On 28 Jan 2014, at 05:57, meekerdb wrote:
On 1/27/2014 7:17 PM, Jason Resch wrote:
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?
Supposing there is a "ground of all reality", as some would nominate
the strings of string theory and others computations of a universal
dovetailer, why would suppose in advance that this GOAR is infinite,
transcendent(whatever that means), eternal, or immutable. If you're
not going to jump to conclusions, carrying baggage with you, let's
just call it goar. And I would remind you that there is not
necessarily a goar. I still like the virtuous cycle of explanation:
physics->biology->intelligence->consciousness->observation->language-
>mathematics->physics->...
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.
But it refers to an immortal person, and singular at that.
Brent
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