what is pragmatic for a particular hairless ape species on a particular little planet to somehow be of equivalent status to the Ultimate Truth.

 

[qwerty mob]

X = supernaturality, true

X = who killed JFK, false

X = invisible green dragon, true

X = Jack the Ripper's real identity, false

 

[Raithere]

The problem I have with this example is that you already said it was a baseball. That differentiates it from footballs, socks, and cathedrals. Somehow, it has some "baseball-ness" to it, and it seems that the extent to which we would give it knowable qualities (it must be round, have stitiches, etc) and then give it unknowable qualities, is the extent to which you are creating something inherently nonsenical.

This is merely a semantic confusion. I'm positing the existence of an unknowable object. If we propose that something can be and yet be unknowable, in what way can it be said to exist?

My argument is that an unknowable object does not exist. That, in fact, unknowability is the very definition of non-existence. My hypothesis of an unknowable baseball on the table is false. The debate boils down to whether being is an independent quality or not.

On the other hand, if I say that the number of stars in another universe in the multiverse is unknowable, I'm at least saying something that is not in principle nonsensical. There may be good theoretical reasons to expect a multiverse, along with practical limitations that would forbid us to know specific details of the other parts of it. I agree with you fully that the question of the number of stars is in a sense, a completely meaningless question to *us*. But it is possibly not a meaningless question to some other sentient being that possibly inhabits that universe.

There are two considerations here. One is that, as you posit it, this is an unanswerable question not an unknowable object. Two is that you have not defined it as inherently unknowable, only as unknown or beyond our limited capacity to know. I believe this is essentially different that being unknowable.

~Raithere

 

[Godless]

"Are there such things as true statements that *in principle* cannot be known by human beings?"

This is a contradiction; how can it be "things as true statements" and yet we know nothing of what one means to be true. There's no true statement when the principle is "unknown".

Godless (and several others) would say "Of course not."

Don't make assumptions about me, you don't know me that well yet. :bugeye:

(Multiverse, or physical properties at energies that are simply too high to probe, etc. Also events in the past that happened but were not observed in detail.

A multiuniverse is nothing more than unprovable concept, not even a good hypothesis, when there's no evidence or nothing showing that such a thing exists. Events that happened in the past, have to have been witnesed by somebody, and even then those witnesses may contradict themselves of what was seen or happened. This is also kind of vague, what events in the past are you talking about, human events, ecological, astronomical etc?

G.

 

[Lerxst]

Two is that you have not defined it as inherently unknowable, only as unknown or beyond our limited capacity to know. I believe this is essentially different that being unknowable.

Yes! An important distinction. I agree.

So do we indeed have a "limited capacity to know" in a fundamental sense? I don't know that we can really answer this question other than to say it is not clear. Which in and of itself is an answer of sorts.

 

[Lerxst]

This is a contradiction; how can it be "things as true statements" and yet we know nothing of what one means to be true. There's no true statement when the principle is "unknown".

Certainly we both agree that natural things exist independently of our perceptions or misperceptions of them, as the case might be (although the little details, at least at the quantum level, do depend quite strongly on our observing them or not). Certainly there are true things about the universe that we don't know today, such as the existence of the Higgs boson. It is either there or it is not, regardless of our current ignorance. However if we as human beings have limitations in what we can determine about reality, then there will likley be truths that we will not ever discern. I guess where we differ is that you would hold that no such limitations can in principle exist. Is that right? It is either that or we are using quite different definitions of truth.

Don't make assumptions about me, you don't know me that well yet. :bugeye:

Sorry mate, but I did correctly predict your answer, didn't I?

A multiuniverse is nothing more than unprovable concept, not even a good hypothesis, when there's no evidence or nothing showing that such a thing exists. Events that happened in the past, have to have been witnesed by somebody, and even then those witnesses may contradict themselves of what was seen or happened. This is also kind of vague, what events in the past are you talking about, human events, ecological, astronomical etc?

The multiverse is a notion taken seriously by more than one cosmologist. I agree that currently there is no hard evidence of it - at least according to my imperfect understanding of the current state of cosmology.

As for the events of the past I mentioned, sorry for the confusion, I was referring to an earlier post. I simply described an experiment in which I basically flipped a coin without observing the result and then put it back in my pocket. Either "the coin was heads" or "the coin was tails" is a *truth* and the other is necessarily a falsehood. But no one saw it, so it is an undecidable proposition, of sorts. It is a truth about the world that is unknowable.

As Raithere had pointed out some ways back, complete knowledge is never going to be possible in principle because of quantum indeterminancy. I'm not sure this works into the concept of Truth, per se, though. After I measure the x-component of spin of an electron I cannot know what the z-component will be with certainty. I don't think that there is a "truth" out there in that particular case that the "truth" happens to be "spin up" for example. The z-component of spin cannot even be said to exist in a definite sense, it is a linear combination of two opposite states - that happens to be the (strange) truth, along with the fact that there are no hidden variables to control which state will obtain due to a measurement. There is a fundamental kind of mystery that is built into the fabric of reality it seems, a mystery we cannot seem to penetrate.

Or, if I devise a formal axiomatic theory that is sophisticated enough to account for arithmetic, there will be truths in that system that cannot be reached by those axioms. So how can I be sure I have found all the truths? I can respond by creating a larger system that contains the previous one and allows me to reach those truths, but in the process I've just generated more unreachable truths. If this keeps going on and on, it seems that the ratio of unknown truths to known truths will always exceed 1. I don't see how it is possible that all the truths could be known because we would run out of time. (Either that or I don't understand Godel correctly. I've been trying to for a while, and it hurts my brain. Whether or not this paragraph follows from Godel's work is probably worthy of it's own thread.)

What if there are an infinite number of truths? Then what? This is purely rhetorical and meant to spur discussion. Can we even decide if the total number of truths is finite or not?

Do the mathemtical truths of an axiomatic system put togtether by a human correspond to truths about reality? I think they do, I think math is just as much "out there" in the real world as physics is.

 

[stretched]

Quote water:
“Can you regularly pray to a God which you only hope that He exists, and remain sane?”

Quote Lerxst:
“What I do see is that prayer can be a kind of self-talk or meditation. In other words, "I'm going to address this dialogue to my inner self, but God, if you are there, please listen in and help."

* So I am not the only one then! But it seems that which we search for without, could be within, and that which we search for within, could be without.

I sound like a friggin mystic!

 

[hypGnosis]

But you have to accept one of the following:

1. I believe there is a god(s).
2. I do not believe there is a god(s).
3. I don't know or it cannot be answered.

If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice....

Hi guys,

Per the above, Lerxst ommitted an important consideration... that being, "I know there are gods or a god."

I've only read back a few pages, but it seems no one has made a distinction betweeen 'believing' and 'knowing'; and IMHO, the difference is huge.

To believe in something and to know otherwise is how I would define 'blind faith'.

Lersxt, per your list of choices, even without my addition, 2 choices are possible, such as, "I believe there is a god AND I do not know anything about the god in which I believe."

-OR-

With my addition, one could rightly claim, "I don't believe in gods"; and I don't know of any gods."

 

[Sarkus]

But you have to accept one of the following:
1. I believe there is a god(s).
2. I do not believe there is a god(s).
3. I don't know or it cannot be answered.

If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice....

Hi guys,

Per the above, Lerxst ommitted an important consideration... that being, "I know there are gods or a god."

I've only read back a few pages, but it seems no one has made a distinction betweeen 'believing' and 'knowing'; and IMHO, the difference is huge.

To believe in something and to know otherwise is how I would define 'blind faith'.

Lersxt, per your list of choices, even without my addition, 2 choices are possible, such as, "I believe there is a god AND I do not know anything about the god in which I believe."

-OR-

With my addition, one could rightly claim, "I don't believe in gods"; and I don't know of any gods."

I thought "Blind Faith" was merely believing with no reason, no rational explanation for it?

To believe a thing yet know otherwise is not "blind faith" but very real stupidity and is classic delusion.

As for choices - I think he meant that you need to choose AT LEAST one.

With regards to Theism / Atheism there is only 2 options:
1. You have a belief in a god (or gods);
2. There is an absence of belief in any god (or gods).

1. THEISM
2. ATHEISM - regardless of whether you actually take it further and have an equal / opposite belief that there is no god.


There is then also the epistemological stance, in this instance with regard to any deity - i.e. your view on the knowledge of the matter in hand:
A. You think that the truth of the matter is known or knowable;
B. truth and/or claims of the matter is unknown, unknowable, or incoherent;

A. Not AGNOSTIC
B. AGNOSTIC


Me, I'm of the 2B - an Agnostic Atheist.
You could be an Agnostic Theist, or a non-agnostic Atheist, or a non-agnostic Theist.
1A, 1B, 2A or 2B.

But (A)theism deals with an entirely separate matter to agnosticism.
Atheism and theism are ontological positions.
Agnositicism is an epistemological position.

 

[Godless]

Certainly we both agree that natural things exist independently of our perceptions or misperceptions of them, as the case might be (although the little details, at least at the quantum level, do depend quite strongly on our observing them or not). Certainly there are true things about the universe that we don't know today, such as the existence of the Higgs boson. It is either there or it is not, regardless of our current ignorance. However if we as human beings have limitations in what we can determine about reality, then there will likley be truths that we will not ever discern. I guess where we differ is that you would hold that no such limitations can in principle exist. Is that right?

We are only limited by our misconceptions, our mysticism, our sense of subjective perception, however these limitations may not hinder our progress as we discover, learn and our epistemology grows. However our knowledge so far is limited by many other variables, such as; mysticism, political, ethical, problems that exist withing our society today, say in 10k years our history if known to them, would be much as we today look at cave dwelers. What I'm trying to tell ya is, humanity will never stop learning, as long as we exist!. With every knew discovery, if we were to find Higgs bosom today, what would that change in your life? How would you then perceive any different as to not ever finding it? Perhaps new gadgets would be invented.

The multiverse is a notion taken seriously by more than one cosmologist.

Great for Hollywood movies, Jet Lee's "The One", and others I'm sure, but in reality, this would prove harder to find than Higgs bosom. LOL..what the cosmologist that think this to be true, is the fact that they are inventing bs, in order to tie ends that they can't quite figure out yet. Pseudo science, is unprovable hypothesis. The parallel or multiverse theory is just that an unprovable hypothesis.

*Nick Bostrom (2) points out that the Anthropic Principle may be considered presumptive evidence for many universes "in the absence of any plausible alternative." Unfortunately, there is no observational or experimental ("scientific") evidence whatsoever for any universe besides the one we inhabit. And even the idea has serious problems, both physical and philosophical (I would like to say metaphysical, but that's not always a respectable term, even to philosophers).* http://www.bluffton.edu/~bergerd/essays/impert.html

As Raithere had pointed out some ways back, complete knowledge is never going to be possible in principle because of quantum indeterminancy.

I didn't claim "complete knowledge" we will never be omniscient. However if a theory, hypothesis, is thought out such as Higgs bosom for example; if it exist! we will find it. We are hard wired that way, we crave for knowledge that's in our nature, in 10k years, the humans that exist then, would be much more knowledgeable than our ignorance of today.

Godless

 

[qwerty mob]

Beg to disagree on the last point, Sarkus: "lacking exposure to (thus any belief or nonbelief in) deities" isn't an ontological position; working generalizations of atheism need to account for this important distinction, otherwise one is apt to draw a strawman for convenience's sake.

Agree otherwise, that agnosticism and theism aren't mutally exclusive; one is a position on specific knowledge, and the other on the "existence" of one or more "deities."

Cheers

 

[water]

* So I am not the only one then! But it seems that which we search for without, could be within, and that which we search for within, could be without.

Or maybe that is a false dilemma.

 

[hypGnosis]

I thought "Blind Faith" was merely believing with no reason, no rational explanation for it?

To believe a thing yet know otherwise is not "blind faith" but very real stupidity and is classic delusion.

Well, maybe it is so, that believing without reason or rationale is exemplary of 'blind faith', but I think if you scratch the surface of the 'believer', you'll find 'reasons' supporting the 'blind faith'.

I think we could agree that there are instances of 'classic' delusion that could be termed 'blind faith', i.e. to believe to the contrary even tho' the 'believer' prefers to ignore factual evidence.

And back to the distinction between belief and knowledge...

If a Hindu tells me that he 'knows' that Vishnu and Shiva are real, I'm reading that the Hindu is really telling me that he 'knows' what he believes... not that he has direct knowledge of Vishnu and Shiva.

 

[stretched]

"But existence is not an idea. It is there all around you, within and without. When you are utterly innocent, a deep thankfulness - I will not call it prayer because in prayer you are asking for something. I will call it a deep thankfulness - a gratitude arises. Not that you are asking for something, but thanking for something that has already been given to you."

Osho

 

[cole grey]

This means that God is partially knowable, and that you know that part of God. But how can you be sure of such a thing?! How can you be sure that what you know is indeed about God??

Some people are that sure. Maybe their experiences are more conducive to belief. They often say they "know", but I don't think anyone who has posted here would use that word for what they are experiencing. The word "know" in the theological sense may be more relational than cognitive.
Let's realize here on this thread though - "knowing" something doesn't depend on having evidence, but on being empirically correct. We associate evidence with the process because we have found that our assumptions are often correct when we have evidence for them, but sometimes evidence can be misleading - it does kind of look like the sun is going around the earth.

I do not live the way I do because I would believe in God.

That wasn't my point. I was responding to your saying, how does one put "everything" into this hope, by saying that I think people have other reasons for living the way they do than just giving it "all" - that they may do things a theist should, not solely because they are theists but simply because they feel it is appropriate for their lives.

If God isn't the first and the last thought on your mind, then what's the point in believing in God at all??

Self-forgiveness? Moral responsibility? Those may seem contraindicated but they are not.


* * *
Godless - I turn the heater on and the turtle dies from the heat - as i thought I said... we don't change reality as a system, we change things about our reality in actuality, not just subjectively.

***
Raithere - To say something is completely unknowable would mean we cannot define anything about it. This is the problem I have with those who say, "God is all", or whatever - with not even a single defining characteristic, how can we relate to it in any way?
Saying something is completely unknowable would exclude it from our ability to reason with the concept. That would not however exclude it from existence, just outside of our mental world.

***
The story about the elephant and the blind men is appropriate here. The blind men can describe to their best abilities what they perceive, but the elephant is objectively the same, and would be the same even if there were no blind men around to feel it.

 

[water]

Hi, stretched,


I'm so sorry. But everytime I think of Osho and read what he said, it goessssss ...

"Bt existncssss is not ... n idea ... sssssss. It is there oll around you, sssss .... within and without sss. sssss

Sorry, I needed this laugh this morning.



* * *


Dear cole grey,


I think I understand you well. But I can't help but to feel dismay and envy for those who live with great surety in their belief in God.

Some people are that sure. Maybe their experiences are more conducive to belief. They often say they "know", but I don't think anyone who has posted here would use that word for what they are experiencing. The word "know" in the theological sense may be more relational than cognitive.
Let's realize here on this thread though - "knowing" something doesn't depend on having evidence, but on being empirically correct. We associate evidence with the process because we have found that our assumptions are often correct when we have evidence for them, but sometimes evidence can be misleading - it does kind of look like the sun is going around the earth.

Agreed.

If God isn't the first and the last thought on your mind, then what's the point in believing in God at all??

Self-forgiveness? Moral responsibility? Those may seem contraindicated but they are not.

Maybe we're talking about two different perspectives on the same thing.

To an external observer, a person's belief in God may indeed have something to do with self-forgiveness and moral responsibility.

But from the self-reflecting perspective, the way an individual person understands himself -- to say "I believe in God because I want to be able to forgive myself and because I want my moral responsibility to make sense to me" -- I do not think this is feasible, I do not think it is possible to trick oneself like that. I at least could not trick myself like that.

The story about the elephant and the blind men is appropriate here. The blind men can describe to their best abilities what they perceive, but the elephant is objectively the same, and would be the same even if there were no blind men around to feel it.

In other words, when I eat a bite of something, I do not need to know what it was in order to be able to tell that I have indeed eaten something.

If it tasted good and didn't make me sick, alright.
If it didn't taste good or if it made me sick, then this is just how it is.
Giving it a name (and develop a grand conceptualization of it) won't make any difference to this.


And, to quote Osho (seriously this time) on this:

"But existence is not an idea. It is there all around you, within and without. When you are utterly innocent, a deep thankfulness - I will not call it prayer because in prayer you are asking for something. I will call it a deep thankfulness - a gratitude arises. Not that you are asking for something, but thanking for something that has already been given to you."

 

[stretched]

You keep right on laughing water! That is what it`s all about!

 

[Sarkus]

Beg to disagree on the last point, Sarkus: "lacking exposure to (thus any belief or nonbelief in) deities" isn't an ontological position; working generalizations of atheism need to account for this important distinction, otherwise one is apt to draw a strawman for convenience's sake.

Agree otherwise, that agnosticism and theism aren't mutally exclusive; one is a position on specific knowledge, and the other on the "existence" of one or more "deities."

Cheers

Hmmm - I think I see your point re: lacking exposure, but I would argue that how can anyone have exposure to that which does not exist, or to that which offers no evidence of existence?

Ok - without delving into possible semantics, or into philosophy (whichever field it may be), I would agree that there is a distinction between atheism through reason (the ontological position), and atheism through ignorance (i.e. lack of exposure) - such as the atheism of inanimate objects.

 

[Lerxst]

Saying something is completely unknowable would exclude it from our ability to reason with the concept. That would not however exclude it from existence, just outside of our mental world.

Well said.