I hope that we’ll have the universe completely sussed out one day and that everything makes sense… but then again, it could be God.
You don’t seem to be understanding that for me, “everything makes sense” would be God.
I just don’t think filling the hole with God is a useful step toward figuring out what the hole is about.
I agree: we definately don’t want to dismiss the mysteries of science with the word “God”, like that answers anything. Instead, we feel like studying the mysteries of science is studying God. What we already know about the universe is also God, and the consistency of what we know bolsters our belief in God. Einstein is quoted as having said that the more he studies science, the more he believes in God. (as cited in Holt 1997).
A deterministic universe doesn’t mean there must be a plan. Water doesn’t plan to conform to the shape of the container it is poured into.
This is semantic quibbling. I’ve observed that atheists, sort of generally, seem so uncomfortable with using words in certain ways. A “plan” need only have anthropic characteristics if you’re talking about a human plan.
Is there some reason you choose to use the word “God”? It seems like you could get away with calling the same concept “the Dao” or “the totality of things” or “the Force” or by a made-up word. That might trigger slightly fewer alarm bells around here.
You’re right; my purpose is larger than just trying to gain group acceptance regarding my belief in universal physical laws. I really want to gain some purchase in acceptance of belief in God, which I know is ambitious, but I keep trying. I’ll explain why.
I think religion poses a big problem. Perhaps I am somewhat hysterical, but I fear what religious conflict may yield over the next 20-200 years. And I think it is critically important to handle this problem with truth. While New Atheism seems to present a solution, it doesn’t present the truth. To me, it’s just another religious dogma, one that happens to be anti-religion. It gains support by asserting the supremacy of science because that is exactly where the conflict is … people believe in science but their religions don’t. But New Atheism is spiritually barren. (In the secular sense of the word). People who care about meaning won’t convert.
I think rationalists should take the supremacy of science (empiricism) and provide a better model for religion. Whether God exists or not isn’t the right question – it’s not an empirical fact about the universe. The question is, whether you believe in God or not, how do you tack towards the truth about anything? The truth isn’t in the literal translation of the Bible not because God doesn’t exist but because trusting authority is not good epistemology. Obama said it well in a speech I can’t find at the moment: it’s not that we need to reject the subjective religious experience of a theist, but they need to understand we have only empirical evidence to go by when evaluating their beliefs, and that’s all they have to evaluate each other’s. So, in other words, you can’t argue that X must be done because God wants it so. You must find empirical evidence that X is better. This is completely rational in a polytheistic society. It will raise the sanity line, and religious beliefs will depolarize.
I’ve said before: I think it is our duty to give people a better model for religion, not take away the meaning religion is giving. We can have meaning and the truth together.
I really don’t get how identifying God with the regularities of the universe rescues “meaning”. If the universe existed without humans or comparable beings, would it have meaning? (I say no.) Conversely, if we refuse to identify God with the regularities of the universe, does that imply that the universe is without meaning? (Again, I say no.)
You don’t seem to be understanding that for me, “everything makes sense” would be God.
Aaah! Why? You’re right, I totally do not understand what you are saying. You keep saying “God” but I have zero idea what you mean by “God”. If the universe is God, then when we say “God” we are just saying “the universe”, which means “God” is a meaningless word. It’s like you’re saying you’ve invented a new kind of fruit called a plibb, and then handing me an apple.
Einstein is quoted as having said that the more he studies science, the more he believes in God.
Einstein also said that God doesn’t play dice with the universe. He was wrong about the dice part, why couldn’t he be wrong about the God part? It sounds an awful lot like you’re appealing to authority here.
A “plan” need only have anthropic characteristics if you’re talking about a human plan.
There is no other kind of plan*. It’s not quibbling, you’re using an anthropic word in a non-anthropic context. The word “plan” requires design and carrying out a plan requires intention.
*Save for exceptions found elsewhere in the animal kingdom eg. wolf packs, chimpanzees.
I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress today, because I’ve started to get the counter-arguments and questions I was expecting. What I need to do next is buttress my argument that my belief in universal physical laws is bona fide theistic belief.
Here’s a sketch of the argument:
Major theistic religions assert the existence of a supreme all-powerful entity. (they also assert this entity is good, but let’s leave that aside for now.) Universal physical laws would qualify as all-powerful because they are universal physical laws IFF they cannot be violated. Universal physical laws also explain everything, so we recover that God is omnipresent (“omniscent” when applied to a mind) and explaining/accounting for everything that exists.
Now for the problem of goodness. Is goodness required for the existence of God, or is it just an asserted property? (Eliezer pointed out that religions assert overly positive statements, can we dispose of that without disposing of God?) So maybe theists were wrong about this property, maybe we need to look more closely at their theology to see what they mean by “good” (Keith Ward argues that the Catholic notion of goodness is actually quite limited and qualified), or maybe we have to admit this falls down to interpretation. If none of these things are true, and we agree goodness is a necessary property for a cogent definition of God that isn’t met, then I would concede that God doesn’t exist. But I think there’s plenty of room for debate here. (My personal stance is that the universe is neutral and goodness is not a necessary property.)
I presume that’s what Einstein thought, as he was opposed to the notion of a personal God (even yielding Nobel prize acceptance time to the topic). (The appeal to authority is appropriate here because I need to maintain that there are other theists with my point of view, and citing Einstein is most verifiable.)
Einstein has confused so many people by his various statements about religion that we’d better leave him out. In fact everybody, no matter where they fall on the atheist-religious spectrum, goes around saying Einstein would’ve agreed with them. As if that mattered.
Is goodness required for the existence of God, or is it just an asserted property?
Opinions differ. But I’d guess the overwhelming majority of believers (yep even Deists) consider God to be mind-like, not equation-like, so argument from common use doesn’t favor you.
Under your view it would seem god lacks a mind, will, intentionality, etc., no? It’s going to be hard to convince me that those are optional characteristics of god as conceived by major theistic religions.
ETA: I’ve voted your comment up because I don’t think it deserves to be at a −5… I’d be happy to see you come up with a line of reasoning that supports your conclusions, but I don’t think this is it.
In response to your points above and here and similar ones throughout this thread, I concede I need to narrow my understanding of theism to mean belief in a personal, anthropomorphic God. I’ve asked several theists (results described here) and this appears to be the common view.
As far as I can tell, you are arguing that to you, inviolable physical laws governing the universe are equivalent to what you call “God”. If such laws don’t exist, neither does God; if they do, they are God. Is this a fair characterization?
If so, here’s my question. I also accept that there may be universal physical laws (in fact, I strongly suspect there are). To me, however, they are not God. To me, they would disallow God, by every definition of God I can think of, personal or impersonal. But seeing as we both share a belief in the existence of universal physical laws, why do you see God-nature where I just see nature?
Einstein’s belief in God was a belief in something “subtle, intangible and inexplicable” that was a “force beyond anything that we can comprehend”*. If we do some day comprehend that force, surely it would no longer possess any inexplicable “God-nature”… but simply be better information about the universe we happen to inhabit?
There’s not much point in defending my beliefs, since my purpose has been to defend those of theists and the link between my beliefs and those of “theists” is not as strong as I thought. Nevertheless, to respond to your question:
If so, here’s my question. I also accept that there may be universal physical laws (in fact, I strongly suspect there are). To me, however, they are not God. To me, they would disallow God, by every definition of God I can think of, personal or impersonal.
An anthropomorphic God is seen as externally manipulating the universe. I think it is natural to ask, if such a God existed and he is omnipotent, why didn’t he make the universe the way he wanted it to be in the first place? It seems to me that not building self-correction into the system would be evidence of an imperfect, if not flawed, design.
I would expect that the universe created by an omnipotent God would be created so perfectly that it would just run itself. When I carry the argument even further, throwing in a bias for mathematics and logic, I would also expect that the universe would contain the rules for it own creation (self-creation), and even its own justification (self-justification). That would be most perfect. It wouldn’t make God obsolete, it would be God. (God as creator.) This is just speculation: what I would expect of a perfect, omnipotent Creator.
Yet, finally, that’s exactly what we have with empiricism: there’s nothing externally manipulating the universe, so the universe is completely self-determined. The answers to the big questions (the why and how of creation and existence) must exist here in the universe, not somewhere else. We can understand the universe by observing what it does.
I guess I never thought the right question was whether God exists or not, but where he exists and how he exists. I think it’s actually meaningless to say he doesn’t exist, and the dominant view here is that it’s meaningless to say that he does exist if he’s not the anthropomorphic, personal God that most people think of. So I’ve made my argument several different ways, not always as clearly and directly as I should have, but I did my best and now I’ll leave the debate to the next theist (or devil’s advocate) that comes along.
But seeing as we both share a belief in the existence of universal physical laws, why do you see God-nature where I just see nature?
It seems to me that you take the existence of universal physical laws for granted to some extent.
I see God in a deterministic and ordered universe, rather than a random and disordered one. If something seems haphazard, I intuitively feel like its meaningless. However if it is highly constrained, I feel like it is meaningful because it is exactly the way it had to be. (My final perspective is a little more sophisticated than this though, because order can emerge from random behavior, and I’m interested in rules that describe this.)
In contrast, a God with volition doesn’t make sense to me. Why should things be meaningful just because they were arbitrary dictated by a God manipulating the universe? I think it is much more logical that God’s desires would not be arbitrary: thus they would be described by rules, and thus God would not have volition. Likewise, if God is manipulating the universe on a day to day basis, he must not have written complete instructions in the source code, which seems kind of sloppy and imperfect to me. (The anthropomorphism here is a communication device only.)
You don’t seem to be understanding that for me, “everything makes sense” would be God.
I agree: we definately don’t want to dismiss the mysteries of science with the word “God”, like that answers anything. Instead, we feel like studying the mysteries of science is studying God. What we already know about the universe is also God, and the consistency of what we know bolsters our belief in God. Einstein is quoted as having said that the more he studies science, the more he believes in God. (as cited in Holt 1997).
This is semantic quibbling. I’ve observed that atheists, sort of generally, seem so uncomfortable with using words in certain ways. A “plan” need only have anthropic characteristics if you’re talking about a human plan.
Is there some reason you choose to use the word “God”? It seems like you could get away with calling the same concept “the Dao” or “the totality of things” or “the Force” or by a made-up word. That might trigger slightly fewer alarm bells around here.
You’re right; my purpose is larger than just trying to gain group acceptance regarding my belief in universal physical laws. I really want to gain some purchase in acceptance of belief in God, which I know is ambitious, but I keep trying. I’ll explain why.
I think religion poses a big problem. Perhaps I am somewhat hysterical, but I fear what religious conflict may yield over the next 20-200 years. And I think it is critically important to handle this problem with truth. While New Atheism seems to present a solution, it doesn’t present the truth. To me, it’s just another religious dogma, one that happens to be anti-religion. It gains support by asserting the supremacy of science because that is exactly where the conflict is … people believe in science but their religions don’t. But New Atheism is spiritually barren. (In the secular sense of the word). People who care about meaning won’t convert.
I think rationalists should take the supremacy of science (empiricism) and provide a better model for religion. Whether God exists or not isn’t the right question – it’s not an empirical fact about the universe. The question is, whether you believe in God or not, how do you tack towards the truth about anything? The truth isn’t in the literal translation of the Bible not because God doesn’t exist but because trusting authority is not good epistemology. Obama said it well in a speech I can’t find at the moment: it’s not that we need to reject the subjective religious experience of a theist, but they need to understand we have only empirical evidence to go by when evaluating their beliefs, and that’s all they have to evaluate each other’s. So, in other words, you can’t argue that X must be done because God wants it so. You must find empirical evidence that X is better. This is completely rational in a polytheistic society. It will raise the sanity line, and religious beliefs will depolarize.
I’ve said before: I think it is our duty to give people a better model for religion, not take away the meaning religion is giving. We can have meaning and the truth together.
I really don’t get how identifying God with the regularities of the universe rescues “meaning”. If the universe existed without humans or comparable beings, would it have meaning? (I say no.) Conversely, if we refuse to identify God with the regularities of the universe, does that imply that the universe is without meaning? (Again, I say no.)
Meaning is something humans create.
Aaah! Why? You’re right, I totally do not understand what you are saying. You keep saying “God” but I have zero idea what you mean by “God”. If the universe is God, then when we say “God” we are just saying “the universe”, which means “God” is a meaningless word. It’s like you’re saying you’ve invented a new kind of fruit called a plibb, and then handing me an apple.
Einstein also said that God doesn’t play dice with the universe. He was wrong about the dice part, why couldn’t he be wrong about the God part? It sounds an awful lot like you’re appealing to authority here.
There is no other kind of plan*. It’s not quibbling, you’re using an anthropic word in a non-anthropic context. The word “plan” requires design and carrying out a plan requires intention.
*Save for exceptions found elsewhere in the animal kingdom eg. wolf packs, chimpanzees.
I feel like I’ve made a lot of progress today, because I’ve started to get the counter-arguments and questions I was expecting. What I need to do next is buttress my argument that my belief in universal physical laws is bona fide theistic belief.
Here’s a sketch of the argument:
Major theistic religions assert the existence of a supreme all-powerful entity. (they also assert this entity is good, but let’s leave that aside for now.) Universal physical laws would qualify as all-powerful because they are universal physical laws IFF they cannot be violated. Universal physical laws also explain everything, so we recover that God is omnipresent (“omniscent” when applied to a mind) and explaining/accounting for everything that exists.
Now for the problem of goodness. Is goodness required for the existence of God, or is it just an asserted property? (Eliezer pointed out that religions assert overly positive statements, can we dispose of that without disposing of God?) So maybe theists were wrong about this property, maybe we need to look more closely at their theology to see what they mean by “good” (Keith Ward argues that the Catholic notion of goodness is actually quite limited and qualified), or maybe we have to admit this falls down to interpretation. If none of these things are true, and we agree goodness is a necessary property for a cogent definition of God that isn’t met, then I would concede that God doesn’t exist. But I think there’s plenty of room for debate here. (My personal stance is that the universe is neutral and goodness is not a necessary property.)
I presume that’s what Einstein thought, as he was opposed to the notion of a personal God (even yielding Nobel prize acceptance time to the topic). (The appeal to authority is appropriate here because I need to maintain that there are other theists with my point of view, and citing Einstein is most verifiable.)
They’re prohibited from doing a whole lot of things.
Einstein has confused so many people by his various statements about religion that we’d better leave him out. In fact everybody, no matter where they fall on the atheist-religious spectrum, goes around saying Einstein would’ve agreed with them. As if that mattered.
Opinions differ. But I’d guess the overwhelming majority of believers (yep even Deists) consider God to be mind-like, not equation-like, so argument from common use doesn’t favor you.
Under your view it would seem god lacks a mind, will, intentionality, etc., no? It’s going to be hard to convince me that those are optional characteristics of god as conceived by major theistic religions.
ETA: I’ve voted your comment up because I don’t think it deserves to be at a −5… I’d be happy to see you come up with a line of reasoning that supports your conclusions, but I don’t think this is it.
In response to your points above and here and similar ones throughout this thread, I concede I need to narrow my understanding of theism to mean belief in a personal, anthropomorphic God. I’ve asked several theists (results described here) and this appears to be the common view.
As far as I can tell, you are arguing that to you, inviolable physical laws governing the universe are equivalent to what you call “God”. If such laws don’t exist, neither does God; if they do, they are God. Is this a fair characterization?
If so, here’s my question. I also accept that there may be universal physical laws (in fact, I strongly suspect there are). To me, however, they are not God. To me, they would disallow God, by every definition of God I can think of, personal or impersonal. But seeing as we both share a belief in the existence of universal physical laws, why do you see God-nature where I just see nature?
Einstein’s belief in God was a belief in something “subtle, intangible and inexplicable” that was a “force beyond anything that we can comprehend”*. If we do some day comprehend that force, surely it would no longer possess any inexplicable “God-nature”… but simply be better information about the universe we happen to inhabit?
*The Diary of a Cosmopolitan, HG Kessler
There’s not much point in defending my beliefs, since my purpose has been to defend those of theists and the link between my beliefs and those of “theists” is not as strong as I thought. Nevertheless, to respond to your question:
An anthropomorphic God is seen as externally manipulating the universe. I think it is natural to ask, if such a God existed and he is omnipotent, why didn’t he make the universe the way he wanted it to be in the first place? It seems to me that not building self-correction into the system would be evidence of an imperfect, if not flawed, design.
I would expect that the universe created by an omnipotent God would be created so perfectly that it would just run itself. When I carry the argument even further, throwing in a bias for mathematics and logic, I would also expect that the universe would contain the rules for it own creation (self-creation), and even its own justification (self-justification). That would be most perfect. It wouldn’t make God obsolete, it would be God. (God as creator.) This is just speculation: what I would expect of a perfect, omnipotent Creator.
Yet, finally, that’s exactly what we have with empiricism: there’s nothing externally manipulating the universe, so the universe is completely self-determined. The answers to the big questions (the why and how of creation and existence) must exist here in the universe, not somewhere else. We can understand the universe by observing what it does.
I guess I never thought the right question was whether God exists or not, but where he exists and how he exists. I think it’s actually meaningless to say he doesn’t exist, and the dominant view here is that it’s meaningless to say that he does exist if he’s not the anthropomorphic, personal God that most people think of. So I’ve made my argument several different ways, not always as clearly and directly as I should have, but I did my best and now I’ll leave the debate to the next theist (or devil’s advocate) that comes along.
It seems to me that you take the existence of universal physical laws for granted to some extent.
I see God in a deterministic and ordered universe, rather than a random and disordered one. If something seems haphazard, I intuitively feel like its meaningless. However if it is highly constrained, I feel like it is meaningful because it is exactly the way it had to be. (My final perspective is a little more sophisticated than this though, because order can emerge from random behavior, and I’m interested in rules that describe this.)
In contrast, a God with volition doesn’t make sense to me. Why should things be meaningful just because they were arbitrary dictated by a God manipulating the universe? I think it is much more logical that God’s desires would not be arbitrary: thus they would be described by rules, and thus God would not have volition. Likewise, if God is manipulating the universe on a day to day basis, he must not have written complete instructions in the source code, which seems kind of sloppy and imperfect to me. (The anthropomorphism here is a communication device only.)