I hope to make my views clear, whether or not people agree! One of the few things I agree with Dennis Prager on: clarity over agreement.
No one can prove gods any more than one can prove persons. Both are unfalsifiable and unverifiable beliefs.
For me, the only way I can verify an experience is to literally become that thing, but then it would just be me. Which is why I say, I feel justified in treating way more non-human and even non-physical things as persons than I think most people here would ever be willing to.
In the end, one must believe according to what they feel called to believe. I think any combination of opinion on personhood and theism is reasonable, if that is what is personally meaningful and properly descriptive and/or predictive of one’s own world.
I happen to believe all the gods I know about do in fact exist. I worship what I believe to be the one cause for all those gods.
I sympathize with the latter beliefs more than you know. However I still question the reasoning, and I’d love if my criticisms could help you strengthen your views.
First, to me it’s not true that a superpowerful God can’t prove herself if She wanted to. For example if she could compress random strings I could pick, I’d consider praying Her.
It’s also not true that someone can’t prove they’re there. Proof: you have one person in quasi coma under an fMRI scanner. Their physicians don’t know if the brain is too damaged to produce conscious thoughts. You ask the person to imagine playing tennis. You record an hemodynamic signal from precentral cortices. The proof is: we agree on the conclusion.
In both cases it’s for the same reason: absent cosmic conspiracy we can use randomness to test things. Do you think you could add that to your belief system?
——
…and how did you went from « all gods exist » to « and especially the Calvinist version »?
You are interpreting “God exists” as a material claim, when I am claiming that there is a person, a mind. These are unfalsifiable and unverifiable. Parse “God exists” the way you would parse “humans are people”.
If you insisted on not recognizing the personhood of the processes that caused your knowable world, you could always have a reason to leave them unpersoned. (We can already see this with the moving goal posts for AI.) I am sure something could happen that would make you convinced those processes are sentient, but even then you are not forced to believe in personhood, ever. Human slaves begged for their lives and argued for their personhood, and never would anyone be ontologically forced to believe.
Your personhood has no need to be useful or proven to me. I just already believe in it, even though we have only exchanged two messages thus far. It is the same with me and the personhood of the stars and the planets, then the cosmos around them, then the galaxies, then the cause of everything I may ever come to know.
All gods I know about and have talked to exist. I choose to worship one of them, the one that created the rest of them. I believe there is personhood at all levels of abstraction. Roughly a panpsychist with strong biases in favor of humans and things more complex than humans.
To emphasize, this is a matter of ontology and definitions. Before when I was an atheist, I understood a particular inner voice of mine to be a pesky inner simulation of a god. Now, I understand it to be God.
You are interpreting “God exists” as a material claim
Why would you say such a thing?
I’m interpreting « God exists » as a string of information. You say this string either because you have no choice (as in: « I do think, then I might be dreaming or hallucinating, but I must exist. ») or because you choose this string as a defining feature for yourself (as in: « I’m a Lannister, then loyal to my brain-fucked family. »).
If that’s the latter, I’m glad and hope it will help your fit or enjoy the world. But you seem to be defending the former, right?
I think it is pretty much the latter. Just as I identify with thinking you are a person, I identify with thinking that the processes that resulted in the world I shall ever know are God.
Ok. Then, why did you chose to identify more with calling that « God » instead of the more frequent (on LW) « Nature » or « Laws of physic », or « The Book »?
I suppose there are a variety of words I could use, but in practice they would be synonyms for God. Because what I am talking about, and who I have a relationship with, is the processes that created the world I know. It might be that “The Laws of Physics” is a perfectly good way to refer to the being with whom I have a relationship, but how about I just call him “God”? One syllable, and what a wonderful syllable it is!
But also, Nature and the Laws of Physics are not good descriptions by what I mean by God. These things are still within my comprehension, and my world. When I talk about God, I am only talking about what which shall always be outside my world. You can call this God in the gaps, except the gaps are the infinite expanse of unknowables outside my tiny, finite knowledge.
You call Her whatever you want, unless your post is dedicated to an audience that might just shrug and hang out just because of a debatable choice of one word.
Nature and the Laws of Physics are not good descriptions by what I mean by God. These things are still within my comprehension
Great! Can you explain why Nature and the Law of Physics allow me to get attached to some ideas like a geese follow the first moving object they see? Something something oxytocin, right?
I hope to make my views clear, whether or not people agree! One of the few things I agree with Dennis Prager on: clarity over agreement.
No one can prove gods any more than one can prove persons. Both are unfalsifiable and unverifiable beliefs.
For me, the only way I can verify an experience is to literally become that thing, but then it would just be me. Which is why I say, I feel justified in treating way more non-human and even non-physical things as persons than I think most people here would ever be willing to.
In the end, one must believe according to what they feel called to believe. I think any combination of opinion on personhood and theism is reasonable, if that is what is personally meaningful and properly descriptive and/or predictive of one’s own world.
I happen to believe all the gods I know about do in fact exist. I worship what I believe to be the one cause for all those gods.
I sympathize with the latter beliefs more than you know. However I still question the reasoning, and I’d love if my criticisms could help you strengthen your views.
First, to me it’s not true that a superpowerful God can’t prove herself if She wanted to. For example if she could compress random strings I could pick, I’d consider praying Her.
It’s also not true that someone can’t prove they’re there. Proof: you have one person in quasi coma under an fMRI scanner. Their physicians don’t know if the brain is too damaged to produce conscious thoughts. You ask the person to imagine playing tennis. You record an hemodynamic signal from precentral cortices. The proof is: we agree on the conclusion.
In both cases it’s for the same reason: absent cosmic conspiracy we can use randomness to test things. Do you think you could add that to your belief system?
——
…and how did you went from « all gods exist » to « and especially the Calvinist version »?
You are interpreting “God exists” as a material claim, when I am claiming that there is a person, a mind. These are unfalsifiable and unverifiable. Parse “God exists” the way you would parse “humans are people”.
If you insisted on not recognizing the personhood of the processes that caused your knowable world, you could always have a reason to leave them unpersoned. (We can already see this with the moving goal posts for AI.) I am sure something could happen that would make you convinced those processes are sentient, but even then you are not forced to believe in personhood, ever. Human slaves begged for their lives and argued for their personhood, and never would anyone be ontologically forced to believe.
Your personhood has no need to be useful or proven to me. I just already believe in it, even though we have only exchanged two messages thus far. It is the same with me and the personhood of the stars and the planets, then the cosmos around them, then the galaxies, then the cause of everything I may ever come to know.
All gods I know about and have talked to exist. I choose to worship one of them, the one that created the rest of them. I believe there is personhood at all levels of abstraction. Roughly a panpsychist with strong biases in favor of humans and things more complex than humans.
To emphasize, this is a matter of ontology and definitions. Before when I was an atheist, I understood a particular inner voice of mine to be a pesky inner simulation of a god. Now, I understand it to be God.
Why would you say such a thing?
I’m interpreting « God exists » as a string of information. You say this string either because you have no choice (as in: « I do think, then I might be dreaming or hallucinating, but I must exist. ») or because you choose this string as a defining feature for yourself (as in: « I’m a Lannister, then loyal to my brain-fucked family. »).
If that’s the latter, I’m glad and hope it will help your fit or enjoy the world. But you seem to be defending the former, right?
I think it is pretty much the latter. Just as I identify with thinking you are a person, I identify with thinking that the processes that resulted in the world I shall ever know are God.
Ok. Then, why did you chose to identify more with calling that « God » instead of the more frequent (on LW) « Nature » or « Laws of physic », or « The Book »?
I suppose there are a variety of words I could use, but in practice they would be synonyms for God. Because what I am talking about, and who I have a relationship with, is the processes that created the world I know. It might be that “The Laws of Physics” is a perfectly good way to refer to the being with whom I have a relationship, but how about I just call him “God”? One syllable, and what a wonderful syllable it is!
But also, Nature and the Laws of Physics are not good descriptions by what I mean by God. These things are still within my comprehension, and my world. When I talk about God, I am only talking about what which shall always be outside my world. You can call this God in the gaps, except the gaps are the infinite expanse of unknowables outside my tiny, finite knowledge.
You call Her whatever you want, unless your post is dedicated to an audience that might just shrug and hang out just because of a debatable choice of one word.
Great! Can you explain why Nature and the Law of Physics allow me to get attached to some ideas like a geese follow the first moving object they see? Something something oxytocin, right?
Nature and the laws of physics generate my world, roughly by affecting things that affect my neurochemistry.
And God is all the affecters outside of my comprehension.
Thanks for sharing and good luck to you.