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Note: in this post I will be speaking of “God” (capitalised) in the meaning of Yahweh, who is the God in most forms of Judaism; the “Father” in Christianity (all of it?); and Allah in Islam (to the best of my knowledge). Some of the things I say here can be said about other religions. Some of the things I say may be applied to any form of a deity. I, however, am speaking from my point of view as a Jew, who studied backgrounds of religion that are wide enough to incorporate both classical “fundamentalist” thought, “liberal” thought, and other fragments of various other approaches. So I just thought I’d make this a bit clearer.
Also, to simplify this I will speak of God (or Yahweh) as if the entity is of male, masculine gender and sex, just in order to get pronouns more manageable.
I’d like to apologise if at any point I accidentally did not capitalise pronouns speaking of God. If I did so – it is because I forgot. I am simply recently revealed to this feature of the English language and don’t always remember to do it.
There’s an 8-page or similarly long thread about proving God does not exist. I did not enter the thread, it kind of scares me reading an 8-page thread about God that probably grows in the same rate as our Dates Thread. I don’t usually do that kind of quick scanning over the past many pages.
I don’t usually enter theological or religious threads. I am a person who’s nowhere near brave enough to pop up in the middle, talking about things I don’t know too much about. So I thought I’d start something I may know more about and understand more about. I’m no great writer, and I’m trying to write an opening for a thesis I’ve never, ever put into words, so please excuse this for probably screwing up.
Part One – Representing Religion in Philosophical Terms
Here comes my question: do we really need to know whether God exists or not? According to my understanding of one of the middle-age commentators, he says that the whole purpose of the sacrifices is to prepare the pagan people of Israel to worship God. He says that it was the first step; the second step was the destruction of the Temple, and eventually even prayers won’t have to be recited, because everything will be in the mind and people will worship God through thought.
We must ask ourselves, in light of this statement, why do we worship God? Why do we do something which is apparently irrational, “wasting” time doing things that don’t affect us? Why do we, humans, believe in some entity whose existence we cannot prove, particularly in our level of conscious reality?
The answer is seemingly simple – because we get something out of it; because we feel certain satisfaction at a certain place. Ultimately that is true – we do something because we feel an urge to do it. If you force me to do something that I hate and I do it, it is because I feel it’s more pleasant (“less unpleasant”) to comply rather than face the consequences. Consequences could be physical, mental, emotional or many other things.
Let’s take two types of worshipping God – and I will give examples of these two forms in their more extreme versions, to highlight the contrast between them.
The first one is worship because you honestly believe that such form of worship is the one needed because that is what your God said, therefore you should so it and not argue whether or not it’s a proper thing to do; you should not care about other things because these are the only issues that matter to you. What has been written in your holy book is utterly true, has been written in perfection by God Himself and should not be used for anything but study and compliance. This form is true and utter belief for reasons that do not need to be rational – and many times aren’t (speaking objectively).
The second form is a much wider form of belief. This is a more academic form of belief, which is many times not a theist one, but a more a communal one. I’ve seen several television shows that show how a Thanksgiving dinner is something people wait for, because it’s a communal way of connecting to religion as a whole, and not exclusively to God (in any form).
While one can look at the former as a “purer” form of belief, many people feel much more connected to the latter and see it as a way to speak to them. Reform movements of many kinds have had elements of the latter. As a human who believes, who feels the greater pleasure (lesser “displeasure” that is – using the Freudian analysis of pleasure) of believing, it’s henceforth clear that something drives us to believe in one of those two ways (and I’m assuming at the time that any third form of belief is not complete belief – purist or not).
I can speak only for myself and my experiences; but I believe that I’m not too unhuman for this to apply to many others. I’ve asked people who believe for purist reasons, “fundamentalists” you may call them, as to why they believe so vigorously in their religion. Many said that it was because they were brought up to believe it is the ultimate truth, that purism is what they were told to believe, and since it happened at a very young age – they believe it at later ages with great passion and occasionally zeal. What remains is to understand how the first one of those people, who wasn’t brought to believe in those things from parents, how did that person come to believe in it with such intensity?
Looking at the second form of belief (and now please allow me to move to the first person), we see how the religion, the laws of God, have formed us a framework in which we live. We have limitations, however, and soon enough we develop a pattern of understanding based on our interpretation of the laws. This pattern aids us in comprehending the purpose of the laws in our religion, and we develop it in the direction we believe it needs development, while not breaking the additional boundaries we set ourselves in behaviour (so the pattern remains unchanged). We might sometime come to a point in which we don’t understand why we are following that pattern specifically, or why we need the social framework in the first place.
If we become unhappy with our social development and instructions given to us by our predecessors, if we decide that these patterns and frameworks can be untrue and that our religious predecessors might have been oblivious to some thing or another, we can arise with the same question as our fellow purists might have been asked – why do our predecessors yearn to follow those rules of worship [or similar]? Why are we to believe it ourselves, and why is it that there are people who believe in it in the first place? Though this does not necessarily give an answer to the question asked originally – “does belief in God really matter” – it gives a direction of thought.
Believing in God will be done not necessarily because it’s right, or because we know or think it’s right. Philosophically you can argue that nothing can ever be determined to be right or wrong, and the mathematical-logical way to reply is by setting axioms for us to believe whatsoever, to lay foundations for society. All of society, essentially, is valid “assuming you accept axioms a, b, c”.
Conclusion of Part One: God is the axiom of religion. There’s no rational explanation, He just is. That’s it.
Part Two – Some Physical and Philosophical Issues
Surely, you could argue the way Aristotle did, proving philosophically that some original source had to exist. Beings cause other beings to be, and therefore we can argue that something came first. Take any theory – evolution, for example: the Earth was created from nebulae’s activities in the Solar System, causing Earth to evolve; but how did the Solar System happen? Eventually it all comes back to the Big Bang – a singularity with all the matter there is in zero space. No space means no time, as one is dependent on another – and we still arrive at the question – what caused the Big Bang to happen, and what was before the Big Bang?
Or look at the book of Genesis – “in the beginning God ‹list of actions›” – meaning there was a God who acted those actions. Before anything else could have been, God was the one who existed. But if God existed, what caused Him to be? The claim that God is eternal can be neither proved nor disapproved; it contradicts my belief of physics, but that doesn’t mean it can or cannot be true.
Science, though, can prove no simpler an issue. Assuming what I think is part of String Theory, that:
The universe is 10-27 dimensional and its structure is not that of a plain sphere;
If you travel in one direction from one point, you’ll arrive (eventually) where you started (I like to think of the subway-station scene in Matrix Revolutions as a one-dimensional simple version of the universe from that aspect); and
The universe is expanding into nowhere, and that nowhere never existed before because the location of expansion is everywhere (all is relative, there is no centre to the universe);
It is obvious that space has no beginning and no end, because beginning and end are part of each other, therefore everything in both space and time is both beginning and both end, therefore it is impossible to prove or disapprove anything – even speaking in this theory’s rules alone – particularly that this universe ever was the only one.
While this may seem obvious, look at the theory that the universe is going to contract and new universes will arise. Look at the sub-theory that there will be different physical rules to it. Can one possibly prove that the philosophical rules that will apply to the physical rules, simple and axiom-true philosophy that is utterly true, can one prove that these rules will apply themselves to the different universes? That there is some thing, some rule, which is not only universal but ultimate – applying to the one level beyond universes, and to any other levels that arise beyond that? Is there anything beyond that that we can believe is ultimately true? Is there that something that answers all axioms?
Part Three – Connecting the Previously Said and Concluding
There isn’t that answer. And the thought that there is nothing that can possibly prove anything, that can make us know by the true sense of the word is an unbearable thought. So it is at least to a knowledge-hungry philosophy-lover and truth-seeker, which I believe that I [at least partly] am.
So that is why we have God. We cannot explain the world. It is impossible to know what caused the Big Bang; impossible to know whether philosophy can apply ultimately (“ultimatism” is the term I use to define the levels beyond “universalism”); impossible to know whether there is a core-rule to axioms and whether or not they can be proven one way or the other; impossible to determine a cause and a reason in the ultimate sense.
I can continue the arguments from this point on in a never-ending circuit, where no matter how many levels one can ascend – all those levels can fit, like string theory, as a loop to which you can always find some other philosophical proof (seeming proof, it’s always speculation) that philosophy won’t apply necessarily to anything beyond that “loop” of endless levels.
But wait, if philosophy proves that it cannot prove anything or apply to anything, we’ve then got a paradox. It’s a never-ending loop; and the only reason which I see that explains the fact that we exist – even if only at our bottommost level – rather than the whole of existence being absent and nonexistent (Cartesianly impossible, because “cogito ergo sum”) – is the reasoning that there is, in fact, an original source that causes us to be. We cannot prove it true, prove it false, or do anything about it, except try to understand and possibly find new ways of thought.
We live in a world which we speculate, or we know because all that we know because our understanding is based as certain framework which was constructed with speculations and assumptions. Because we cannot ever know, we’ve got to give some form of an ultimate reason to everything. We cannot leave these issues unexplained because our minds cannot bear the unexplainable. That, I believe, is the reason there is belief in an ultimate God. We cause something which is at an unknown level, but the ultimate one. It is possible that there is no ultimate one – but He is at the topmost level, the level of ultimate truth. If it even is existent. (Similar to the mathematical proof – which I don’t know – that there is an infinite number of infinities, but which infinity is that “infinite number”? The “biggest” infinity.)
Those who do not believe – as I understand – will be either unusual humans, people who prefer not to think of “utmost levels” and prefer to ignore the unprovable philosophy, or people who simply don’t know.
I don’t know where I am. But these are my thoughts. If you’ve read this far and understood this thesis in my awful phrasing – congratulations; I learned a lot myself, mind you, while writing this, so my line of thought changed a lot – meaning it’s probably even less coherent.
Jonathan Howard
This message has been edited for proofing, formatting, readability and consistent styling only; all content and quotes have not been touched.
[ July 22, 2005, 05:18 AM: Message edited by: Jonathan Howard ]
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quote:Philosophically you can argue that nothing can ever be determined to be right or wrong, and the mathematical-logical way to reply is by setting axioms for us to believe whatsoever, to lay foundations for society. All of society, essentially, is valid “assuming you accept axioms a, b, c”.
Of course, that reply still does not determine anything to be right or wrong unless you can somehow determine the axioms are right and wrong. Just selecting a bunch of axioms that you happen to like does not solve anything.
quote:God is the axiom of religion. There’s no rational explanation, He just is. That’s it.
God is the axiom of CERTAIN religions, but not the majority of religions and not religion in general. This is a problem for your argument, I think, because if people need an ultimate reason for everything and that God must fill that role, why do many religions and cultures have no God? Some religions don't have any ultimate answer at all.
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quote: Just selecting a bunch of axioms that you happen to like does not solve anything.
But this is how it is. You can question definitions but when you get to the core of understanding then you've reached rock-bottom, where you've got to have something to work up from; you can't create a theory without having certain constants which are simply given. You've got to assume any theory based on something; basic axioms that mathematicians and philosophers have given us are those given constants, and our belief we build on that.
quote: God is the axiom of CERTAIN religions, but not the majority of religions and not religion in general
Perfectly right. That is precisely why I stated in my notice above that "I, however, am speaking from my point of view as a Jew". I was referring primarily to God in the capitalised meaning, the way I know Him. I don't know all religions, I know tiny fragments of some - so what I say is based on what I know, and that's why I stated certain limits upon which I developed that little thesis of mine.
quote: I can speak only for myself and my experiences
quote:so what I say is based on what I know, and that's why I stated certain limits upon which I developed that little thesis of mine.
Yes, but I think the fact that those other religions don't have God impacts your argument. After all, if we have God for the reasons you give, why don't all religions have God or an equivalent for the same reasons? They cannot explain the world any better than we can without fundamental axioms - if we need God for this reason, why don't they?
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quote: They cannot explain the world any better than we can without fundamental axioms - if we need God for this reason, why don't they?
I can try and explain the ancient Greek belief, and possibly other pagan religions.
God is one entity in Judaism, it is three in Christianity. However, in Christianity (to the best of my knowledge), "Yahweh" preceded Jesus and created him - father creates son, after all, not the opposite - and so God did have an exclusive part of defining it.
Similarly with pagan religions such as the Greek and the Egyptian: there were certain gods or supreme entities preceding other ones (Chronos preceded Zeus, Ra was the father of other gods). I do not know much about others, but I suspect that you either have preceding fathers to all deities, Mother Nature can be a global entity too, or you have gods with shared, completing powers - functioning together as the original source.
That is what I suspect would happen. It's an alternative explanation, but it follows the rules, as I can see it.
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Well, God isn't an axiom for me, but a conclusion. I do have some axioms: fundamentally, the universe makes sense; simpler explanations are to be preferred; love is a good thing. God's existence isn't one of them, although I believe in him.
It's really hard to make a rigorous argument for something so broad, but I'll still kibitz about part 1, while admiring the work that went into it. Jonathan, you give us 2 types of worship, but the kind that I do doesn't fit either category: simply recognizing the worthiness of God (which is the origin of the term, btw: worth-ship). It's much like when I recognize the worthiness of a great CD, and want to tell other people to listen to it.
I didn't follow how we go from "these are the 2 types of worship," and the descriptions of how people think about God, to "God's existence can only be axiomatic." But this could only work given that the only way to prove God's existence is by considering what people think about him, and I don't think this has been established.
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When you say you believe in God, "how" do you believe in Him? What do you believe God is, and what do you believe caused the world to be? If you tell me that the currently popular theory of the Big Bang - then please tell me: how do you[ believe God and the Big Bang fit together? Did God cause the Big Bang? Is God the set of physical laws? What do you believe God is: an entity or an assortment of laws, similar in structure to a computer application? Or maybe something else?
I did give you two types of worship, but I didn't say that those were the only two. If you acknowledge and recognise the worthy of God, if you admire Him, then what purpose does your yearn for preaching to other people serve? By wanting to tell people "look at what He did!", what type of satisfaction do you gain, and what urge do you relieve?
I stated roughly "these are two types of worship", I never said the only two. God's existence, according to those two is axiomatic for the reason that [assuming God is the original source:] the endless philosophical question of "what caused Him to be" and the recurring questions that can never be answered cannot possibly be cancelled as if our world is an illusion, because we do exist in our level of consciousness. We may never know what actual reality is, but even if we're an illusion, we still exist.
Similarly to a book or a film. Gandalf is smarter than, say, Copernicus, though I doubt Tolkien - who wrote the character of Gandalf in his books - necessarily was. In a film, a character does have real feelings though he or she (or it) probably doesn't exist actually in our level of consciousness that we call "reality".
The film has boundaries of existence, and so we can assume our "higher" level of "reality" (or more technically - consciousness) also has. We might be someone's illusion or a simulation, but we don't know. If we know that one level exists ("cogito ergo sum"), there must be an ultimate level. That ultimate level is where the original source is; and that is by definition.
That is the axiom. We don't know the highest level, but logically it must exist, or we wouldn't. You never know what is the highest level, even if you are there, but what's sure is that that level is the level of the original source.
Since we know that that level exists logically, but we cannot prove which one it is or where it is, your existence, and the existence of the original source - whatever it may be ("God" in what I covered) - are simply taken as a given, as something granted.
That is why God is axiomatic.
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I think you're saying that God is axiomatic because there must be an ultimate level of reality, that is, something that wasn't made up by something else.
OK. If we define God as the ultimate level of reality, I can understand the statement. However, you also said that God has no rational explanation. You just gave one! For that definition of God, at least. It wouldn't be mine, because that definition of God is so broad it could mean "the universe" or its creator or its creator's creator or ... Interesting.
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I like the Scott Adams theory. The only thing G-d could not know is what it is like to die. So He killed Himself. The resulting explosion created the Big Bang, and we are all G-d's debris trying to piece itself together again.
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quote: OK. If we define God as the ultimate level of reality, I can understand the statement. However, you also said that God has no rational explanation.
God is assumed by Judaism to be the original source, therefore forging everything that exists. So yes, God is axiomatic because Cartesianly there is an ultimate level of reality or consciousness, it's a rational idea. However, we do not know what it is, if it still is, or if that Cartesian proof is even possible from another logical point of view - because whatever you call God, He might just be an illusion created from a higher level. That higher level can itself be an illusion or a sub-entity of something higher.
So logically, there never actually is an ultimate level. At first gaze you can say that "the truth lies out there, and there must be an answer and a reason, even if we can never know it, because it can always be just something of a limited level of consciousness".
Think again. It is possible, and true that there is no ultimate level because it cannot be attained by anything and therefore its actuality (concluding with the previous paragraph) is both existent and nonexistent.
quote: Because we cannot ever know, we’ve got to give some form of an ultimate reason to everything. We cannot leave these issues unexplained because our minds cannot bear the unexplainable. That, I believe, is the reason there is belief in an ultimate God. We cause something which is at an unknown level, but the ultimate one. It is possible that there is no ultimate one – but He is at the topmost level, the level of ultimate truth. If it even is existent.
If it even is existent. It's in doubt because its existence can be proved both ways. If I ask you what is the biggest number, you'll tell me that there is no such thing. But if every [real] number is smaller or bigger (or equal) to another - how can you tell me the biggest one? If you can always add 1 to the number, you get a bigger one.
The problem is unsolvable, so you just have to take it for granted that you exist. The irrationality that you bump into trying to solve the problem of existence can get you tangled. You cannot explain how it is, because the problem is unsolvable, at least as I see it. Therefore (again, as I see it, and until you prove me otherwise wrong it's the thesis) God's entity is unexplainable, because you can't tell me that God is both (a) at the top, ultimate level; (b) rationally and actually existent.
You just have to take it as a given. God is axiomatic.
[ July 23, 2005, 02:31 PM: Message edited by: Jonathan Howard ]
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There are certain things that are unknown. That much, I think we can safely say, is true.
However, these unknown things can be either a) not yet known, or b) unknowable. Either way, it is a feature of humanity that we don't like the unknown, and we try to explain it.
If you ask a six year old how a television works, you'll likely get an answer like "you push the on button, and the show comes on". That is an explanation that is satisfying at that age.
But if you ask the six year old "why", or ask for a better explanation of what the button does that causes those particular pictures, you are unlikely to get an explanation including the chain from show concept to acting to filming to distribution to electric current, etc.
It is because this is not yet known, though it is knowable to an inquisitive and mature mind.
If the question were "what is lightning?" you might get an answer that it is the crooked white lines that flash in the sky during rain storms. But "why?"
During ancient times, this was "unknowable" - though in truth it was simply "not yet known". We know can talk about electricity when discussing lightning, though in ancient times this was explained simply as an act of deity.
Deity became the explanation for the "unknowable" - and it still is that for many people today. Though, of course, the "unknowable" explanations also include aliens, psychics, ghosts, etc. They are all methods we, as humans, have developed to put an explanation to something that is otherwise unexplainable.
But this does not mean we are right, just that we don't know and we have adopted an explanation we can live with.
There are countless religions, all claiming their explanation of the unknown is correct, yet most still accept that it is ultimately unknown - or have gotten to the point where it is "unquestionable".
Religion is comfort in the face of the unknown, as is science. Neither accepts that anything can be "unknowable" - either it is known by the deity, or it is discoverable through human means.
I choose to believe that there are things that are "not yet knowable" at our stage of human development. I don't need to convince myself that I'm standing on firm ground, because I know I am not. I am slave to neither dogma nor empirical "fact", and don't have a problem accepting the explanations of others as possible - be they spiritual, scientific, or paranormal.
It just seems to me that a lot of argument and strife happens when one person's explanation of the unknown clashes with another's - simply because neither side is willing to accept the possibility that their explanation is wrong.
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Obviously there are things which are not known today but in a hundred years we will probably understand better. Why, a hundred years ago Rutherford did his experiments with the atoms. In a hundred years who knows where we'll be?
The thing is, that there is a difference between the "unknown" and the "impossible to prove". The fact that God is axiomatic has been proven in this thread until otherwise proved. So obviously there are things that are not known; obviously philosophy has not been completely investigated; obviously we haven't thought of everything. But there are limitations we know of, and until those limitations are proven otherwise we can't really argue them.
We don't know what's the most elementary particle and we don't know whether Matter and Energy are the same. We don't know whether we can break past the Uncertainty Principle of Eisenberg, although it seems like it's impossibe - with our current knowledge.
But we do know that Cartesianly proving God is one philosophical idea and though the theory fits in well with itself, it might clash with someone else's theories for all we know. Maths and logic, sometimes in philosophy too, have shown us that certain things can be proved correctly to show completely opposie results. Dividing a number by zero can yield almost anything, if not anything. We therefore set ourselves boundaries and we rely on axioms. We give ourselves patterns to work with, so we don't stumble over.
All I am saying that God is an axiom of that sort. You can relate to that axiom in different ways, and you may discover new things all the time; you may find new ways to think and you might make the axiom simpler as you find new ideas that can fit. But the axiom will probably remain an axiom, and the more fundamental the axiom is and the more we rely on it - the more it is going to be stable and reamin the way it is - not being cancelled by a little proof.
God is one fundamental axiom, and with virtual certainty will remain so. Unless someone can argue that these logical rules, which show us that God is an axiom, can be explained otherwise in a convincing way - God remains axiomatic.
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Now, are you saying that God is axiomatic, meaning that the very existence of such an entity is self-evident and universally true? Or are you saying "people's belief in God" is axiomatic?
Personally, too much of a majority of humanity's experience on this planet has been without a monotheistic God for me to call God an axiom.
I think it would be more correct to call God (or, more globally, the concept of deity) a meme, something that is a cultural part of the human experience, than an axiom, which is a universal truth. If you want to get Jungian, you might even call it an expression of our collective unconscious, or, contrarily, a social development needed to further civilization, such as language or farming.
Or are you saying that one must take God as axiomatic, true without needing proof, if one is to discuss religion or deity in any meaningful way?
Even in your own argument, you limit yourself to such an incredible extent before you even begin. You've chosen the shared deity of three religions, and neglected the myriad religious constructs outside of those limited bounds almost entirely. What about religions such as Buddhism or Taoism? Or Jainism? Or Atheists, even?
There is a significant portion of the world's population that rejects the concept of deity outright.
To say God is axiomatic with so many populations who reject the axiom? Seems a bit hasty, to me.
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I don't know Buddhism, Taoism and Jainism well, to say the least. I cannot speak, therefore, for other religions that I barely know, or don't know - not yet, anyway. However, I am certain that different approaches to solving the problems that God comes to answer in the three monotheistic religions exist - in other forms.
I had to limit myself in the argument, otherwise I would have tried to say things about areas I do not know enough about. But I'm rather sure that explanations for things that are unexplainable exist - in one form or another - in those religions as well.
What I was saying was that those some peoples' belief in God is axiomatic. The axiom will apply, at least somewhat, to anyone who tries to explain that rough bit of cause; reason; Earth's creation; Cartesian proofs of God; endless consciousness levels; string theory; et cetera.
The axiom incorporates more that God Himself in it; God (as Yahweh) is just a representation of that axiom in those three monotheistic religions, and I looked at the axiom through that approach. God represents what eventually becomes an answer to a universal question (assuming people ask it), which can be answered elsehow, I don't know how to answer it in a different way, though.
Atheists do not believe in God; that is not to say that they don't face the axiom. Say you take science as your belief of the universe's origin: you still face that problem of what caused the Big Bang. God may not exist in the form of Yahweh as we know Him, but that's not to say that God cannot be a set of physical rules which are passive.
That significant portion of population might reject an active, self-"intelligent", independent deity; but it does not mean that that portion of the population doesn't explain the reason for our existence in different ways.
God is axiomatic; that population (or those populations) don't reject the axiom, they reject God.
Catholics are Christian; Christianity is not Catholic alone. God is axiomatic; the axiom is not God alone.
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It's axiomatic to me that it's possible to be polite to someone you disagree with. It's certainly worth a try.
Now, about God and axioms: Jonathan You aren't saying that God must be believed in (since atheist exists) You aren't saying that God must be believed in by reasonable people (I think?) You were saying -- I believe -- that if one believes in God, it can't be as a conclusion, it must be as an axiom.
If this is right: thing is, there are people (like me) who believe in God, but don't take his existence as axiomatic. Now, maybe we aren't reasonable. But you've confined your reasoning to a particular issue, that is, creation and levels of reality. There might be other reasons for believing in God.
But what I think you're saying is that since the universe exists, it must have a cause, and that cause (or its ultimate cause) can be called "God." True. But the concept of ultimate cause isn't identical with the concept of the God of Abraham, so I'd rather call the first concept "ultimate cause." If you argue that the universe must have an ultimate cause, I doubt you'll get much argument.
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quote:That is the axiom. We don't know the highest level, but logically it must exist, or we wouldn't. You never know what is the highest level, even if you are there, but what's sure is that that level is the level of the original source.
The question, then, is WHY must a highest level exist - why must there be an original source? Why can't there simply be an infinite string of levels - each explaining the thing before? If that is illogical, then what is the logical proof against it?
My theory is that it is not illogical at all, but instead actually just difficult to grasp.
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And you are also assuming a philosophical world that has a multi-billion year history, which must have some sort of beginning. Which then begs Tres' question - what came before that? And, then, what before that?
Could time and history merely be illusion? Could the universe have started with your first remembered thought or image, and all that came before merely be things you've made up so that your existence would make sense at all?
To get all Cartesian again, I think, therefore I am. Not therefore you are. I exist, and I'm pretty sure of that. All else is speculation.
If you want to get even further afield, ask if you existed yesterday. Or did the Universe spring into being when you opened your eyes this morning, and will it end when you close them tonight? And all the memories of the past are simply figments?
You're trying to serve two masters. If science is true, then God must exist as the spark that set it into motion. However, what if you abandon the premise? What if science is not true, but merely a convenient, coincidental explanation that doesn't represent truth at all, but merely works insofar as our limited experience has shown us?
The existence of a higher being is not axiomatic. In fact, with the amount of restrictions you have placed upon yourself, I'm not sure anything can be considered axiomatic - being something that is true globally and without question.
You're trying to nail down a microcosmic axiom, that only works in a very limited and defined space. Thing is, that blows the idea of axiom apart, because if you need to set such restrictive limits for it to be true, then it isn't globally accepted as truth without question - it becomes a "proof" drawn from a long string of givens.
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And, just to speak to Tres' point, who I seem to have agreed with (I'm waiting for that freak tornado to hit my house now) -
It's not that hard to comprehend his idea of an infinite string of levels. Just stand in a hallway and put a big mirror in front of you, and one behind you. Where does the image stop? And must it stop anywhere?
Must there be a top, or a beginning, or an end, or a deity?
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I wonder if the reason I'm having such a problem understanding this discussion is that the term God is so variously defined and no-one has really got a universal definition.
It simply cannot be axiomatic that there was a creator -- if that's the definition of God that's being used. The Creator is a postulate (in human terms). It is a theory that seeks to explain the otherwise incomprehensible.
Since the actual content of that explanation is culturally dependent, and the powers assigned to the creator are similarly dependent on the story that each culture developed, I think the idea of God as axiomatic just becomes watered down to mean nothing because it has to mean "everything."
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I think more what he's getting at is that there is a Creative Spark meme, that without any way of *knowing* how the universe and all things in it were formed, humans feel the need to assign some explanation, and create societal stories to quantify the unquantifiable.
In this thread, he's calling that spark "God" for lack of... well, not sure what it's for lack of.
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quote: Could time and history merely be illusion? Could the universe have started with your first remembered thought or image, and all that came before merely be things you've made up so that your existence would make sense at all?
That's the problem. It can be proved both ways. On the one hand, some truth must exist. You think, therefore you are, but why do you think in the first place? On the other hand, maybe all of existence is an illusion - one level of the other - and nothing is necessarily higher, or provable either way?
Therefore, I assume that "there is a Creative Spark meme, that without any way of *knowing* how the universe and all things in it were formed, humans feel the need to assign some explanation, and create societal stories to quantify the unquantifiable".
quote: But the concept of ultimate cause isn't identical with the concept of the God of Abraham, so I'd rather call the first concept "ultimate cause."
I am explaining a reasoning of belief in God, as the ultimate or original source. Not the reasoning.
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Sometimes, I wish the world had an "I have no flippin' idea" meme.
I think the role of creation stories is not so much to glorify God as it is to bind a culture (tribe) together through common tales.
And, I do think the worship part is important. Because it's possible for a society to believe a particular creation myth without ultimately deciding to worship whatever did the creating. Or, perhaps it'd be more accurate to say that they morph the creator into something they CAN worship for other reasons (like being the lightbringer). Because the creative act, while ultimately something we should all be grateful for, has a certain remoteness that doesn't inspire. At least not as much as making the corn grow this year.
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phew...I thought I'd killed this thread. You all seemed to be enjoying it. I'm still a bit baffled, but I think I'm catching up.
JH: I think the trouble with using the word axiom is that, at least from the perspective of mathematics, an axiom is not just something unproven and yet generally accepted.
An axiom is something from which useful knowledge is derivable. That "given x" we can prove that y is true.
Saying that God is an axiom is not strictly the same. Why? Because what you are postulating is some being for whom nothing is impossible. Therefore, making God axiomatic takes the rest of your proofs outside the realm of logic altogether. Everything is true because God is true.
All of your proofs are one logic step long and require only the axiom.
I'm not saying you can't do that...obviously it's possible to believe that. Sure. Go ahead. But the problem is that the rest of theology and the rest of human thought is not going to back you up.
It's like skipping all the steps in your proof and inserting the words "and then a miracle happens" to go from point A to point Z in one leap.
Ah well. I may need to think about this some more.
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