There is 1 thing most religions have in common and that is after life.Im not sure what gods the egyptians followed.But how they created soul passages thru the pyramids to certain stars really freakes me out,cause thats a hell of a ride in light speeds (cast spell imp invis,cast spell silence)..
@Isandir How does an hypothesis such as the quantum multiverse in which every single happenning creates multiple universes where that fact happenned, didn't happen or had different consequences impactst the different currents in free will?
I can see an easy conclusion that by creating multiple universes free will is preserved. But I can also easily see how this could be used as proof of the nonexistence of free will as every possible decision MUST be taken.
@mlnevese: You've actually touched on one of the strands of evidence that I feel suggests that open theism is a more viable theological position than the others based on our current scientific knowledge. In respect to your question first, however, I do have a few thoughts. As a disclaimer, though I've read a great deal in this area, I am certainly not a scientist, nor an expert.
The various multiverse theories are still regarded as purely hypothetical by most in the physics community, and several of them question whether it would ever be possible to demonstrate that alternate universes exist. The few suggestions of evidence I have seen published were heavily criticized by other cosmologists and were most often purely mathematical in nature. This is not to say that I think multiple universes do not exist, nor that scientists will never be able to find proof. However, based on the current evidence, I don't see the theory as viable.
If they do exist, it's highly unlikely that they would result from the process you describe. The most likely theories of multiple universes (i.e., those with the most consistent internal mathematical structures and suggested signs of evidence) propose that alternate universes develop independently of ours. The model most physicists would use to describe them would be expanding bubbles that could crash into each other--not mini-universes sprouting from quantum events within our own. Thus, if they were proved to be true, it wouldn't necessarily impact free will for agents within this universe.
As for the relation to open theism, classical theology and physics both viewed the universe as static and immutable, governed by consistent, predictable laws. Quantum mechanics has not overturned that picture entirely as some think. (The whole idea of quantum mechanics "proving" that we create our own realities is absurd.) What is has done is demonstrate that at some level, classical physics is not sufficient to explain events, and scientists have concluded that the uncertainty that occurs at the quantum level is not due to a lack of technology or knowledge, but rather an inherent principle.
The most interesting aspects relate to wave functions. Though we can predict the possible range of a particle's location at a given time, we are unable to predict its precise location at the moment of measurement. The way I have heard it described is that all of the possibilities exist at once. When the wave function collapses, the possibilities simply cease to exist.
This obviously has interesting implications in its utility as a model to demonstrate the coherence of the nature of free will and god's omniscience as described by open theism. It validates the coherency of possessing full knowledge of an entity and being able to accurately predict the range of its behavior, but still being unable to identify the final result.
@Isandir, thank you for sharing about Greg Boyd and open theism. I am very sympathetic to that kind of compassionate theism that focuses on free will, and an idea of god responding dynamically to the choices made by free-willed entities.
My problem with it is the same problem I have with all theism. It proceeds from the axiom that god exists, and that axiom is not brought into question, because the whole system starts from god's existence as a given.
The mean old atheist, like me, *does* question the assumption that god exists, quite rigorously. And, as I have said, my conclusion after extensive study and experience is that there is no such thing as "god". It really looks to me like human beings are making the whole thing up, in order to avoid, on the one hand, facing up to suffering and death, and on the other hand, dealing with existential loneliness by creating an imaginary friend who understands, and experiences life with you more intimately than is possible with another limited human being, and connects you to a joyful transcendent awareness and feeling of connection with eternity.
(Incidentally, I've read the neurobiological studies where a brain surgeon can give you a "joyful transcendent awareness and feeling of connection with eternity" by stimulating a certain area on the surface of your brain with a small electrical impulse.)
It's a pretty fantasy, and it strikes us to the core of our emotional selves, wanting it to be true. It's so compelling and seductive to believe that there's a God who cares about individual humans, every one of us, is in control, understands us intimately and completely, has a good purpose in mind for all the trials and suffering we go through, and guarantees us eternal life. How wonderful.
But it really looks to me like it *is* a fantasy, and one that winds up doing more harm than good for humanity, when the tally of the consequences for "belief" in this fantasy is totaled, over all of history.
@Isandir Particularly I believe the multiple universe hypothesis is the best explanation for a series of physical phenoma, from strange gravitational behavior of very large mass concentrations to the behavior of some particles, but I do not believe in the quantum derivation theory where every possible result would generate a new universe. It would result in an infinite number of universes and if gravity can go through the branas as is believed now, that would probably be enough to crush all universes.
If I understood your last paragraph, you're proposing that god could see all the wave function probability at once without knowing in which state the collapse will happen. doesn't it deny omniscience?
@mlnevese do you believe the infinite universes are inside a "bigger" and "different" multiverse? Or it must comes to many different and infinite universes without a unique multiverse?
On a related topic discussed in the last page; I think that belief is something very strong, if you belief in something you "make it real" to say it in some way, if you force yourself to believe in something, there comes a point where you can't tell the difference between your beliefs and reality, this often leads (and is caused by it too only sometimes) madness, because, if you believe in others more than you, you'll loose trust in those others, because they are discussing something that is real for you, but only for you, they are trying to deny the existence of an illusion of your own mind, this can be made by your own will or randomly generated if you don't control over your ideas and beliefs.
@CrevsDaak the most accepted physics studies indicate that all universes would exist inside self-contained infinite branas moving inside a "larger" infinity that MAY be 12 dimensional in nature. There is no proof of anything, though.
@mlnevese: While I think quantum mechanics provides a useful parallel as to how free will could work, I don't think it's the basis for our choices. If it were, however, or if free will did function in almost exactly the same way, the critical point was this: "the uncertainty that occurs at the quantum level is not due to a lack of technology or knowledge, but rather an inherent principle." The reason scientists are unable to predict the location of the particle has nothing to do with a lack of knowledge. It simply doesn't exist; only the possibilities within the wave function exist.
Moving this to a different analogy, traditional views of god suggest that he is omniscient in the sense of knowing what did occur, what is occurring and what will occur. However, the assumption built into that belief is that his knowledge is based on a reality that looks like a single set timeline. The question open theists ask is "What if reality doesn't look like that?"
Traditional theism thus sees reality as a novel, with god as the author. We are the characters in the pages, knowing all that happened before, but not knowing what comes next. But what comes next is in fact already written by god. Open theism contrastingly views reality as a "choose your own adventure" book. God is still the author and he still knows reality in its entirety. It's simply a different kind of reality in which the characters in the book have genuinely open choices.
The most common objection to this is that the book/reality is constrained by time, but god exists outside of time. Suffice to say, as in the case of many other misunderstandings, I would argue this is based on poorly interpreted Hebraic and Greek terms, philosophical principles and assumptions. As it's theology-heavy and long, I put the following few paragraphs from one of my essays into a spoiler.
Geisler believes that if one argues, whether from a deterministic or libertarian standpoint, that God’s knowledge possesses any trace of sequential understanding, the Christian conception of God falls to pieces:
"Finally, the whole idea of there being a chronological or even logical sequence in God’s thoughts is highly problematic for evangelical theology. It runs contrary to the traditional doctrine of God’s simplicity (absolute indivisibility) held by Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas and bequeathed to modern evangelicals through the Reformers. As Augustine put it, ‘Neither does His attention pass from thought to thought, for His knowledge embraces everything in a single spiritual continuition.’ If God is simple, then his thoughts are not sequential but simultaneous. He does not know things inferentially but intuitively. If God is not simple, then he would have to think in temporal succession. And, if God is temporal then he is also spatial. Indeed, such a God would even be material (which is contrary to Scripture, e.g., Jn 4:24). And if God is limited to the space-time world then he could think no faster than the speed of light. Thus he would not even be able to know the whole universe at a given moment, to say nothing of having an infallible knowledge of the future. Furthermore, if God is so limited, then he is subject to disorder and to entropy (that is, running out of usable energy). "
Clearly, in Geisler’s mind omniscience must be grounded in conjunction with God’s simplicity, immutability and timelessness. It is quite apparent, however, that the majority of theists today do in fact consider these conclusions to be highly questionable and unbiblical; Geisler is in the minority in holding to such an extreme view of eternality.
Addressing the timelessness of God, a critical issue in relation to foreknowledge, many theologians ask, “Why think that God exists timelessly? God’s atemporality could be successfully deduced from his simplicity and immutability, for if God is absolutely simple, he stands in no relations whatsoever—including temporal relations of earlier than/later than—and if God is absolutely immutable, then he cannot change in any way.” Certainly such a conclusion appears to fit Geisler’s own conclusion, “But . . . these extra biblical doctrines are highly controversial and now widely rejected, so that one needs to look for other grounds of one’s doctrine of divine eternity.” This theology dominated through a great deal of church history, but by no measure does the prevailing view of the past conclusively provide truth, particularly when it’s quite evident that its theological claims derive largely from extrabiblical sources.
Kung again points out that the base for these doctrines—Aquinas’s theology—formed the definitive synthesis of Augustinian/neo-Platonic and Aristotilean thought. Following the rediscovery of Plato and Aristotle during the Middle Ages, theologians again embraced the chance to adapt those philosophies to their Christian heritage—a heritage already influenced by Platonic thought through Augustine. Aquinas became the principal advocate of the view that God possessed a simple, immutable nature, unaffected by the physical world, and that he existed in a timeless state. Such speculations, however, are almost certainly Greek in origin:
"Divine simplicity is a doctrine inspired by the neo-Platonic vision of the ultimate metaphysical reality as the absolute One. It holds that God, as the metaphysical ultimate, is an undifferentiated unity, that there is no complexity in his nature or being. As such, this is a radical doctrine that enjoys no biblical support and even is at odds with the biblical conception of God in various ways . . . For Aristotle, God was the Unmoved Mover, the unchanging source of all change. God’s immutability is also attested in Scripture (Mal 3:6; Jas 1:17). But the biblical authors did not have in mind the radical changelessness contemplated by Aristotle nor the immutability required by the doctrines of essential timelessness or simplicity. They were speaking primarily of God’s unchanging character and fidelity."
The criticisms within this passage bring us to another point: what did the biblical authors have in mind when they wrote of God’s attributes? The passages that speak directly of God’s immutability from the above quotation—Malachi 3:6 and James 1:17—do little to support a view that suggests God is literally changeless in every sense. The former claims that he does not change, but within the context of the passage, it refers to his remaining faithful to the covenant with Israel. Furthermore, the Hebrew term used here--shânâh--most often refers to a sense of repetition, or doing something multiple times. James writes that there is no parallage in the Lord, which literally states that the Lord is not fickle. By no means does either of these passages demonstrate the divine immutability as conceived by Aquinas or Geisler.
Contrastingly, the eternality of God appears in a large number of verses, both in the Old and New Testaments. Deuteronomy speaks of the “eternal God” as a refuge, using the term qêdmâh. This usage often indicates direction or a directional sense in other verses, and here appears to indicate God’s lasting through all time. Many other verses such as Genesis 21:33 refer to God as everlasting—ôwlâm (or ôlâm)—words that carry a similar literal meaning: perpetual or unending time. The Greek terms used in the New Testament, aion and its derivative aionios, tend to possess the same meaning as the Hebraic terms in most cases. Timelessness appears equally unlikely in the Greek usage, however, as the same term to describe God as everlasting in Romans 16:26 is continually used to describe believers attaining that same eternal life through Christ.
To further understand the sense in which these terms were used, we must examine the culture from which they arose. Jewish society was by nature fully grounded in history, and it was within history that God directly interacted—it was the “primary locus” of God’s revelation. Not only did the Jewish people believe God to be in time and interacting with history, but he specifically guided their lives—not in a absent, determinative sense—but rather by descending to the earth and actively taking part in historical events. The Jews believed that God had purposefully established a covenant in which he guided their collective path, and they in turn received his love and protection: “The significant thing about all this is that existence is conceived as a dynamic turning of God to his creation and as his free entering into relations of mutuality and permanence…perhaps even to the extent of permitting them almost to frustrate his purpose.”
This intimacy felt by the writers of the Old Testament cannot be overemphasized: “Again and again in the Pentateuch, the psalms, the prophets, and the subsequent writings which derive from them, the claim is made that the creator of the entire universe has chosen to live uniquely on a small ridge called Mount Zion, near the eastern edge of the Judean hill-country.” To say that God did not understand the “sequence” of Israel’s history, or that he did not share the joys and grief of his chosen people, would from their standpoint be tantamount to denying that he was the same God at all. Everything within their belief system, including God’s understanding of their lives, was grounded in time, from his interaction and commandments to life, death and resurrection. Indeed, as resurrection—the restoration of humanity to this intended state—was conceived of as death’s reversal rather than a transcendence of the eternal soul over the body, such a concept becomes difficult to adhere with a concept of timelessness. In the Jewish mindset, eternity was life uninterrupted by death—not an existence outside of time.
Further support for this can be found among the Old Testament apocrypha, most particularly in the Wisdom of Solomon 2:23, which claims that “God created man for incorruption and made him in the image of his own eternity.” If in fact eternity was conceived of as timelessness prior even to the influence of Greek philosophy, how does one explain that man was made in the image of that eternity? It seems far more likely that if man were made in the image of God’s eternity, the concept, though transcending our conception of time, nevertheless implied some form of time, whether it is that of this universe or another model. One argument points to the dilation of time, explaining the manner in which God perceives it in 2 Peter 3:8: “a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day.” In such a view, “Eternity is not merely the negation of time. It is not in any way timeless. On the contrary, as the source of time it is supreme and absolute time, i.e., the immediate unity of past, present and future.”
The most compelling point rests in the person of Christ himself. As Kung argues, Christianity “does not mean some eternal idea (whether of ‘justice’ or ‘love’), some dogma (however solemn), some world-view (even the best), but rather this all-determining significance of a concrete human figure, Jesus the Christ.” Christian theology must be grounded first and foremost in the person of Christ. But how does one reconcile the traditional understanding of Christ with a timeless God? For as the Chalcedonian definition of Jesus’ identity states, “We all with one voice confess our Lord Jesus Christ to be one and the same Son, perfect in divinity and humanity, truly God and truly human…” Yet if Christ, who was one with the Father, was born in time, he most certainly experienced time as a human being; how does one reconcile this with God necessarily existing in an eternally timeless state as Geisler believes? To deny or separate Christ’s divine nature from his human nature treads dangerously close to Docetism and other early heresies.
Further difficulties arise in light of his life and death. Again, unless one has resolved to segregate Christ’s divinity from his humanity, it becomes enormously difficult to explain how the perfect God could not only have taken human flesh, but how he could experience human emotions, suffering and ultimately, death itself. Most importantly, Christ’s resurrection—his existence as the fully risen Lord—did not restore him to an omnipresent, immutable location outside of time. His eternality was in the form of eternal life—the breaking of death; it “involved not the corruption of his physical body in the tomb (and his elevation to some non-physical sphere of dignity or Lordship), but its incorruption.” One cannot argue that Christ’s resurrection and ascension, as conceived in Jewish terms, implies a transcendence of time without utterly contradicting our knowledge of early Jewish Christian beliefs.
Finally, Macnish claims that “the Bible appears to give little direct evidence one way or the other as to whether God is in time or outside it,” and thus the issue must be deliberated through philosophical means. He is indeed correct in pointing to the lack of direct evidence, and it may be agreed that philosophy and science may provide a clearer understanding of the nature of time. However, it’s also quite evident that some precedent exists for granting that in the traditional Jewish context, the concept of eternality, even if pointing to a God that stood outside of time, radically contradicts the idea that he does not understand the chronological course of history or that he remains unaffected by its events, yet these are precisely the claims that must be supported to endorse Geisler’s theology. Ultimately, timelessness “may serve as a good explanation of the existence of the world, [but] it creates a real problem for God’s relation to history. If God is immutable, that is, if he cannot change in any way at all, how can he interact with free persons and be affected by them as the Bible says?”
As conceived, Geisler’s view neither conforms to the original meaning of biblical terms, nor does it consider the cultural milieu from which these terms arose. This is not to suggest that any of the positions that disagree with the view—including open theism—deny that God existed before time, without beginning. What it does suggest is that God, even in the unlikelihood that he does stand outside time after creation, nevertheless understands the order of history, even if simply by virtue of his understanding of the human perspective. One cannot argue that his perception of events remains timeless without undermining the original Hebrew and Greek text in lieu of the cultural beliefs of Judaism and early Christianity, as well as the more general Jewish and early Christian affirmations of God’s emotional ties to his creation. We may thus reject Geisler’s proposed solution of uniting God’s exhaustive determination of reality with the self-determination of agents.
In respect to the more philosophical side of it, I believe timelessness would fail as an explanation regardless (this was again drawn from the same essay I wrote):
Geisler attempts to introduce his solution of timelessness, yet this fails as well, for the difficulty lies not in accounting for the compatibility of God’s foreknowledge and libertarianism, but rather the compatibility of a settled future and libertarianism. For the future is part of a created reality and is thus temporal, as are the agents that exist within it. God may be timeless, yet it accordingly makes little difference, for agents exist within a temporal state. Thus, within that temporal state, x precedes not only the agent’s choice but also the agent’s very existence. To claim that agents determine their own future actions entails backwards causation, leaving only the option of claiming that the definiteness of future actions is simply uncaused.
The difficulty of this issue rests in the failure to distinguish between the nature of God’s knowledge and human knowledge: “God’s omniscience also grows out of his omnipotence. God is not all-knowing simply because He has applied His superior intellect to a sober study of the universe and all its contents. Rather, God knows all because He created all and He has willed all.” (emphasis added) If God possesses EDF, it is not because he has foreknown what other agents have determined; it is because he himself has determined reality in that manner. It is precisely for this reason that Calvinism and open theism agree over and against the other views in stating that God’s EDF necessarily entails God’s omnidetermination of reality.
@BelgarathMH: I can understand that perspective, and several of my friends have reached that same conclusion. I personally would probably share it as well if I approached the topic by looking at purported arguments for the existence of an omnipotent, omniscient god. I just don't think we would ever be able to prove that through conclusive evidence, and the arguments that were most dominant for centuries have depicted an image of god that has significant issues. (As I said, I like that area more because I find it interesting.) I approach it differently through a historical approach and base it in a historical person, but going into that subject typically just leads to many hot-headed debates and is off-topic here, so I'd rather not go into it.
When you were studying for your degree, was there a particular event or text that made you decide to give it up, or was it several lines of thought just building up over time?
Not gonna lie... the discussion between @Isandir@mlnevese and @BelgarathMTH has advanced to a level beyond my current Wisdom, Lore and/or Intelligence stats. I only studied philosophy for 1/3 of my degree, and some of the above has left me buffle-headed.
I will probably come back every now and then and try to digest the above information in smaller chunks when I am feeling a bit sharper, but I don't have a 'qualified response' as in the case of political debates.
@Isandir, I arrived at atheism over a lifetime of experience and thought, through both formal study and personal family, religious, and self history. Explaining my story in detail would be a very long post, and very personal, as well as off-topic for the thread. So I think I'll just leave it at the simple statement that I'm an atheist, for now. For purposes of the thread question about "Do you Believe?", my basic answer is "No, I'm sorry, I don't."
I've very much enjoyed reading all the posts in this topic, though. We have a lot of thoughtful and well-educated people around here.
I belive in life and death because both are certain and those two are probably the most scariest things we ever encounter,i think the time between those two are part of some kind of learning,evolving,growing thing.All my life I've been searching for something i didn't understand and when i found it i was far from ready to engage it.What i don't believe in is fairytales and lottery.
@BelgarathMTH: I also think it's a testament to the friendliness of this forum that there was absolutely no negativity in this discussion despite how inflammatory it can often be for people. Until joining here (which seems much longer than has been), I had never regularly contributed to any forum. The dialogue I have with all of you keeps drawing me back, so thanks to all of you for that.
Also, @God, are you ready to reveal part of what you had been hoping to find as a result of the experiment yet? We got slightly sidetracked in the discussion, but it seemed to stay at least somewhat related to the topic of knowledge and belief for the most part.
I'm pretty similar to @Isandir in my knowledge and belief as far as religion goes, but he knows even more than me so umm. Yeah I got nothing to post LOL, props @Isandir you've gained massive respect from me today
As far as where I stand, I wouldn't call what I do "believing" as such. I accept certain things as true (such as that a sturdy chair will be able to hold me up if I sit in it. The less sturdy the chair, the less inclined I will be to actually take a seat.). When it comes to questions about a deity, it's possible that something like that exists somewhere. But of all the entities posed to be put in such a position (Christian God, Muslim God, Deist God, Hindu Gods, Flying Spaghetti Monster, Invisible Pink Unicorn), I have yet to find one that is logically consistent or believable consistent with the attributes they are claimed to have. The one that probably comes closest to being believable is the Deist God who created everything and then promptly abandoned his creation, never looking back nor answering prayers nor giving a tinker's damn about his creation(s). I have a hard time believing any God large and powerful enough to create the universe would care about being worshipped by beings that are about on the level of the bacteria that inhabit the human body to him/her/it. I have a hard time believing that any Deity so powerful and so loving (ad many claim about their deity of choice) would also be as demanding as a selfish two year old child when it came to being loved and worshipped. That a deity would give it's creations "free will". yet punish them eternally for the crime of not using that free will to love and worship him/her/it. In fact, that whole scenario sort of smacks of the criminal plot of "Lovely eternal life you have here… would be a pity if something were to happen to it because you didn't choose to love and worship me!"
::Sigh.:: When I was a child, I was a devout and fervent believer. But to paraphrase a certain religion's holy book, when I became an adult, I left those childish (to me) things behind. I hate no religion, but I do feel irritation at certain believers who exhort me to believe in their pet belief near-constantly. I have friends of many different sorts of beliefs, just don't proselytize me because I find people who exhort me without fail and constantly tell me I will end in some bad place when I die are irritating to be around and annoying to everyone. At one point, I had been told by 37 different people that they would be "praying for me', apparently in the belief that this would somehow turn me Christian. Still a non-believer. (And a non-Belieber as well. )
@Isandir Particularly I believe the multiple universe hypothesis is the best explanation for a series of physical phenoma, from strange gravitational behavior of very large mass concentrations to the behavior of some particles, but I do not believe in the quantum derivation theory where every possible result would generate a new universe. It would result in an infinite number of universes and if gravity can go through the branas as is believed now, that would probably be enough to crush all universes.
If I understood your last paragraph, you're proposing that god could see all the wave function probability at once without knowing in which state the collapse will happen. doesn't it deny omniscience?
I've been thinking about @Isandir's post and I have to say it did not change my belief that the existence of a deity adds too much complexity to the equation of existence. It's a much simpler explanation, in my opinion, that the entire Universe was created out of a random quantum fluctuation than that somehow an omnipotent and omniscient being just appeared out of nowhere and willed everything to exist.
I could almost agree with @LadyRhian's ideas but the existence of a deity in itself is, in my opinion, unlikely.
@BelgarathMTH: I also think it's a testament to the friendliness of this forum that there was absolutely no negativity in this discussion despite how inflammatory it can often be for people. Until joining here (which seems much longer than has been), I had never regularly contributed to any forum. The dialogue I have with all of you keeps drawing me back, so thanks to all of you for that.
This is so true.I used to think the internet was the place where angry people go to disagree with eachother, but this forum is proving me wrong. On such a touchy issue as well. I think it reflects well not only on the people here, but also the moderators, who quickly strike down any rabble-rousers. Even when one seeps through the cracks, they are usually ostracized. Good stuff!
I love these kind of educated conversations and debates.
On a personal level, I have a strong, keen interest in evolutionary biology from my bio-archaeology years. I am also a keen follower of modern theoretical physics so I've been following the conversation between @mlnevese & @Isandir with interest.
I guess you could technically call me an agnostic, simply because I do not think anything can be proven 100% correct or 100% false. I think we only know things that there is tried and tested evidence for and I stick by that.
Everything else is anecdotal, or not falsifiable and thus in any other context would be nonsensical.
I have no issues with religious people as a whole - in fact, I think many are kind hearted and genuine people. I just don't think you need to have a deity to be like that.
I was born into the Anglican church and christened when I was a kid (my families not religious, so I am not to sure why I was christened). I was heavily exposed to both sides of the debate as a child and a decided to weigh the evidence up myself. It just didn't add up to me so I abandoned it entirely.
Actually, in the words of Richard Dawkins: "On a scale of one to ten, I'm 9/10th atheist and 1/10th agnostic", simply because I do not see any evidence at all that leads me to a creator figure.
Also, @God, are you ready to reveal part of what you had been hoping to find as a result of the experiment yet? We got slightly sidetracked in the discussion, but it seemed to stay at least somewhat related to the topic of knowledge and belief for the most part.
Indeed, is it I who hopes to find something here? Am I to find whether I believe? This is not the case As the more perceptive probably noticed by now, I'm not a good experimentator. The experimenters are, in fact, all of you. And the result of the experiment, an ongoing respectful (though somewhat richer in depth than in breadth) discourse on the ideals of faith and belief, is certainly not a sidetracking issue but a natural development. I believe it will prove beneficial for all of you, indirectly if not directly.
Should one be surprised by my lack of reference to the survey, let me remind that I explicitly stated it will not be used in any kind of research. The poll was constructed for your enjoyment entirely, and structured so that it could not only be answered, examined and interpreted but also extensively questioned. It served its primary purpose, which was to 'break the ice' and encourage the development of a discussion, but accomplished even more than that. I came to know it helped some of you to discover new things about yourselves and I am contented with such turn of events.
My work here is done, but you should definitely carry on experimenting. Let this thread be a rock upon which you will strive to build mutual understanding between yourselves.
I love God. Who doesn't exist. I think I love @God, too, who obviously *does* exist.
He keeps amazing me by how well he (He?) "plays God".
Of course I know that @God is some human being somewhere, amusing himself by "playing God" on his computer. My little dog shows me that. ("Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!")
But, damn, that dude "plays God" better than anybody I've ever seen trying to do it.
It's probably just that he plays so well as *my* God. I'd be quite interested to see how he plays to someone who challenges him from some other perspective than mine.
Although, he (He?) doesn't deign to directly engage mortal concerns very often.
I've read the objections by @Bob_Veng and @Isandir, trying to engage @God in a philosophical defense of his (His?) whimsical musings and play.
True to character, for both God as I understand God, (who doesn't exist, unfortunately), and @God as I understand @God, (who demonstrably *does* exist), he (He?) refuses to engage on the intellectual level.
So, I don't know if @God will ever choose to engage with us, here on the BG forums, as a human being. (Didn't "He" already try that once and get crucified for "His" trouble?)
But, to "the man behind the curtain", I continue to be amazed, and to give my superlatively heartfelt approval.
Of course, He doesn't care about that. Why would He need *my* approval? He doesn't need anything. We all exist merely for His amusement, anyway. Maybe that's the meaning of life? To amuse the God who doesn't exist, because life is meaningless.
To anyone who is reading this and wondering if I've gone mad, I am engaging in something called "paradox". There are numerous mystical philosophies that can open one's mind to this kind of thinking, both Eastern and Western. The main Western Christian "mystic" who started thinking this way was Nicholas of Cusa. You could start there if you're interested in following up or understanding my "crazy" lines of thought on relating to @God.
Also, see "Neale Walsch", "Conversations With God."
"I consciously use belief at will to achieve my own gains"...
This is the closest to the marriage of "intuition" and "authority". I rely *very* much to my own intuition, but NEVER *too* much. I respect and accept authority, but NEVER without crossing the validity of its claims, that's if i can somehow get to this... I also like to experiment myself and sorting out information. But i also know that i know very few things, that my knowledge is limited, my perception can be flawed, and that i can err with ease. That's why i keep an open mind, open eyes, open ears, and reject nothing without examining it from most, if not all its angles, beforehand...
"I consciously use belief at will to achieve my own gains"...
This is the closest to the marriage of "intuition" and "authority". I rely *very* much to my own intuition, but NEVER *too* much. I respect and accept authority, but NEVER without crossing the validity of its claims, that's if i can somehow get to this... I also like to experiment myself and sorting out information. But i also know that i know very few things, that my knowledge is limited, my perception can be flawed, and that i can err with ease. That's why i keep an open mind, open eyes, open ears, and reject nothing without examining it from most, if not all its angles, beforehand...
That's wise, all the things get bad when you go over their limit. ALL THE THINGS, no exceptions.
Comments
I can see an easy conclusion that by creating multiple universes free will is preserved. But I can also easily see how this could be used as proof of the nonexistence of free will as every possible decision MUST be taken.
The various multiverse theories are still regarded as purely hypothetical by most in the physics community, and several of them question whether it would ever be possible to demonstrate that alternate universes exist. The few suggestions of evidence I have seen published were heavily criticized by other cosmologists and were most often purely mathematical in nature. This is not to say that I think multiple universes do not exist, nor that scientists will never be able to find proof. However, based on the current evidence, I don't see the theory as viable.
If they do exist, it's highly unlikely that they would result from the process you describe. The most likely theories of multiple universes (i.e., those with the most consistent internal mathematical structures and suggested signs of evidence) propose that alternate universes develop independently of ours. The model most physicists would use to describe them would be expanding bubbles that could crash into each other--not mini-universes sprouting from quantum events within our own. Thus, if they were proved to be true, it wouldn't necessarily impact free will for agents within this universe.
As for the relation to open theism, classical theology and physics both viewed the universe as static and immutable, governed by consistent, predictable laws. Quantum mechanics has not overturned that picture entirely as some think. (The whole idea of quantum mechanics "proving" that we create our own realities is absurd.) What is has done is demonstrate that at some level, classical physics is not sufficient to explain events, and scientists have concluded that the uncertainty that occurs at the quantum level is not due to a lack of technology or knowledge, but rather an inherent principle.
The most interesting aspects relate to wave functions. Though we can predict the possible range of a particle's location at a given time, we are unable to predict its precise location at the moment of measurement. The way I have heard it described is that all of the possibilities exist at once. When the wave function collapses, the possibilities simply cease to exist.
This obviously has interesting implications in its utility as a model to demonstrate the coherence of the nature of free will and god's omniscience as described by open theism. It validates the coherency of possessing full knowledge of an entity and being able to accurately predict the range of its behavior, but still being unable to identify the final result.
My problem with it is the same problem I have with all theism. It proceeds from the axiom that god exists, and that axiom is not brought into question, because the whole system starts from god's existence as a given.
The mean old atheist, like me, *does* question the assumption that god exists, quite rigorously. And, as I have said, my conclusion after extensive study and experience is that there is no such thing as "god". It really looks to me like human beings are making the whole thing up, in order to avoid, on the one hand, facing up to suffering and death, and on the other hand, dealing with existential loneliness by creating an imaginary friend who understands, and experiences life with you more intimately than is possible with another limited human being, and connects you to a joyful transcendent awareness and feeling of connection with eternity.
(Incidentally, I've read the neurobiological studies where a brain surgeon can give you a "joyful transcendent awareness and feeling of connection with eternity" by stimulating a certain area on the surface of your brain with a small electrical impulse.)
It's a pretty fantasy, and it strikes us to the core of our emotional selves, wanting it to be true. It's so compelling and seductive to believe that there's a God who cares about individual humans, every one of us, is in control, understands us intimately and completely, has a good purpose in mind for all the trials and suffering we go through, and guarantees us eternal life. How wonderful.
But it really looks to me like it *is* a fantasy, and one that winds up doing more harm than good for humanity, when the tally of the consequences for "belief" in this fantasy is totaled, over all of history.
If I understood your last paragraph, you're proposing that god could see all the wave function probability at once without knowing in which state the collapse will happen. doesn't it deny omniscience?
On a related topic discussed in the last page;
I think that belief is something very strong, if you belief in something you "make it real" to say it in some way, if you force yourself to believe in something, there comes a point where you can't tell the difference between your beliefs and reality, this often leads (and is caused by it too only sometimes) madness, because, if you believe in others more than you, you'll loose trust in those others, because they are discussing something that is real for you, but only for you, they are trying to deny the existence of an illusion of your own mind, this can be made by your own will or randomly generated if you don't control over your ideas and beliefs.
Moving this to a different analogy, traditional views of god suggest that he is omniscient in the sense of knowing what did occur, what is occurring and what will occur. However, the assumption built into that belief is that his knowledge is based on a reality that looks like a single set timeline. The question open theists ask is "What if reality doesn't look like that?"
Traditional theism thus sees reality as a novel, with god as the author. We are the characters in the pages, knowing all that happened before, but not knowing what comes next. But what comes next is in fact already written by god. Open theism contrastingly views reality as a "choose your own adventure" book. God is still the author and he still knows reality in its entirety. It's simply a different kind of reality in which the characters in the book have genuinely open choices.
The most common objection to this is that the book/reality is constrained by time, but god exists outside of time. Suffice to say, as in the case of many other misunderstandings, I would argue this is based on poorly interpreted Hebraic and Greek terms, philosophical principles and assumptions. As it's theology-heavy and long, I put the following few paragraphs from one of my essays into a spoiler.
"Finally, the whole idea of there being a chronological or even logical sequence in God’s thoughts is highly problematic for evangelical theology. It runs contrary to the traditional doctrine of God’s simplicity (absolute indivisibility) held by Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas and bequeathed to modern evangelicals through the Reformers. As Augustine put it, ‘Neither does His attention pass from thought to thought, for His knowledge embraces everything in a single spiritual continuition.’ If God is simple, then his thoughts are not sequential but simultaneous. He does not know things inferentially but intuitively. If God is not simple, then he would have to think in temporal succession. And, if God is temporal then he is also spatial. Indeed, such a God would even be material (which is contrary to Scripture, e.g., Jn 4:24). And if God is limited to the space-time world then he could think no faster than the speed of light. Thus he would not even be able to know the whole universe at a given moment, to say nothing of having an infallible knowledge of the future. Furthermore, if God is so limited, then he is subject to disorder and to entropy (that is, running out of usable energy). "
Clearly, in Geisler’s mind omniscience must be grounded in conjunction with God’s simplicity, immutability and timelessness. It is quite apparent, however, that the majority of theists today do in fact consider these conclusions to be highly questionable and unbiblical; Geisler is in the minority in holding to such an extreme view of eternality.
Addressing the timelessness of God, a critical issue in relation to foreknowledge, many theologians ask, “Why think that God exists timelessly? God’s atemporality could be successfully deduced from his simplicity and immutability, for if God is absolutely simple, he stands in no relations whatsoever—including temporal relations of earlier than/later than—and if God is absolutely immutable, then he cannot change in any way.” Certainly such a conclusion appears to fit Geisler’s own conclusion, “But . . . these extra biblical doctrines are highly controversial and now widely rejected, so that one needs to look for other grounds of one’s doctrine of divine eternity.” This theology dominated through a great deal of church history, but by no measure does the prevailing view of the past conclusively provide truth, particularly when it’s quite evident that its theological claims derive largely from extrabiblical sources.
Kung again points out that the base for these doctrines—Aquinas’s theology—formed the definitive synthesis of Augustinian/neo-Platonic and Aristotilean thought. Following the rediscovery of Plato and Aristotle during the Middle Ages, theologians again embraced the chance to adapt those philosophies to their Christian heritage—a heritage already influenced by Platonic thought through Augustine. Aquinas became the principal advocate of the view that God possessed a simple, immutable nature, unaffected by the physical world, and that he existed in a timeless state. Such speculations, however, are almost certainly Greek in origin:
"Divine simplicity is a doctrine inspired by the neo-Platonic vision of the ultimate metaphysical reality as the absolute One. It holds that God, as the metaphysical ultimate, is an undifferentiated unity, that there is no complexity in his nature or being. As such, this is a radical doctrine that enjoys no biblical support and even is at odds with the biblical conception of God in various ways . . . For Aristotle, God was the Unmoved Mover, the unchanging source of all change. God’s immutability is also attested in Scripture (Mal 3:6; Jas 1:17). But the biblical authors did not have in mind the radical changelessness contemplated by Aristotle nor the immutability required by the doctrines of essential timelessness or simplicity. They were speaking primarily of God’s unchanging character and fidelity."
The criticisms within this passage bring us to another point: what did the biblical authors have in mind when they wrote of God’s attributes? The passages that speak directly of God’s immutability from the above quotation—Malachi 3:6 and James 1:17—do little to support a view that suggests God is literally changeless in every sense. The former claims that he does not change, but within the context of the passage, it refers to his remaining faithful to the covenant with Israel. Furthermore, the Hebrew term used here--shânâh--most often refers to a sense of repetition, or doing something multiple times. James writes that there is no parallage in the Lord, which literally states that the Lord is not fickle. By no means does either of these passages demonstrate the divine immutability as conceived by Aquinas or Geisler.
Contrastingly, the eternality of God appears in a large number of verses, both in the Old and New Testaments. Deuteronomy speaks of the “eternal God” as a refuge, using the term qêdmâh. This usage often indicates direction or a directional sense in other verses, and here appears to indicate God’s lasting through all time. Many other verses such as Genesis 21:33 refer to God as everlasting—ôwlâm (or ôlâm)—words that carry a similar literal meaning: perpetual or unending time. The Greek terms used in the New Testament, aion and its derivative aionios, tend to possess the same meaning as the Hebraic terms in most cases. Timelessness appears equally unlikely in the Greek usage, however, as the same term to describe God as everlasting in Romans 16:26 is continually used to describe believers attaining that same eternal life through Christ.
To further understand the sense in which these terms were used, we must examine the culture from which they arose. Jewish society was by nature fully grounded in history, and it was within history that God directly interacted—it was the “primary locus” of God’s revelation. Not only did the Jewish people believe God to be in time and interacting with history, but he specifically guided their lives—not in a absent, determinative sense—but rather by descending to the earth and actively taking part in historical events. The Jews believed that God had purposefully established a covenant in which he guided their collective path, and they in turn received his love and protection: “The significant thing about all this is that existence is conceived as a dynamic turning of God to his creation and as his free entering into relations of mutuality and permanence…perhaps even to the extent of permitting them almost to frustrate his purpose.”
This intimacy felt by the writers of the Old Testament cannot be overemphasized: “Again and again in the Pentateuch, the psalms, the prophets, and the subsequent writings which derive from them, the claim is made that the creator of the entire universe has chosen to live uniquely on a small ridge called Mount Zion, near the eastern edge of the Judean hill-country.” To say that God did not understand the “sequence” of Israel’s history, or that he did not share the joys and grief of his chosen people, would from their standpoint be tantamount to denying that he was the same God at all. Everything within their belief system, including God’s understanding of their lives, was grounded in time, from his interaction and commandments to life, death and resurrection. Indeed, as resurrection—the restoration of humanity to this intended state—was conceived of as death’s reversal rather than a transcendence of the eternal soul over the body, such a concept becomes difficult to adhere with a concept of timelessness. In the Jewish mindset, eternity was life uninterrupted by death—not an existence outside of time.
Further support for this can be found among the Old Testament apocrypha, most particularly in the Wisdom of Solomon 2:23, which claims that “God created man for incorruption and made him in the image of his own eternity.” If in fact eternity was conceived of as timelessness prior even to the influence of Greek philosophy, how does one explain that man was made in the image of that eternity? It seems far more likely that if man were made in the image of God’s eternity, the concept, though transcending our conception of time, nevertheless implied some form of time, whether it is that of this universe or another model. One argument points to the dilation of time, explaining the manner in which God perceives it in 2 Peter 3:8: “a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years is like a day.” In such a view, “Eternity is not merely the negation of time. It is not in any way timeless. On the contrary, as the source of time it is supreme and absolute time, i.e., the immediate unity of past, present and future.”
The most compelling point rests in the person of Christ himself. As Kung argues, Christianity “does not mean some eternal idea (whether of ‘justice’ or ‘love’), some dogma (however solemn), some world-view (even the best), but rather this all-determining significance of a concrete human figure, Jesus the Christ.” Christian theology must be grounded first and foremost in the person of Christ. But how does one reconcile the traditional understanding of Christ with a timeless God? For as the Chalcedonian definition of Jesus’ identity states, “We all with one voice confess our Lord Jesus Christ to be one and the same Son, perfect in divinity and humanity, truly God and truly human…” Yet if Christ, who was one with the Father, was born in time, he most certainly experienced time as a human being; how does one reconcile this with God necessarily existing in an eternally timeless state as Geisler believes? To deny or separate Christ’s divine nature from his human nature treads dangerously close to Docetism and other early heresies.
Further difficulties arise in light of his life and death. Again, unless one has resolved to segregate Christ’s divinity from his humanity, it becomes enormously difficult to explain how the perfect God could not only have taken human flesh, but how he could experience human emotions, suffering and ultimately, death itself. Most importantly, Christ’s resurrection—his existence as the fully risen Lord—did not restore him to an omnipresent, immutable location outside of time. His eternality was in the form of eternal life—the breaking of death; it “involved not the corruption of his physical body in the tomb (and his elevation to some non-physical sphere of dignity or Lordship), but its incorruption.” One cannot argue that Christ’s resurrection and ascension, as conceived in Jewish terms, implies a transcendence of time without utterly contradicting our knowledge of early Jewish Christian beliefs.
Finally, Macnish claims that “the Bible appears to give little direct evidence one way or the other as to whether God is in time or outside it,” and thus the issue must be deliberated through philosophical means. He is indeed correct in pointing to the lack of direct evidence, and it may be agreed that philosophy and science may provide a clearer understanding of the nature of time. However, it’s also quite evident that some precedent exists for granting that in the traditional Jewish context, the concept of eternality, even if pointing to a God that stood outside of time, radically contradicts the idea that he does not understand the chronological course of history or that he remains unaffected by its events, yet these are precisely the claims that must be supported to endorse Geisler’s theology. Ultimately, timelessness “may serve as a good explanation of the existence of the world, [but] it creates a real problem for God’s relation to history. If God is immutable, that is, if he cannot change in any way at all, how can he interact with free persons and be affected by them as the Bible says?”
As conceived, Geisler’s view neither conforms to the original meaning of biblical terms, nor does it consider the cultural milieu from which these terms arose. This is not to suggest that any of the positions that disagree with the view—including open theism—deny that God existed before time, without beginning. What it does suggest is that God, even in the unlikelihood that he does stand outside time after creation, nevertheless understands the order of history, even if simply by virtue of his understanding of the human perspective. One cannot argue that his perception of events remains timeless without undermining the original Hebrew and Greek text in lieu of the cultural beliefs of Judaism and early Christianity, as well as the more general Jewish and early Christian affirmations of God’s emotional ties to his creation. We may thus reject Geisler’s proposed solution of uniting God’s exhaustive determination of reality with the self-determination of agents.
In respect to the more philosophical side of it, I believe timelessness would fail as an explanation regardless (this was again drawn from the same essay I wrote):
Geisler attempts to introduce his solution of timelessness, yet this fails as well, for the difficulty lies not in accounting for the compatibility of God’s foreknowledge and libertarianism, but rather the compatibility of a settled future and libertarianism. For the future is part of a created reality and is thus temporal, as are the agents that exist within it. God may be timeless, yet it accordingly makes little difference, for agents exist within a temporal state. Thus, within that temporal state, x precedes not only the agent’s choice but also the agent’s very existence. To claim that agents determine their own future actions entails backwards causation, leaving only the option of claiming that the definiteness of future actions is simply uncaused.
The difficulty of this issue rests in the failure to distinguish between the nature of God’s knowledge and human knowledge: “God’s omniscience also grows out of his omnipotence. God is not all-knowing simply because He has applied His superior intellect to a sober study of the universe and all its contents. Rather, God knows all because He created all and He has willed all.” (emphasis added) If God possesses EDF, it is not because he has foreknown what other agents have determined; it is because he himself has determined reality in that manner. It is precisely for this reason that Calvinism and open theism agree over and against the other views in stating that God’s EDF necessarily entails God’s omnidetermination of reality.
When you were studying for your degree, was there a particular event or text that made you decide to give it up, or was it several lines of thought just building up over time?
Anyway, all this discussing about believes and not believes made me think of this song here.
HEAVENS BLESS YOU AND YOUR SOUL! LOL Thanks a lot I don't know why but it made me so mad when everytime I hit "save" the link was messed up >.<
I will probably come back every now and then and try to digest the above information in smaller chunks when I am feeling a bit sharper, but I don't have a 'qualified response' as in the case of political debates.
I've very much enjoyed reading all the posts in this topic, though. We have a lot of thoughtful and well-educated people around here.
Also, @God, are you ready to reveal part of what you had been hoping to find as a result of the experiment yet? We got slightly sidetracked in the discussion, but it seemed to stay at least somewhat related to the topic of knowledge and belief for the most part.
::Sigh.:: When I was a child, I was a devout and fervent believer. But to paraphrase a certain religion's holy book, when I became an adult, I left those childish (to me) things behind. I hate no religion, but I do feel irritation at certain believers who exhort me to believe in their pet belief near-constantly. I have friends of many different sorts of beliefs, just don't proselytize me because I find people who exhort me without fail and constantly tell me I will end in some bad place when I die are irritating to be around and annoying to everyone. At one point, I had been told by 37 different people that they would be "praying for me', apparently in the belief that this would somehow turn me Christian. Still a non-believer. (And a non-Belieber as well.
I could almost agree with @LadyRhian's ideas but the existence of a deity in itself is, in my opinion, unlikely.
Everytime someone says they don't believe...
A fairy D I E S ! ! !
Now start clapping! Or tinker is not going to make it!
On a personal level, I have a strong, keen interest in evolutionary biology from my bio-archaeology years. I am also a keen follower of modern theoretical physics so I've been following the conversation between @mlnevese & @Isandir with interest.
I guess you could technically call me an agnostic, simply because I do not think anything can be proven 100% correct or 100% false. I think we only know things that there is tried and tested evidence for and I stick by that.
Everything else is anecdotal, or not falsifiable and thus in any other context would be nonsensical.
I have no issues with religious people as a whole - in fact, I think many are kind hearted and genuine people. I just don't think you need to have a deity to be like that.
I was born into the Anglican church and christened when I was a kid (my families not religious, so I am not to sure why I was christened). I was heavily exposed to both sides of the debate as a child and a decided to weigh the evidence up myself. It just didn't add up to me so I abandoned it entirely.
Actually, in the words of Richard Dawkins: "On a scale of one to ten, I'm 9/10th atheist and 1/10th agnostic", simply because I do not see any evidence at all that leads me to a creator figure.
As the more perceptive probably noticed by now, I'm not a good experimentator.
The experimenters are, in fact, all of you.
And the result of the experiment, an ongoing respectful (though somewhat richer in depth than in breadth) discourse on the ideals of faith and belief, is certainly not a sidetracking issue but a natural development. I believe it will prove beneficial for all of you, indirectly if not directly.
Should one be surprised by my lack of reference to the survey, let me remind that I explicitly stated it will not be used in any kind of research. The poll was constructed for your enjoyment entirely, and structured so that it could not only be answered, examined and interpreted but also extensively questioned. It served its primary purpose, which was to 'break the ice' and encourage the development of a discussion, but accomplished even more than that. I came to know it helped some of you to discover new things about yourselves and I am contented with such turn of events.
My work here is done, but you should definitely carry on experimenting.
Let this thread be a rock upon which you will strive to build mutual understanding between yourselves.
He keeps amazing me by how well he (He?) "plays God".
Of course I know that @God is some human being somewhere, amusing himself by "playing God" on his computer. My little dog shows me that. ("Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!")
But, damn, that dude "plays God" better than anybody I've ever seen trying to do it.
It's probably just that he plays so well as *my* God. I'd be quite interested to see how he plays to someone who challenges him from some other perspective than mine.
Although, he (He?) doesn't deign to directly engage mortal concerns very often.
I've read the objections by @Bob_Veng and @Isandir, trying to engage @God in a philosophical defense of his (His?) whimsical musings and play.
True to character, for both God as I understand God, (who doesn't exist, unfortunately), and @God as I understand @God, (who demonstrably *does* exist), he (He?) refuses to engage on the intellectual level.
So, I don't know if @God will ever choose to engage with us, here on the BG forums, as a human being. (Didn't "He" already try that once and get crucified for "His" trouble?)
But, to "the man behind the curtain", I continue to be amazed, and to give my superlatively heartfelt approval.
Of course, He doesn't care about that. Why would He need *my* approval? He doesn't need anything. We all exist merely for His amusement, anyway. Maybe that's the meaning of life? To amuse the God who doesn't exist, because life is meaningless.
To anyone who is reading this and wondering if I've gone mad, I am engaging in something called "paradox". There are numerous mystical philosophies that can open one's mind to this kind of thinking, both Eastern and Western. The main Western Christian "mystic" who started thinking this way was Nicholas of Cusa. You could start there if you're interested in following up or understanding my "crazy" lines of thought on relating to @God.
Also, see "Neale Walsch", "Conversations With God."
http://www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Rohmann/Rohmann-000000.htm
http://jasper-hopkins.info/CusaOnCoincidencePlusNotes.pdf
http://www.nealedonaldwalsch.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neale_Donald_Walsch
http://www.butler-bowdon.com/conversations-with-god
This is the closest to the marriage of "intuition" and "authority". I rely *very* much to my own intuition, but NEVER *too* much. I respect and accept authority, but NEVER without crossing the validity of its claims, that's if i can somehow get to this... I also like to experiment myself and sorting out information. But i also know that i know very few things, that my knowledge is limited, my perception can be flawed, and that i can err with ease. That's why i keep an open mind, open eyes, open ears, and reject nothing without examining it from most, if not all its angles, beforehand...
ALL THE THINGS, no exceptions.