RE: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to dialectics?

Wed, 14 Jan 2015 11:03:41 -0800 

 

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Samiya Illias
Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 2:47 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Why is there something rather than nothing? From quantum theory to 
dialectics?

 

 


On 14-Jan-2015, at 1:38 pm, "'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List" 
<[email protected]> wrote:

 

 

From: [email protected] 
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of meekerdb

 

On 1/13/2015 11:08 PM, Jason Resch wrote:

 

 

On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 3:39 PM, meekerdb <[email protected]> wrote:

On 1/12/2015 8:32 AM, Bruno Marchal wrote:

Atheism is a variant of christiniaty, because for non atheist non christian, 
"God", like any term in a theory, is defined by axioms or semi-axioms indeed.


I suppose by "semi-axioms" you mean definitions by description, like "ground of 
all being" or "creator of the universe" or "that of which we cannot speak" - 
which are used to define "God" by Christian theologians too.  But I'll bet you 
$100 that if we pick a person at random who is neither a Christian nor an 
atheist and ask him if "God" refers to a superpowerful, immortal person who 
judges human behavior he'll say "Yes".

 

That stars weren't holes in the celestial sphere didn't mean stars didn't 
exist, it meant we had to update our conception of what stars are.

 

That Earth wasn't flat didn't lead to people denying the existence of Earth or 
throwing out the word altogether, it meant we had to update our conception of 
the Earth to something more like a ball.

 

Two people might both say they believe in Quantum Mechanics, but yet they might 
have very different ideas about what that means. Person A might mean they 
believe in the Everettian view, while Person B might believe in the Copenhagen 
view.

 

Such it is with the concept of God. 


No it's not.  As Bruno says "God" is defined by description.  Stars are defined 
ostensively.





That some, or even most people's conception is faulty is not justification to 
throw out the term. It means only that there is room for progress to better 
approximate reality with our conception. Furthermore, the possibility for the 
same word to mean different things to different people make a word useless. As 
we see with the various interpretations of QM, there is common-root meaning, 
and minimum set of ideas commonly held ideas, even if they aren't exactly the 
same.

 

You may find some particular tribe's conception of God to be ridiculous and 
unworthy of acceptance, but to reject the notion of God altogether on this 
account alone would be like rejecting the ground you walk on because 
flat-Earthers are mistaken about that ground's geometry.


I only reject the concept of God that I understand to be designated by the word 
"God", and I've specifically explained that I understand the term to refer to a 
supernatural, powerful person who created the world and judges human behavior.  
Some people say "God is love", Bruno says "God is unprovable truths.", Paul 
Tillich said "God is whatever you value most."  But just because somebody says 
"Unicorns are rhinocereses" doesn't mean I have to start believing unicorns 
exist, or that that when I say unicorns don't exist I'm denying the existence 
of rhinocereses.




In a certain sense, I feel the discussion over and about god, can become a 
distraction. 

God, is after all, also, just a word… and an impossibly difficult to pin down 
word at that, meaning many different things to many people over time. To those 
people (and times) and to each of us, it connotes some meaning (or other), but 
in between us… in neutral semantic/ontological space… it’s just a word; a 
symbol of something else it points to perhaps.

Unless somebody can define god (the concept, and not the word) in some manner 
that makes clear no-wiggle-room falsifiable predictions my sense is that it 
tends to lead discussions of some things off into discussions about other 
things entirely – discussions that can become self-fueling.

 

How does god – meaning this or meaning that – help or impede a search for 
meaning, for an elegant model of everything?

Personally I think god (the word) is a distraction from the search for the 
origin of all that emerged (which is a distinction, with which I believe ?god? 
would agree)  I am open minded to the abstraction of god (the concept) if it 
could be expressed in a rigorous & unambiguous manner – where is the formula 
for god(the concept)? 

Now that could be interesting; discussing the meaning of the word and what it 
should/should not mean ends up becoming circular IMO

-Chris

 

Why not define God as the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe and Everything 
Else that is or may exist? The raison d'être of everything? The unanswerable 
and unexplainable first reason? Who chooses to remain hidden but Whose presence 
cannot be denied? The question that nobody can begin to answer?! 

 

Sure, why not, for you it works, but many also have their own definitions and 
doctrines… and there is the rub. Everyone is talking about god, but the word 
means different things to different people.

If we want to rigorously define the conceptual meaning of god then I believe it 
should be possible to use the language of math and logic to make a more 
compelling argument for science. 

To speak of god scientifically I believe it is incumbent to drop the word --- 
because arguing over the meaning of god is circular and budges nobody from 
their positions of faith or lack thereof – and seek to find a way to speak of 
this mystery that uses rigorous symbolic language of math and logic. Otherwise 
it is just a bloody (not so) merry go round…. And round, and round.

-Chris

 

 

Samiya 





Brent





 

 Jason

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