The point is that these days… and I think in the days before that, AND the days before that… … Okay, so basically since forever, “God” has been such a loaded concept...
If you ask people where God is, some of them will tell you that “God is in everything and anything” (or something to that tune). Now, these people don’t have to be right (or wrong!) but that’s … a rather broad definition to me.
One can imagine God as an entity. Like, I dunno, a space alien from an alternative universe (don’t ask how that universe was created; I don’t know, this is a story and not an explanation). With super advanced technology. So if we then ask “did God create the world” and we (somehow...?) went back in time and saw that, hey, this space alien was somewhere else at the time and, no, the planet formed via other means, then you’d have a definitive answer to that question.
But there are other definitions. God are the mechanics of the universe. So, what you’d call the laws of physics, no, that’s just God. That’s how God keeps everything going. Why, then, yes, God did create the world! But only because current scientific understanding says “we think physics did it” and then you say “Physics is God”.
Anyway, if you want a sane, useful, rational answer to your third question then you must define God. I personally treated God as 1 entity in my earlier answer, which leads to the problem of having to connect events to the same entity (which, when you know very little about that entity, is pretty hard). (If you didn’t connect events to that same entity then something else must have caused it, in which case you have multiple probable causes for fantastic events, and you might as well call them Gods individually?)
I don’t quite grasp what you mean with the last bit...
I am a theist, but I am appalled by the lack of rational apologetic, the abundance of poor ones, and the disinterest to develop a good one. So here I am, making baby steps.
God is a messy concept. As a theist, I am leaning more towards the Calvinistic Christianity. Defining God is very problematic because, by definition, it is something, which in it’s fullness, is beyond human comprehension.
Could you clarify?
Since ancient time, there are many arguments for and against God (and the many versions of it). Lately, the arguments against God has developed to a very sophisticated extend and the theist is lagging very far behind and there doesn’t seem to be any interest in catching up.
It is a very interesting quest you have taken on. As an atheist, I am always interested in hearing good arguments in favour of God.
Why don’t you start by answering: Why are you a theist? You have looked at all the evidence available to you, and arrived at a posterior where P(God exists) >> P(God does not exist). Explain your reasoning to us. If your reasoning is good enough for you, why would it not be good enough for me?
“Explain your reasoning to us. If your reasoning is good enough for you, why would it not be good enough for me?”
Christians will sometimes ask me this, trying to get me to explain why I no longer think that Christianity is true.
And it has a very good answer. There really are good reasons why my reasoning is good enough for me, and would not be good enough for them. Basically, they want me to give a few short arguments which they will, quite rightly, dismiss as unconvincing. I fully understand why they dismiss them as unconvincing. It is because “a few short arguments,” no matter what they are, will in fact be unconvincing. I understand that, because I would have dismissed them as unconvincing myself in the past, and I fully understand why I would have done that, and it would have been quite reasonable.
But my reasoning is good enough for me, because I have thought about these things for years, considering not just a few short arguments, but many, many many arguments, and replies to replies, and replies to replies to replies, and so on. So I understand how things stand overall, and this “how things stand overall” cannot be communicated in a few short arguments.
In that way, to the degree that “If your reasoning is good enough...” is rhetorical, and implies that if you are not convinced, they should not be convinced either, it is a fallacy.
This is very poorly formulated. But there are 2 foundations in my logic. First is, that I am leaning towards presuppositionalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presuppositional_apologetics). The only way to build a ‘map’, first of all, is to take a list of presuppositions for granted. I am also interested in that (see my post on http://lesswrong.com/lw/nsm/open_thread_jul_25_jul_31_2016/). The idea is that a school could have a non-contradicting collection of self-referential statement that covers the epistemology and axiology and another school have another distinct collection. And due to the expensiveness of computation and lack of information, both maps are equally good and predicting what should and should not happen (“and also what is actually happening and why”, what scientist, not rationalist, cares about).
The other part is, the basis of this post, personal experience. All of my personal life experience, up until this point, “arrived at a posterior where P(God exists) >> P(God does not exist)” exactly in the same way Eve arrived at hers in this OP.
Now I do realize that is very crude and not at all solid, not even presentable. But since you asked, there you go.
Which is why I use labels such as “an entity” which may or may not be “omniscient” or “omnipotent”. You can describe God in terms of labels; If I had a car, and had to describe it, I could say parts of it were made from leather, parts of it were made from metals, parts of it were made from rubber, looking at it gives a grey sensation, but there is also red and white and black...
If God really can do anything and everything then everything is evidence of and evidence against God and you have 0 reason to update on any of the beliefs surrounding God. Which is, once again, why you don’t tie 100% probability to things. That includes statements of the nature “God caused this”.
The point is that these days… and I think in the days before that, AND the days before that… … Okay, so basically since forever, “God” has been such a loaded concept...
If you ask people where God is, some of them will tell you that “God is in everything and anything” (or something to that tune). Now, these people don’t have to be right (or wrong!) but that’s … a rather broad definition to me.
One can imagine God as an entity. Like, I dunno, a space alien from an alternative universe (don’t ask how that universe was created; I don’t know, this is a story and not an explanation). With super advanced technology. So if we then ask “did God create the world” and we (somehow...?) went back in time and saw that, hey, this space alien was somewhere else at the time and, no, the planet formed via other means, then you’d have a definitive answer to that question.
But there are other definitions. God are the mechanics of the universe. So, what you’d call the laws of physics, no, that’s just God. That’s how God keeps everything going. Why, then, yes, God did create the world! But only because current scientific understanding says “we think physics did it” and then you say “Physics is God”.
Anyway, if you want a sane, useful, rational answer to your third question then you must define God. I personally treated God as 1 entity in my earlier answer, which leads to the problem of having to connect events to the same entity (which, when you know very little about that entity, is pretty hard). (If you didn’t connect events to that same entity then something else must have caused it, in which case you have multiple probable causes for fantastic events, and you might as well call them Gods individually?)
I don’t quite grasp what you mean with the last bit...
Could you clarify?
God is a messy concept. As a theist, I am leaning more towards the Calvinistic Christianity. Defining God is very problematic because, by definition, it is something, which in it’s fullness, is beyond human comprehension.
Since ancient time, there are many arguments for and against God (and the many versions of it). Lately, the arguments against God has developed to a very sophisticated extend and the theist is lagging very far behind and there doesn’t seem to be any interest in catching up.
It is a very interesting quest you have taken on. As an atheist, I am always interested in hearing good arguments in favour of God.
Why don’t you start by answering: Why are you a theist? You have looked at all the evidence available to you, and arrived at a posterior where P(God exists) >> P(God does not exist). Explain your reasoning to us. If your reasoning is good enough for you, why would it not be good enough for me?
“Explain your reasoning to us. If your reasoning is good enough for you, why would it not be good enough for me?”
Christians will sometimes ask me this, trying to get me to explain why I no longer think that Christianity is true.
And it has a very good answer. There really are good reasons why my reasoning is good enough for me, and would not be good enough for them. Basically, they want me to give a few short arguments which they will, quite rightly, dismiss as unconvincing. I fully understand why they dismiss them as unconvincing. It is because “a few short arguments,” no matter what they are, will in fact be unconvincing. I understand that, because I would have dismissed them as unconvincing myself in the past, and I fully understand why I would have done that, and it would have been quite reasonable.
But my reasoning is good enough for me, because I have thought about these things for years, considering not just a few short arguments, but many, many many arguments, and replies to replies, and replies to replies to replies, and so on. So I understand how things stand overall, and this “how things stand overall” cannot be communicated in a few short arguments.
In that way, to the degree that “If your reasoning is good enough...” is rhetorical, and implies that if you are not convinced, they should not be convinced either, it is a fallacy.
This is very poorly formulated. But there are 2 foundations in my logic. First is, that I am leaning towards presuppositionalism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presuppositional_apologetics). The only way to build a ‘map’, first of all, is to take a list of presuppositions for granted. I am also interested in that (see my post on http://lesswrong.com/lw/nsm/open_thread_jul_25_jul_31_2016/). The idea is that a school could have a non-contradicting collection of self-referential statement that covers the epistemology and axiology and another school have another distinct collection. And due to the expensiveness of computation and lack of information, both maps are equally good and predicting what should and should not happen (“and also what is actually happening and why”, what scientist, not rationalist, cares about).
The other part is, the basis of this post, personal experience. All of my personal life experience, up until this point, “arrived at a posterior where P(God exists) >> P(God does not exist)” exactly in the same way Eve arrived at hers in this OP.
Now I do realize that is very crude and not at all solid, not even presentable. But since you asked, there you go.
Which is why I use labels such as “an entity” which may or may not be “omniscient” or “omnipotent”. You can describe God in terms of labels; If I had a car, and had to describe it, I could say parts of it were made from leather, parts of it were made from metals, parts of it were made from rubber, looking at it gives a grey sensation, but there is also red and white and black...
If God really can do anything and everything then everything is evidence of and evidence against God and you have 0 reason to update on any of the beliefs surrounding God. Which is, once again, why you don’t tie 100% probability to things. That includes statements of the nature “God caused this”.