Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

[Dubious]

Contingency excludes the necessity of a God being its source.

[Reflex]

Yes, my tale is a rough retelling of current orthodoxy - that works with the laws of physics as we know them. The issue here is, as you allude, "as we know them".

We will always be wrong to some extent in that our models are always incomplete (and we will never know everything) so a posited reality that fits into that incomplete model is an incomplete reality at best, although it will probably be more reliable than less grounded speculation.

True. But we cannot, or at least should not, be afraid of the uncertainty, afraid of committing to the ideas that best represent our highest ideals.

The biggest gap in the story is the issue of insides and outsides, and my tale was one of outsides, not insides. The emerging story of "insides" is more mysterious, raising questions of relative panvitalism or panpsychism and the nature of the contrast between chemical and physical reactions and conscious responses.

One possible solution to the problem of other minds is the idea that it is actually all one mind - that each mind is the same mind as others, just in a different setting. It is that one mind that some would call God or a "collective unconscious". Then again, who is to say that one mind isn't a collective human mind, or the Earth's mind, or that of the Sun or the galaxy?

Plenty of books on that.

I think the universe is comprised of a vast hierarchy of qualitative variations of interpenetrating fields, processes and systems.

While great value seems to be afforded to The Ultimate, this seems to detract from the value afforded to the intermediates.

It can, sure.

The dynamic reminds of the way Olypmic gold medal winners are lauded while a silver medallist unluckily missing out by the barest of margins is forgotten - degrees of recognition in the public sphere are apportioned exponentially rather than linearly.

Simply, it seems that God is getting a lot of the good publicity that was more likely "earned" by humanity en masse, the Earth, the galaxy etc.

Last time I checked, God was getting all the blame.

[Greta]

I think, based on the main import of his theory, not unlike what was written without the theological gloss. The significance of the Omega Point demands more of philosophy and science; it doesn’t need to be wrapped in any kind of Christian apologetics or synthesis the inclusion of which only adds to an inert type mysticism.

Yes, evolution does not need to be wrapped in anything. However, when one considers how utterly outclassed humanity would be by aliens just a hundred years more advanced than us, when we consider the possibilities of evolution over the best part of a trillion years, then we may be akin to a toddler, or even embryonic as compared with what's to come.

Personally, I would be very wary of that conclusion. Who says that evolution can't lead to devolution even by some unknown we ourselves initiate; or how many possible alien civilizations may have suffered, in spite of their advancement, that kind of fate. T de C's conclusion that once we reach a certain boiling point in consciousness the odyssey toward complexity can no-longer be infringed is a dangerous assumption in a universe which offers no guarantees at any level.

Sure, the Earth might end up being overrun with paperclip optimisers, but that's nature - no one is guaranteed survival. However, it seems that over deeper time than we have ever known in the impossibly vast arena of the universe, the probabilities must be great that extreme intelligence and resilience will emerge from hominid level intelligence (which we already know is possible over much shorter spans of time).

[Greta]

Yes, my tale is a rough retelling of current orthodoxy - that works with the laws of physics as we know them. The issue here is, as you allude, "as we know them".

We will always be wrong to some extent in that our models are always incomplete (and we will never know everything) so a posited reality that fits into that incomplete model is an incomplete reality at best, although it will probably be more reliable than less grounded speculation.

True. But we cannot, or at least should not, be afraid of the uncertainty, afraid of committing to the ideas that best represent our highest ideals.

For me it's not fear but a wish not to commit to my ideals. I think they have more evolving to do before I commit to any notion that I have. Maybe that will always be the case.

I think the universe is comprised of a vast hierarchy of qualitative variations of interpenetrating fields, processes and systems.

Nicely put.

While great value seems to be afforded to The Ultimate, this seems to detract from the value afforded to the intermediates.

It can, sure.

Well, I would like to see these under-appreciated entities put on their rightful pedestals I can very much relate to Earth worship, for instance. That we live on a world in space is terribly abstracted and unappreciated concept while we remain distracted by life's exigencies.

When you think about what stars and planets actually are, especially their scale and layers, and then how especially weird the Earth is compared with everything else we've observed in space - the whole situation is so trippy and mind-boggling that there is no way our little heads can properly wrap around it. Yet human attempts to understand are heroic in their determination against impossible odds, and that persistence has brought us further than our ancestors would have thought possible.

The dynamic reminds of the way Olympic gold medal winners are lauded while a silver medallist unluckily missing out by the barest of margins is forgotten - degrees of recognition in the public sphere are apportioned exponentially rather than linearly.

Simply, it seems that God is getting a lot of the good publicity that was more likely "earned" by humanity en masse, the Earth, the galaxy etc.

Last time I checked, God was getting all the blame.

and that is similarly "ambitious". Humanity are also getting some adverse press. By contrast, the Earth and galaxy are seen more or less as die - random elements in the game of survival - but they may well be the main players and most blame-worthy

[Greta]

Is the concept of a whole necessary to define fractions? Can halves, quarters, eigths and so on exist without a relationship to a whole? Why not. We believe we can have opinions without any connection from the whole from which they originated. If creation doesn't require a source for its devolutions, does that mean the perception of colors doesn't require white light as its origin and Man doesn't require a source for its creation?

But why the whole necessarily be God? Why couldn't it be the universe or multiverse or maybe something else we haven't thought about?

Because those things are contingent.

Not necessarily; they may be inevitable.

[gaffo]

This thread has been inspired by, firstly, chats with others about agnosticism and, secondly, by reading the over-sure statements of believers on this forum. Dubious had previously aired this thread's idea but I did not understand what he was trying to get across at the time. The penny has now dropped. Sorry Dubious; I was wrong and your idea was good, hence this return.

People speak about God as if the notion is obvious. In truth, we could readily dispense with the notion of God altogether and, in terms of understanding reality, nothing would be lost. We could simply consider what is without running it through the distorting filters of mythology.

Even if the universe is an all-infusive meta-mind, why associate it with a deity who started out as a childishly absurd anthropomorphism? Why not start with a fresh slate? The universe - a speculatively emergent meta-mind. Why isn't that that enough, given the limitation of an inside-out perspective? Blending a modern conception with ancient mythology can only serve to muddy the waters of inquiry, and that is certainly what has happened. Even an attempt to define "God" is fraught because no one agrees - and chaotic results in any given observation or experiment suggest a negative signal.

So the only promising aspects of theism lie in where there is commonality of beliefs. However, they seem to be few and those commonalities also significantly overlap with "secular" people's experiences and observations. Thus, any religious ideation that does not overlap with all other major faiths is necessarily culturally specific, of historical, not ontic, interest.

Today, the God of the Gaps is fashionable because all of the prior anthropomorphic forms were rendered ridiculous with increased understanding of nature's processes. So now God's most credible guise tends to be posited as the ground of being. However, many theists will disagree about what that means too. So why not simply call it qualia? Why add the personification? Is it not possible to feel tremendous love and gratitude towards the Earth, the Sun, the galaxy and universe - even to feel worshipful - without endowing it with a metaphorical grey beard and testicles?

When God is thought of as an it, everything changes, including the need to associate It with a middle eastern Iron Age war god. It becomes simply everything, The All, or rather, The All of Us, given our own infusion within the larger web of being.

all you questions will not be answered here:


https://www.gutenberg.org/files/33854/3 ... 3854-h.htm

why ask when you are an ant? all questions you have are irrelevant.

[gaffo]

And no scientific evidence points towards an all-infusive meta-mind. So it is likely just another anthropomorphization, we projected our own self-awareness and our belief in limited consciousness onto the universe.

yep

[gaffo]

It's certainly highly different from the extremely supernatural anthropomorphic Gods of the great monotheistic religions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCzORgC1NpM

[gaffo]

It's not as though we ourselves agonise about our dead cells or the bacteria and other small things we routinely kill without noticing.

some do.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

[gaffo]

I find God more plausible and useful rather than the deluded, "wart"-religious thoughts of the Atheists and other non-believers.

how so?

i'm an Atheist BTW.

[Greta]

why ask when you are an ant? all questions you have are irrelevant.

I ask because I am a human and not an ant. Ants don't ask questions, humans do.

I appreciate that how I feel about my conditioning is irrelevant to you. You don't know me However, I see value in trying to break out of one's mental conditioning and that is my interest here.

[gaffo]

Like a good Jehovah's Witness - who also used the phrase "Great Beast" from what I recall -

the beast was Emperor Nero, the Whore was Rome and the Dragon is Belial.

not a JW - just an objective reader of The Apocolypse

[gaffo]

why ask when you are an ant? all questions you have are irrelevant.

I ask because I am a human and not an ant. Ants don't ask questions, humans do.

I appreciate that how I feel about my conditioning is irrelevant to you. You don't know me However, I see value in trying to break out of one's mental conditioning and that is my interest here.

you should not take my post as personal - i'm an ant too (did you read Sheckley's story - if so you are fast reader (I have dyslexia and slow reader - not implying you did not).

I ask because his story is my view of our "Reality" and shows hubris of man's nature - thinking he is not an ant when he is just that! - and less even.

[gaffo]

I see value in trying to break out of one's mental conditioning and that is my interest here.

perchance you indeed read the story .

[gaffo]

BTW the stars are indeed cold and the rule of 18 is not Truth.