On Jan 27, 2014, at 4:38 PM, LizR <lizj...@gmail.com> wrote:
On 28 January 2014 09:21, Jason Resch <jasonre...@gmail.com> wrote:
But Jason I want to ask you a direct question, and this isn't
rhetorical I'd really like an answer: If there is no all
encompassing purpose or a goal to existence and if the unknown
principle responsible for the existence of the universe is not
intelligent and is not conscious and is not a being then do you
think it adds to clarity to call that principle "God"?
I consider this question equivalent to asking "If there is no elan
vital found within organisms, does it still make sense to call those
organisms life?" Asking this question illustrates the attitude of
holding the word in higher esteem than the idea, which to me seems
little different from a kind of "ancestor worship" (which you are
also opposed to). I think there is a common kernel of idea behind
the word God, which is common across many religions, though each
religion also adds various additional things on top of and beyond
what is contained in that kernel. If our theories lead us to
conclude God has or doesn't have these attributes, that is progress,
and our definitions ought to update accordingly, just as we did not
throw out the word "life" when we discovered it is just matter
arranged in certain ways. Similarly, even if we were to determine
God is not "omnipotent", or not "conscious", should we abandon that
word and come up with something else? Should we do this every time
we learn some knew fact about some thing? If we did, it seems to me
that any old text would have an incomprehensible vocabulary, as
scientific progress forced us to adopt knew words each time we
learned something new.
Nevertheless, might there not be a threshold beyond which it seems
ridiculous to drag a word and its associated baggage?
Perhaps, but what word would you nominate for the infinite,
transcendent, eternal, uncreated, immutable, ground of all reality? Or
for those minds that simulate whole worlds and universes for fun?
We are far from proving such (god-like) things do not exist, and I
would say the opposite is the case: their existance is a consequence
of many theories, including most of the everything type theories
popular on this list.
Hence we could say the planets move in epicycles, but we prefer to
call them orbits, since that word doesn't carry the baggage of a
discredited theory. Similarly, we don't talk about the aether, but
space-time; we don't talk about elan vital, but DNA....I'm sure you
can think of a few similar examples.
Élan vital and DNA are two explanations (theories) of life. Just as
the "Abrahamic God" and the "comp God" are two explanations (theories)
of that which is responsible for our existance.
Explanations may fall in and out of favor, but the phenomenon to be
explained persists.
I think "God" has enough baggage that the answer to John's question
should be "no". Although given the unconscious reification of
various things (matter, maths, minds...) we might still want a
relatively neutral term for "the (possibly unknowable) principle
behind the universe".
Any suggestions?
(Assuming most people on this list are Westerners, I suppose we
could try "Tao" ... or maybe "Ylem" ?)
I think that might be somewhat more prone to misinterpretation. I
think "god" is a little more neutral since it does not refer to any
particular religion.
Jason
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