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In this quote we see that they want to distance god from creation (transcendence) yet somehow put him in intimate contact with it (immanence). Thus they try to have it both ways. Their argument against this paradox is that without it, one would be either a deist or a pantheist. True, but at least in being one of those two things you would be logically consistent.
I think, (but don't know) that most Christians would be satisfied with a theory that God was an omnipotent dude from another dimension, who created this dimension from the outside of it. Thus he could live outside our dimension or within it at his will.
But for my purpose Christianity isn't the best example of a religion to use. If the OP was "why atheists can be confident that god doesn't exist", it is an easier argument to dismiss the Christian god than it is gods of other varieties.
But if one wants to claim he is an atheist (rather than agnostic,) one has to be confident there are no other gods of any type that exist. That can get harder when you include lessor gods.
I am making a logical extrapolation from the FACT that our brain senses a God presence under the artificial stimulation of low level EM fields.
But it is not a fact. Certainly not just because you typed fact in big letters. We are not sensing anything. We are being duped into thinking we are sensing something. That is all. And it is not a god or a presence we are sensing. It is the stimulus - and our brain not knowing what to do with the stimulus merely interprets it as a presence.
You really are desperate for evidence of god if you want to misrepresent these things as evidence.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
It is the existence of consciousness . . . a VERY non-materialistic phenomenon . . . that does not make sense in your materialist world, Arq.
What is non materialistic about it? You are simply making that up now. And why does it not make sense? Sure - it is something we do not fully understand yet - but that does not mean it makes no sense at all. Again you are simply making things up.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MysticPhD
The basis of your rejection of God is based on failure to produce Him
The rejection is not just based on the failure to produce IT (it not him) but on the failure to produce anything at all that supports belief in such a thing. Not all scientific knowledge is direct. Inference and more come into play. Things do not have to be directly observed to be believed in the face of the evidence for them. But in the face of NO EVIDENCE at all for something - it is similarly rational to be confident the thing likely does not exist.
"more simply, there is nothing that is supernatural."
I agree, but that is why I don't find that term to be a useful distinction.
Things are either real or not real. By placing the label "supernatural" on it, all we are doing is describing it as not real. By saying one doesn't believe in the supernatural, all we are saying is we don't believe in things that aren't real.
But conversely, since theist believe their concepts are real, those concepts must be considered naturalistic claim, in the sense you use the term.
In other words, if someone says they believe something is real, they must, by your definitions, be making a naturalistic claim, even if that object is "simply beyond scientific or human understanding or the known laws of nature," (which by your standards still makes it a naturalistic claim.) So if they claim a god is real, then they are making what you would describe as a naturalistic claim. Even the god of Abraham would be considered naturalistic if one believed he was real.
I agree that the concept of heaven is probably untrue. I'm only asserting that there isn't much real benefit in distinguishing it as a supernatural vs. a natural claim. All claims that something is true must by definition be naturalistic.
I would agree with both you and mordant, Box. There is no such thing as supernatural . . . just not currently known or explicable. I guess I must be missing the nuances you have been debating.
I have to agree that the 'science' that Mystic claims supports his hypothesis looks very like starting out with the hypothesis and fishing around for anything that seems to be in the realm of science that seems to stick.
The science I use, Arq is pretty standard knowledge. The hypotheses I extrapolate from it is admittedly on the frontier of our current knowledge. The fact that our brain senses EM fields is only indicative of the ability of the brain to be sensitive to fields. The interpretations of whatever the brain senses is indicative of what the brain is supposed to interpret. When you put the sensitivity to fields together with the types of interpretations that the brain makes (even though the stimulus is artificial) . . . that suggests something relevant about what the brain is supposed to sense where fields are concerned. The fact that there are fields OTHER than the measurable EM fields gives credence to my hypotheses about the 95+% unmeasurable fields involving dark energy, dark matter and consciousness. You know that my odyssey has been one of confirming my personal experiences . . . so your "fishing around" comments are just disingenuous disparagement.
I would agree with both you and mordant, Box. There is no such thing as supernatural . . . just not currently known or explicable. I guess I must be missing the nuances you have been debating.
It originally started over whether an alien could be considered a god.
One objection was that a god must be supernatural, and since aliens weren't supernatural they couldn't be classified as a god.
My defense was that the division between natural and supernatural was spurious and not a rational criteria for being a god.
Otherwise, we have by definition made gods unreal, when a person who claims a god is real is by definition making a natural claim.
Any god that is claimed to be real is a natural god, thus gods are not restricted to the supernatural.
Ergo aliens may qualify as a god, if other conditions are met.
Any god that is claimed to be real is a natural god, thus gods are not restricted to the supernatural.
Ergo aliens may qualify as a god, if other conditions are met.
There are certainly a lot of commonalities in many depictions of aliens with descriptions of angels or even gods ... and of course the other thing they have in common with gods (and ghosts) so far is that no one can actually produce credible evidence ... it's always stuff out of the corner of your eye, out of focus photos, videos of "alien autopsies" clearly being done on latex figures, etc. So the "desire to believe" is definitely there. The idea of aliens at least makes us feel a little less alone in the universe.
On the other hand I can't help but think of the Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man. "It's a cookbook! A COOKBOOK!"
The science I use, Arq is pretty standard knowledge. The hypotheses I extrapolate from it is admittedly on the frontier of our current knowledge. The fact that our brain senses EM fields is only indicative of the ability of the brain to be sensitive to fields. The interpretations of whatever the brain senses is indicative of what the brain is supposed to interpret. When you put the sensitivity to fields together with the types of interpretations that the brain makes (even though the stimulus is artificial) . . . that suggests something relevant about what the brain is supposed to sense where fields are concerned. The fact that there are fields OTHER than the measurable EM fields gives credence to my hypotheses about the 95+% unmeasurable fields involving dark energy, dark matter and consciousness. You know that my odyssey has been one of confirming my personal experiences . . . so your "fishing around" comments are just disingenuous disparagement.
I don't think that they are. I may be wrong, but it looks to me as though you had your Mystical experience, became convinced of a Christian type-god and built up your very original hypothesis to explain it in scientific terms. I am inclined to think that you looked around at what science had to offer and how it could be fitted into what you believed. Thus latching onto dark matter as the vehicle that best fitted as the material of cosmic consciousness.
I agree that research into the workings of human consciousness and exactly what are these religious feelings we get areinan early stage. So far though, the idea that these feelings are a genuine connection with a Cosmic consciousness is as likely to be wrong as right; in fact I think indications so far indicate it being wrong.
That is why I have said all along that your theory is ingenious and original but speculative,and I don't argue with it as theory, but only when presented as pretty evident fact.
I have also said that I don't mind the idea of a cosmic consciousness. I just don't buy that it is what we actually have. As you know (or so I hope you have picked up) I suggest that our consciousness has evolved from physical reactions that can hardly be called 'consciousness', just as life (it is suggested) evolved from the (non-life) molecular reactions of biochemicals.
It originally started over whether an alien could be considered a god.
One objection was that a god must be supernatural, and since aliens weren't supernatural they couldn't be classified as a god.
My defense was that the division between natural and supernatural was spurious and not a rational criteria for being a god.
Otherwise, we have by definition made gods unreal, when a person who claims a god is real is by definition making a natural claim.
Any god that is claimed to be real is a natural god, thus gods are not restricted to the supernatural.
Ergo aliens may qualify as a god, if other conditions are met.
I suppose the argument would be that aliens are solid and gods are incorporeal, but that may not be a valid distinction between gods and aliens. at one time Gods were considered solid bods and the only reason they were made incorporeal is that we couldn't find them anywhere. So we had to explain that they were invisible. And, when we found out that the universe was a lot bigger than we imagined, the incorporeal gods (or one, since monotheism had become the favoured religion in the west) had to be made Cosmos -sized, too.
It was the old business of adapting religion to fit what science had discovered and then pretending that was what it been saying all the time.
There are certainly a lot of commonalities in many depictions of aliens with descriptions of angels or even gods ... and of course the other thing they have in common with gods (and ghosts) so far is that no one can actually produce credible evidence ... it's always stuff out of the corner of your eye, out of focus photos, videos of "alien autopsies" clearly being done on latex figures, etc. So the "desire to believe" is definitely there. The idea of aliens at least makes us feel a little less alone in the universe.
On the other hand I can't help but think of the Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man. "It's a cookbook! A COOKBOOK!"
There are certainly a lot of commonalities in many depictions of aliens with descriptions of angels or even gods ... and of course the other thing they have in common with gods (and ghosts) so far is that no one can actually produce credible evidence ... it's always stuff out of the corner of your eye, out of focus photos, videos of "alien autopsies" clearly being done on latex figures, etc. So the "desire to believe" is definitely there. The idea of aliens at least makes us feel a little less alone in the universe.
On the other hand I can't help but think of the Twilight Zone episode, To Serve Man. "It's a cookbook! A COOKBOOK!"
Yeah, and just to be clear - I have no reason to believe any alien life form, if it does exist, has ever been to earth. I only recognize the possibility based on the number of habitable planets in the universe.
One of the reasons I'm glad to be back on this forum - particularly up here in the Atheist/Agnostic subforum, is that it allows me to have really esoteric debates like this. All of us here probably believe that roughly the same things likely do or do not exists, yet we are diving into the semantics of the rightfully meaning of words. It's an elevated debate one can't find on most forums.
I was saddened to hear that Rifleman passed while I was away.
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