Who- why- where are we ?

[waechter418]

"Generally, a god would be an entity that by definition excludes other gods"

Dear Conde,
this variety belongs to monotheism - pantheistic gods are usually more family oriented

[Conde Lucanor]

I did not say God cannot change the future - i stated with regards to omniscience that it is unlikely to know ALL the future. Not knowing ALL the future does not render God unable to change the future - especially when it comes to its subjects - us.

This point is something atheists like to use all the time - to state God is not omniscient if it does not know ALL of the future for me is short sighted, as you might then state this God is. But its fine then if thats precludes your definition of omniscient, then fine i'll agree - God is not omniscient! - so what??

Of course God knows at least some of the future, much like we all do. From my experience of it, it certainly knows enough of the future to put in effect its omnipotence.

So you agree your god is not omniscient. But you are inadvertently conceding also that your god is not omnipotent, since it has limitations to its knowledge derived from its impossibility to put itself in a time and space of future events. It can only have a present and a past, but the future remains uncertain for your god. Even more, it cannot determine what the future will be (otherwise it would know it) and it cannot change it. The future will be that which comes on its own and only when it becomes present tense, your god will know what has brought. That brings too a major problem for your god being infinite, because it's restricted by time and space.

Yes in general if you look at the world around us there is no obvious God changing the course of things. But to some individuals, including myself, this God certainly has affected our existence - karma is what some spiritual people call it.

You said it yourself: whatever people think a god does, it is not obvious, it's not evident. So they believe things, like karma or something affecting their existence, but that's all: a belief without evidence. If you believe the light of remote stars affects very deeply your existence, stating it so won't make it more real.

Why? If God AND myself do not know that next year i am going to kill someone and then that point in time arrives and i kill someone - that does not equal that there is NO God, it simply means that God permitted the event to take its natural course, however unpleasant.

If god does not know future events and can't control those future events, it is not omniscient, nor omnipotent. Having limited powers and knowledge makes such a being less than a god and quite imperfect.

But i assure you, from experience it certainly does have the power to prevent this killing. It does know every thought that passes through my mind - and i know this from testing and being tested by it, so i have little doubt since i am just a human, that the same applies to your mind and everyone else's.

Supposing it knows every present thought in your mind, you have made clear that it will not know your future thoughts, and even worse, your future actions. If tomorrow you will want to kill someone next week, your god will not be able to prevent it today, not even one second before the thought appears in your mind.

No there is a big difference. I have never met a priest that states they KNOW for a fact that God exists (obviously experience of it is required) - they merely believe and that belief usually comes from somewhere such as the bible and i don't merely buy bull.

Most preachers of the "born again" kind, which are a lot, usually claim that they have a "personal relationship" with their god, that they talk to him (they call it prayer, BTW), get rewards and punishments, etc.

My actual belief on the matter and one which a sage from the aether confirmed to me, is that we are born into the family, be it atheist, catholic, hindu etc..based on what God has decided is appropriate for us.

Again, that's just a belief, without any evidence to support it objectively.

Actually, it can be easily seen that the different gods of monotheism have attributes, desires, plans, etc., which cannot be reconciled among them.

And that is man's folly. It still does not change the state of God.

But it goes against your claim that all faiths believe in the same god. Your own interpretation could be a man's folly.

Good, let me know what you think of the site.

Sure, I'll get to it. Promise.

[Conde Lucanor]

"Generally, a god would be an entity that by definition excludes other gods"

Dear Conde,
this variety belongs to monotheism - pantheistic gods are usually more family oriented

That's why the sentence begins with "generally", meaning most of the time, but not always.

[attofishpi]

I did not say God cannot change the future - i stated with regards to omniscience that it is unlikely to know ALL the future. Not knowing ALL the future does not render God unable to change the future - especially when it comes to its subjects - us.

This point is something atheists like to use all the time - to state God is not omniscient if it does not know ALL of the future for me is short sighted, as you might then state this God is. But its fine then if thats precludes your definition of omniscient, then fine i'll agree - God is not omniscient! - so what??

Of course God knows at least some of the future, much like we all do. From my experience of it, it certainly knows enough of the future to put in effect its omnipotence.

So you agree your god is not omniscient.

No. I stated if knowing ALL of the future is a requirement for your definition of omniscience then i will agree it is not omniscient. My definition of all knowing is knowing everything up to the current point in time. But let me add - i dont think it is a requirement for a God to be omni anything!!

But you are inadvertently conceding also that your god is not omnipotent, since it has limitations to its knowledge derived from its impossibility to put itself in a time and space of future events.

No, you really do strain yourself with logic. An entity that does not know ALL of the future can exist in a time and space of future events.

It can only have a present and a past, but the future remains uncertain for your god.

So if 10 years in the future not ALL circumstances are currently known to God, but it does have the power to put any circumstance it likes in place as time progresses, where has it lost any omnipotence?

Even more, it cannot determine what the future will be (otherwise it would know it) and it cannot change it. The future will be that which comes on its own and only when it becomes present tense, your god will know what has brought.

How could anyone believe in an entity that knows ALL the future?? That is ridiculous but your insistance that for this entity to be a God it must, is also laughable.

Again, not knowing ALL of the future is irrelevant, since God can CAUSE an (or even ALL) future events to occur.

That brings too a major problem for your god being infinite, because it's restricted by time and space.

You made that point already and i have already refuted it above.
You have brought the words such as omnipotent and omniscient into the debate - now you want me to believe God is infinite. Friggin hell - man cannot even comprehend infinity so dont expect me to start speculating over it.

Yes in general if you look at the world around us there is no obvious God changing the course of things. But to some individuals, including myself, this God certainly has affected our existence - karma is what some spiritual people call it.

You said it yourself: whatever people think a god does, it is not obvious, it's not evident. So they believe things, like karma or something affecting their existence, but that's all: a belief without evidence. If you believe the light of remote stars affects very deeply your existence, stating it so won't make it more real.

I did not state it is not evident to ALL. Since God has made itself extremely evident to me over 20yrs, it is likely that there are plenty of others that have had the same degree of knowledge of its existence....certainly my sage has.

Why? If God AND myself do not know that next year i am going to kill someone and then that point in time arrives and i kill someone - that does not equal that there is NO God, it simply means that God permitted the event to take its natural course, however unpleasant.

If god does not know future events and can't control those future events, it is not omniscient, nor omnipotent.

You are the one making the claim that God cannot control future events - as i have already explained, not knowing ALL the future does not mean it cannot CAUSE all of the future (as to how it sees fit).
In fact since we are going over and over the same either irrational statements of yours, or your lack of comprehension i'm not going to address the rest of your post - sowwy!

We shall have to disagree that you KNOW there is no God, and i KNOW there is. The key difference to our "knowledge" is the ability to have that knowledge, and to claim to KNOW there is NO God, would require knowing everything about the universe, which i'm pretty certain you don't.

[Justintruth]

It seems that since we are aware of ourselves we have been trying to find out who, why & where we are and that many of our religions, cosmologies, philosophies and sciences developed around this quest.

The answers differ widely, see for example neurologists, Buddha, Hegel, astrophysicists, Lao Tse or Christian fundamentalists - yet each insists to have found the right answer, which is understandable, after all, it is not easy to admit that the quest has been in vain and increases our confusion.

What went wrong?

Heidegger is a good place to look. I am convinced the question you pose is the heart of philosophy. It gets very complicated and involved but the question you ask - or imply others are asking - is central.

But it is not a normal question answerable by discovering some facts. At the deepest level it is the forgetting of the question and the need to re-awaken it as an actual question that is interesting. It is hard to raise this question to the state of "actually asking" to appreciate the awareness it brings - to appreciate the meaning of being.

And that appreciating is connected in our anatomy somehow to the survival and reproductive instinctual systems. In fact it is related to love and that is not at all obvious nor demonstrable by simple argument or by argument at all that does not raise the consciousness of the question required.. But it is possible for consideration of the question to reveal these connections and put ones anatomy into the state that causes the realizations that our historically given mythologies are designed to engender.

Part of the problem is that these mythologies - those texts that define Buddhism etc are ancient, predate science, and frequently lead to literal interpretations by us who have benefit of science. Those literal interpretations are contradictory but once one steps back to where metaphysics and physics were confused you can see the metaphysical insight they all posses and realize their historical function and extract the metaphysical insight which is extraordinary and not suspected by most.

But that is not the big problem. There is a "feature" in our biologies that "hides" the actual question and blocks the insight genuine asking reveals. Call it Maya or Forgetfulness or Original Sin or whatever. We have this "problem".

And there are questions we have trouble answering or defining. We have trouble conceiving of notions like "our destiny".

Worse there are epistemic possibilities out time ignores.

We are very fond of looking back and seeing our progress in developing science and carefully observation of nature. We see clearly the Copernican revolution and the birth of hard experimentally based science and most of us- excluding religious fundamentalists - can easily see the prograss and realize how superior science is to literal interpretations of ancient religious texts.

But few can turn over their shoulders and see the revolution that is about to come at us - to come at science not from it -- the one that attacks secular fundamentalism as rigorously as it destroys religious fundamentalism. One based on the ontological awareness of our actual situation and our mammalian heritage. Look at a puppy and compare it to an insect.

We don't know how. We are thrown into it. But we - actually - are. This is our great gift and hopefully awareness of it will mature in the culture.

Scientism - as opposed to science - has no role. Nor will science answer these questions though it will clarify how awareness plays in our biologies. As Heidegger said "Science does not think". Thinking will lead to awareness hopefully before, motivated by what we are unconscious of, we self annihilate.

I hope.

[waechter418]

Answers to the who & where appear in meditations that aim at the fusion of micro- & macrocosm (self & surrounding) - more so, when combining eastern approaches with western (scientific) methods. The question "why" then becomes superfluous.

[Hobbes' Choice]

Where ever you go; there you are.
Because things that are true, are the case.
Who you are is what you do, as to do is to be, and to be is to do; do be do be do, as Franscico Sinatra would say.

[Conde Lucanor]

No. I stated if knowing ALL of the future is a requirement for your definition of omniscience then i will agree it is not omniscient. My definition of all knowing is knowing everything up to the current point in time.

I don't believe it's "my definition" of omniscience, but a concept generally known of an almighty god's infinite knowledge. If you have a different concept of omniscience makes no difference, because what matters is whether your god has infinite knowledge or not. Infinite knowledge includes all knowledge of future events, which your god is incapable of.

But let me add - i dont think it is a requirement for a God to be omni anything!!

But you did say your god was omnipotent and likely omniscient. But in any case, if your god does not have infinite power and infinite knowledge, if that's not part of its essence of being a god, in what sense it can be a god?

But you are inadvertently conceding also that your god is not omnipotent, since it has limitations to its knowledge derived from its impossibility to put itself in a time and space of future events.

No, you really do strain yourself with logic. An entity that does not know ALL of the future can exist in a time and space of future events.

No, that was not the argument. We are supposedly talking about an infinite being that lives simultaneously in the past, present and future, because it would not be restricted to time and space dimensions. If your god has such strict limitations, it is not all powerful and certainly not all knowing.

So if 10 years in the future not ALL circumstances are currently known to God, but it does have the power to put any circumstance it likes in place as time progresses, where has it lost any omnipotence?

It lost it when it was not able to control the future. It can't prevent future circumstances, so they'll be imposed on this god when it arrives to that point in time. They're circumstances it will face and yet it will be unable to avoid them.

How could anyone believe in an entity that knows ALL the future?? That is ridiculous but your insistance that for this entity to be a God it must, is also laughable.

You get the point!! It's ridiculous, but that's what a god is supposed to be.
https://www.gotquestions.org/infinite-God.html

You have brought the words such as omnipotent and omniscient into the debate - now you want me to believe God is infinite. Friggin hell - man cannot even comprehend infinity so dont expect me to start speculating over it.

First I gave you the chance to define your god as not being omnipotent and omniscient, but you voluntarily accepted those attributes as belonging to your god. Infiniteness is consubstantial to omnipotence and omniscience. It means "without limits", that is, unlimited power and unlimited knowledge.

I did not state it is not evident to ALL. Since God has made itself extremely evident to me over 20yrs, it is likely that there are plenty of others that have had the same degree of knowledge of its existence....certainly my sage has.

The point is that since your belief is completely subjective, it only happens between the boundaries of your own perceptions and is has no truth value to anyone else, unless you could make it objectively evident to others, which has not been the case. At best, it can be a truth valid only for yourself.

You are the one making the claim that God cannot control future events - as i have already explained, not knowing ALL the future does not mean it cannot CAUSE all of the future (as to how it sees fit).

If god were the ONLY CAUSE of all future events, then it would necessarily have to know all future events (because god would determine all of them). But you claim it does not know all future events, therefore accepting that at least some future events are not caused by god. Those events are out of reach of your god, become outside circumnstances it must deal with, which makes it not being all powerful.

to claim to KNOW there is NO God, would require knowing everything about the universe, which i'm pretty certain you don't.

I can claim that no bachelor is married, without requiring to search the entire universe to attest that there's actually no married bachelor. There is no god because the idea of god is absurd.

[attofishpi]

to claim to KNOW there is NO God, would require knowing everything about the universe, which i'm pretty certain you don't.

I can claim that no bachelor is married, without requiring to search the entire universe to attest that there's actually no married bachelor. There is no god because the idea of god is absurd.

A ridiculous analogy. Your short-sightedness is all that is absurd.

[Londoner]

No, that was not the argument. We are supposedly talking about an infinite being that lives simultaneously in the past, present and future, because it would not be restricted to time and space dimensions. If your god has such strict limitations, it is not all powerful and certainly not all knowing.

Surely God would not live in the past, present or future. These may be the ways we humans think about time, and our own lives, but even we know that ultimately they don't make sense.

To say God is not restricted by time dimensions is not to say that he can move freely within them, rather that God does not suffer from our own confused ideas! This isn't special to God, when we do physics we recognise time as a way we measure particular things, not a thing in itself.

If god were the ONLY CAUSE of all future events, then it would necessarily have to know all future events (because god would determine all of them). But you claim it does not know all future events, therefore accepting that at least some future events are not caused by god. Those events are out of reach of your god, become outside circumnstances it must deal with, which makes it not being all powerful.

We bring in the notion of time if we want to describe a sequence of particular events, but by selecting out particular events we are again imposing our own subjective view on the universe. Seen holistically, the universe simply is always what it is. No event is really discrete, rather it is integrated with the whole state of the universe, so to separate it out into 'events' is to misrepresent it.

God does not have that problem. He can know the universe as a whole, so for God it isn't necessary for him to break it down into 'events' in order to understand it.

So the state of God cannot be understood in itself, but only in contrast with our own. We humans are trapped in our subjectivity, obliged to use certain concepts and techniques to get by, while being aware that these must also be misrepresentations of what is. God is not restrained in that way. So to understand the omniscience of God as if that meant he 'knows things' in the same sense we understand 'knowledge', except that he has more of it, would be a misleading.

Since the name 'God' is so loaded with cultural baggage, I think we could try making the same argument but leaving out the word 'God'. If we did that, we would be questioning whether the way we humans understand the universe is the only possible way. We would then be reconnecting these rather acrimonious discussions of God back into the mainstream of philosophy.

[waechter418]

....and the question still is WHO-WHY-WHERE are we ? (without blaming a god)

[attofishpi]

....and the question still is WHO-WHY-WHERE are we ? (without blaming a god)

Oh!

WHO - i am me.
WHY - usually questions a reason a 'superior' being put us here OR a reason the universe ebbed and flowed with causality until we arrived.
WHERE - i recently found out somewhere amongst Laniakea.

I know. I'm probably still way off the mark and should read the OP - but its late, sorry.

[Hobbes' Choice]

....and the question still is WHO-WHY-WHERE are we ? (without blaming a god)

Who - ask your mum
Why - ask yourself.
Where - look around.

Why would there be more of an answer?

[Conde Lucanor]

to claim to KNOW there is NO God, would require knowing everything about the universe, which i'm pretty certain you don't.

I can claim that no bachelor is married, without requiring to search the entire universe to attest that there's actually no married bachelor. There is no god because the idea of god is absurd.

A ridiculous analogy. Your short-sightedness is all that is absurd.

Well, that particular analogy right there is one of the classics of analytic philosophy. If you're going to be daring and challenge it, at least show some wit in doing it by presenting the logical counterargument. It was a logical statement, if you think it's false, you should be able to prove it easily.

[Conde Lucanor]

Surely God would not live in the past, present or future.

And the logical support for that statement is?

God does not have that problem. He can know the universe as a whole, so for God it isn't necessary for him to break it down into 'events' in order to understand it.

And other than your wishes to believe so, is there any support to that statement from empirical evidence or logic? You say that "he can know", but assuming such a deity existed, how do you know it has consciousness?

So the state of God cannot be understood in itself, but only in contrast with our own. We humans are trapped in our subjectivity, obliged to use certain concepts and techniques to get by, while being aware that these must also be misrepresentations of what is.

If we can't accurately represent the deity because human understanding is limited, how do you get to know all these things about god? According to you, they are most likely misrepresentations and that should make us ask also if that misrepresented idea exists as a concrete being at all.