The Concept of God Can Be Aided By The Luck of Atheism

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

Skeptical philosophers consider the concept of God to be inconceivable or “impossible”…yet many aspects of biblical characterization of God have amazing parallels with atheistic characteristics of the world.

Here’s how!

(1) Problems with the eternity of God is solved by the analogy of the eternity of energy. If the first law of thermodynamics is true (“energy is neither created nor destroyed, it only changes it’s form”)—then conceivably the concept of eternal things can be applied to God (apart from the “changing of form”—despite the fact that God, as conceived, is capable of appearing in different forms).

Problem solved.

(2) Problems with the omniscience of God (foreknowledge of past, present, and future of all events) is solved by the analogy of Betrand Russell’s statement that we live in a universe that is only “an accidental collocation of atoms”.

The omniscience of God can be explained to be an “accidental collocation of psychic data”----in this sense, the mind of God is a psychic or psychological analog of the collocation of the physical universe before the fact.

Why this should be so? Well—with the same luckiness that atoms form biological environments and systems in atheistic explanations of the world, of course!

(3) God’s omnipresence (God is everywhere) can be decomposed into two versions:

(a) illogical omnipresence (God is everywhere at once—inhabiting all points of space simultaneously and paying undivided attention to all events simultaneously

(b) logical omnipresence (God is “everywhere” in the sense of having knowledge of the goings on in all points in space and time in a psychologically sequential manner rather than a magical simultaneity of knowledge or presence.

(4) God’s omnipotence can be explained in terms of using an analog with the causal web of interactions common to atheistic explanations of the universe.

Causality in atheistic explanations involve a continuous “shooting of pool” between quantum particles in spacetime, each connected to the other through gravity (which affects everything) and their own fields.

One can conceive of God exhibiting a quantum of his own, in the form of psychical or mental particles that interact with the physical

(or one can adopt the notion of superpanpsychism, which states that a mind-independent physical reality does not in fact exist, and the only thing that exists is the mental—either in conscious subjective points of view or mental particles corresponding to David Chalmer’s “panprotopsychism”—which postulates mental particles existing within physical matter.)

One can support this version of the omnipotence of God by invoking David Hume’s skepticism of the essential nature of cause and effect.

(Following Hume’s argument in favor of theology, one can argue that we cannot know that gravity is not only the power of God “pretending” to be gravity—and the other four forces of Nature.

At the end of the day, a conception of the Judeo-Christian God can be a logically possible conception—if one throws out the conceptual necessity of a rigid definition of the “impossible” God and adopt a Logical God—whose qualities adhere to the examples given above).

God need not be a concept tied to the magical and supernatural notions of which he is famous within the usual conceptions of man.

Following this, one can argue that the existence and non-existence of God is not discernible by our knowledge—but is actually indistinguishable from atheistic belief—such that a God might exist and have created a “quasi-atheistic” world for the purpose of instigating or naturally selecting the existence of faith.

Nuff said.

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity

(A working hypothesis of what might have been going on within the mind of Jesus Christ while dying upon the cross—and the hypothesis that the going’s on within the disembodied mind of Jesus Christ, while his body rested within the tomb of Joseph—is the proposed key to immortality)

2

The difference, of course, is that the science stuff you listed are conclusions from arguments, and the god you present is a conclusion to which you are arguing. Taking a conclusion you have already and dressing it up in a scientific-conclusion costume doesn’t get you the same level of justification as the conclusions that actually follow from actual arguments.

3

True…it is often said that science takes the evidence granted from experience and derives conclusions based upon that evidence, while religion formulates conclusions out of thin air and try to twist the sensory evidence to fit the conclusions.

Despite this, and despite the greater justification of science in it’s “from the bottom to the top” investigation of knowledge, one need only question the nature of experience itself—and observe the indistinguishability of experience in atheistic explanation from more exotic theological explanation.

From this, one can derive justification for the existence of God based upon the indistinguishableness of possibilities concerning the underlying nature of the world given by the very sensory evidence that “supports” atheism.

Given this, a theologican can argue that despite the theologicans creation of of conclusions about God “out of thin air”…nothing in our experience can rule him out.

Regardless of whether one proposes the existence of something by making “conclusions from arguments” or proposes the existence of something “from a conclusion that is argued”…objective reality seems to exist in such a way that the latter cannot be ruled out as being accidentally more true than the former.

Nuff said.

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com

4

Off the bat, this argument, if taken for granted, doesn’t show that god is a better explanation, but that god and science are equally shots-in-the-dark. This argument works just as well for any of the infinite possible explanations that include our observations, including ones that propose gods that are malevolent, gods that want us to do bad things, pink elephants with pin-wheel hats, anything. What useful conclusion can be gained from putting all these on the same level? Should we throw darts at a board with extra-observational characteristics and embrace whatever malformed and ridiculous belief system results?
But I think don’t think that all those systems are equal, and I get the impression you don’t either. What science produces is the system that is based on observation with the least baggage. In principle, every scientific claim is a testable one that has been tested, and creates practical results. Claims like god are not dealt with in science, because as you point out, the world looks just like it would if there were a god trying to convince us that he doesn’t exist. But that leap is not as justified as the rest of science’s statements. Science stays mum on untestable question, so it is a body of theories whose disproof can be stated but hasn’t been achieved. Once you add things like god to that body, the system as a whole is less justified, because god is unjustified.

5

The initial premise is erroneous. “God” although induced through logic, doesn’t meet with reason or validity, so the entire proposition fails.

There is no evidence for “mental particles”.

There is no evidence for “psychic phenomena”.

God is distinguishable from atheistic belief as a matter of definition; atheism is the disbelief that there is any non-refutable evidence for divinity.

6

To carleas: Your post is correct, to a fault.

Science is it’s own animal. It chooses to rely upon testable and provable results (based upon the evidence granted by the senses) of a certain state of reality. A scientific theory can be falsified, but a given falsification usually fails to present itself when a given theory is tested. If the falsification should appear, the good thing about a scientific falsification of a theory is that it will be something that is accessible to sensory perception.

However, this is where science ends, and metaphysical philosophy begins. Certain humans take the evidence granted by the senses and use this to piece together a rational formalism concerning the nature of reality.

Below are examples of obvious rational formalisms concerning reality, if one relies upon empirical knowledge alone:

(1) God does not exist.

(2) The brain is responsible for the existence of consciousness.

(3) There is no afterlife. Once the physical brain decomposes, is injured beyond cellular repair, or is instantaneously destroyed (such as within in explosion)—the individual is dead forever.

(Unless one factors in the chance existence of a future neuroscientist who “miraculously” dreams or is inspired by daydream of the exact causal pattern and structure of the brain of the deceased. The neuroscientist then recreates the same brain–perhaps from biological material—perhaps from silicon chips, and places the brain within an android body (or simply settles upon a brain in a vat) 300 years in the future. Barring such an unlikely coincidence, one concludes that dead is dead, and the individual is consigned to eternal oblivion.)

(4) The existence of irresponsible and irresponsive mechanism—(that aspect of the physical world and physical mechanism that doesn’t care if it’s victim is an infant, a child, or a loving old woman dying of AIDS, cancer, or about to fall into a chasm during an earthquake).

Irresponsible and irresponsive mechanism seems to prove that a Deity or deities (who are supposed to care for the well-fare of a certain multicellular organism) does not exist. We are lucky constructs created by blind chance and blind atoms obeying blind laws of physics.

However, one can argue that these conclusions, granted so “obviously” by the information gained by the senses-- is ultimately a rational judgment of reality—a formalism—that is unknowingly belied by an objective truth that possesses, by random chance “more baggage”.

One must respect Occam’s Razor—yet Occam’s Razor does not by reason of it’s simplicity indicate or reveal undeniable and unquestionable truth concerning the nature of reality.

One can argue that while God seems unjustified, there is an actual justification that exists—in the form of causality (the fact that humans are caused to believe in God or conceive of God in terms of God being a thing that affects human decision and choice.

(As distingusihed from Harry Potter, Captain Kirk, and the Tooth Fairy—nature produces an “imaginary” being that produces real life-altering affects upon the beings conceiving the entity)

There is, of course, also the justification that comes from the indistinguishability of the existence and effects of God from an atheistic world.

[One can argue that this is “negative” justification for God, opposed to the “positive” justification demanded by atheism]

We don’t have to “buy” any ole religious theory or fantasy that comes up, what an individal believes to exist seems to be a selective matter of choice and convincing. However, an able-bodied philosopher can easily argue against the skeptic that these things can’t be ruled out, either.

Despite the inaccessibility of the Judeo-Christian God to the five senses, one can easily argue that there is nothing that rules out his indistinguishable existence either…and that it is this indistinguishableness that justifies (negatively justifies) belief in God.

To Mastriani:

The concept of indistinguishableness defeats your skepticism.

Here’s how:

(1) God meets with reason and validity through the concept of indistinguishable possibilities to explain the evidence of sensory reality—God is just as reasonable as the existence of other people’s consciousness from the perspective of a conscious being.

(2) One can argue that there is indistinguishable—rather than “no” ----evidence for “mental particles”.

(3) One can argue that there is indistinguishable—rather than “no”---- evidence for “psychic phenomena”.

(4) One can argue that there is actually no evidence for the existence of the physical world—there is only the subjectively conscious point of view of conscious beings…we have no empirical evidence that there even exists a mind-independent underlying “physical” reality----no matter it’s reasonableness.

(5) While atheism stands firm with the disbelief that there is any non-refutable evidence for divinity, theism stands firm with the belief that divinity can exist in such a way as to be indistinguishable from and operate within a “quasi-atheistic” reality.

Nuff said,

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com

7

Indistinguishable just means insufficient recognizability, ambiguous … sensory reality depends upon the distinguishable.

Twist it all you like, there is no proof in ambiguity. Consciousness is a biological dialog in physicality, two hemispheres of the frontal lobes of the brain in constant communication, through biochemistry, for the sole function of maintaining point of reference, “I”, which is advantageous towards survival.

One can argue anything, especially from ambiguity, but that doesn’t change evidential fact. There is no support for “mental particles”, and shows a fundamental lack of knowledge in the arena of neuroscience.

It isn’t a matter of “could there be particles that have a mentality”, it is a matter of physics; all particles act in accordance with known principles of forces found in physicality.

Same as above. Ambiguity is a weak proposition point.

Again, anything can be found as an argumentative premise. But at the moment sensory perception occurs, and can be qualified and quantified, this proposition fails. It’s part of the whole “conscious” “self awareness” problem.

Check on the latest data for virtual reality simulations, and you will find, that the “self”, is nothing more than biological dialog, and can even be fundamentally fooled by current technology. No physicality, no mind.

Theism can provide no evidence towards its proposition, only belief. Belief can be formulated of any “thing” or “idea”, but as a matter of evidential support, it can never be found, and the belief retains its quality as an inductive informal fallacy.

8

Good post, yet it has it’s flaws.

(1) Sensory reality is a mental phenomenon. You are assuming that the physical exists in the sense that it can be experienced to exist. There is only a subjectively mental experience.

A mind-independent physical reality is not experienced—thus it’s existence is questionable.

(2) You adopt Daniel Dennett’s “the mind is nothing but [physical function]” view of consciousness. This is Type-A materialism, in which experience is explained as something that is nevertheless physical.

David Chalmers (author of “The Conscious Mind”) maintains that consciousness is non-physical, and that the mind/body problem is ultimately a question of how the non-physical can be causally connected to the physical.

The function of the brain, and the subjective experiences that seem to be linked to it, are all an aspect of the simulated reality that is the nature of our experience. The mind/body connection can be argued to itself be an aspect of a larger simulation, rather than a physical objectivism.

Evidential fact does not yield evidence of a mind-independent physical reality. It’s only more subjective experience. Our “physics” is ultimately subjective–in the purest empirical sense. Does this imply a Descartean absence or realism of “physics”? No. It implies that reality might be different than what is currently believed.

We have no real evidence, therefore, of a complete dependency of the mind upon the “physical”. The latest data for virtual reality simulations can be argued to be part of the general mental simulation that is the mind itself.

Indistinguishability is not pure ambiguity, it is an honest observation of the possible nature of reality due to the nature of mind itself—which is purely subjective in the sense of empirical certainty.

Nuff said,

Jay M. Brewer
superchristianity.com

9

Your last post continues to speak to the notion you’ve proposed of negative justification, which is to say no proof that god doesn’t exist, and gods existence is possible within the context of our observations. I think you overstate the power of negative justification.
Suppose I was sick, and I don’t know why. If you told me that drinking battery acid would cure me, and that I since my experience is subjective I can’t use that as evidence against your suggestion, does negative justification really entail that drinking battery acid is just as rational as drinking orange juice? I don’t think so, and come on, neither do you.
The problem with negative justification you propose, and the underlying argument-from-skepticism, is that is lets any and every theory in the door. “If I don’t have any objective reason to believe anything, then I can believe whatever I want and be just as well justified” is not an argument in favor of any particular belief system, i.e. you can’t use negative justification to positively justify anything.

10

The negative battery acid analogy, while interesting, seems to miss the point. It would seem that the threat of drinking battery acid would only work on someone without an intuition that battery acid is poison. The difference between battery acid and orange juice comes down to differences in experience if one or the other is imbibed.

In the case of God, this analogy fails–due to the notion that the existence of God is indistinguishable from the non-existence of God. There is no sensory consequence (such as poisoning) that threatens to result if one chooses to believe in God. In this case, using analogy, the battery acid would taste and have the same chemical effects on the individual as orange juice.

Is it more rational to accept orange juice rather than battery acid if one is ill? Of course!

But here’s where rationality fails…it is a frame of mind concerning the “greater” truth of a proposition…despite the fact that the proposition bearing “lesser” truth is objectively more true than the “greater”.

The concept of negative justification is pure and simple philosophical and epistemological honesty concerning the limitations of our experience.

That’s it.

Belief in God, Quezacoatl, Zeus, Odin, Thor, etc. (and belief in a mind-independent physical reality) are beliefs in entities that do not appear or present themselves to the sensory perusal of the skeptic. Given that these entities consistently fail to appear before the skeptic, one reasonably forms the conclusion that it is not as rational to believe in the existence of these entities as, say, the existence of trees.

But negative justification doesn’t care about this type of rationality, as the relevant rationality is ultimately a psychological state of either certainty or doubt. Objective reality cares nothing for rationality, as the relevant entities can nevertheless have real existence DESPITE our conclusions based upon their absence.

Religious belief (aside from the “religious belief” brought about by rearing, brainwashing, or fear of hell) is simply a phenomenon in which an individual, for whatever reason, possesses a nagging suspicion that the existence of God, despite absence of evidence, is truth.

The religious mind is simply a mind that perceives the world in such a way that the evidence gained by the senses is intuited to somehow not be enough. Like the character Detective Fanning in the film “Collateral” (starring Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx) stated to another detective within the film:

“There’s something else going on!”

This is analogous to the atheist, who is convinced that sensory reality is enough, and that there is nothing further to be explained or accepted. The intuitions on both sides are equally as powerful, yet they run in different directions.

However, a total trust in the sensory begs questions: if rationality is exhausted to the empirical (that which is experienced) and the sensory, then is it not a bit irrational to believe in the existence of another’s consciousness (remember, a physical brain and the internal, private subjective experience of another being are two different things, despite the fact that the latter is believed to be created by the former)—or the existence of a mind-independent physical reality?

The rationality would stem only from a psychological conviction that these existed, despite the fact that other’s consciousness and a mind-independent external reality is just as empirically absent as God.

Negative justification, again, is simply epistemological honesty (the sort of honesty that states: “it might be true for all that can be known or perceived—although I am free to continue to belief that it does not exist”).

If it is accompanied by belief in the non-empirical entity or state-of-affairs, it acts as a kind of justification that works as the “anti-particle” of postive justification, in the sense that our evidence about the world simply does not rule out the possible existence of the non-empirical entity in question.

Once again, one does not have to be ontologically committed to (believing in the actual existence of) a non-empirical entity—but if one finds that one is ontologically committed, then negative justification works to fend off demands for positive justification—and it is supported by the notion of fortuitous objectivism: that which cannot be presented to the skeptic for sensory perusal might nevertheless actually exist—despite the shouts of “nay” from the skeptic .

Belief in God, then, is “supported” by the possibility of fortuitous objectivism, and fortuitous objectivism is conceptually heralded by negative justification. At the end of the day, the existence of God is simply something that cannot be ruled out based on empirical knowledge alone. One can argue that the naysaying of the atheist ultimately is a denial based upon a psychological conviction of a thing that might nevertheless exist.

At the bottom level, we have only a subjective experience of “some sort of” reality----the existence of mechanism at times seems to suggest a simplicity that need not involve deities–but we cannot rule out the notion that a Deity (or deities?) were/are causally responsible for the existence of common mechanism, or that mind/body mechanism is simply an aspect of a different or higher simulated reality.

Nuff said?

Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity (A hypothesis on what was going on within the mind of Jesus Christ while dying upon the cross—in an easy-to-read comic book format)

11

Erroneous, because you are taking a metaphysical position to an already proven physical instance.

Biochemical reactions are the mental experience, they are physical reactions of elements, molecules, compounds on a completely physical level.

There is nothing subjective involved.

My position has nothing to do with Dennett’s , which has a number of metaphysical components.

I regret to inform you, but your assertion that the activity of the brain is subjective, is just erroneous, and empiricism refutes you directly. As I said, the latest virtual reality has opened observation of what the “self” and “mind” are in a new manner. The activity of the brain, physical biochemistry, is not subjective, it is objective, quantifiable, observable, and able to be defined through qualified data.

There is no “mind”, that is the only imposed surrealistic instance. It is a biological defect, to be precise. The presence of “I, my mind” is, for the third time, a biochemical dialog between the hemispheres of the frontal lobes of the brain. Point of reference, “I know I am, where I am”, evolutionarily advantageous for avoidance of danger/death > longevity > higher rates of procreative activity > species continuance.

1,2,3 …

Indistinguishable means ambiguity. Ambiguity is more than a poor proposition, it is falsifiable.

12

Your last post is totally wrong.

The only thing that is empirically certain is subjective experience.

In case you haven’t noticed, reality only “knows” (with certainty) that there is a reality from the perspective of subjective mental points of view.

That’s it.

Our observation of the existence of neurons, right/left hemispheres, biochemicals (with sodium and potassium being the “drug” of choice for the very function of the brain itself, among trace chemicals) and their electronic “dialog”----these are formalized to be “physical” events.

Yet these are “physical events” observed or experienced through a mental medium----“we” “I” “me” are ultimately mental concepts.

At the end of the day, what we call the “physical” is that aspect of personal conscious experience that is believed to have an objective facsimile beyond the subjective experience of the one who experiences reality.

We have no knowledge that this external reality exists, or if it does, that it necessarily must be a facsimile of our experience.

Thus, the brain, the “dialog” between left and right hemispheres, the chemicals that enable bioelectrical communication between neurons (through neurotransmitters) and the whole ballgame is actually…

…drum roll please…

A MENTAL, RATHER THAN OBJECTIVE PHEOMENON!!!

(Be careful now: the term: “mental” as I am using it here follows from David Chalmer’s use of the term, meaning “subjectively conscious” or “subjectively experienced” is is not confined to thoughts, dreams, etc.

As it is used here sensory perception and experience itself is a mentalphenomenon…in that it is not “physical” in the sense that it can actually or potentially be presented publicly to the view of other perceiving beings…or exist in physical space and time (if the physical exists)

The existence of mechanism itself, wherein you have x existing with a certain structure and function, with said structure and function continually necessitating the existence of y in order for structure and function to maintain with a level of relative homeostasis----despite it’s complexity and nature can be argued to simply be another aspect of the [i]simulation of reality[/]that is our experience.

Once again, it’s all subjective…we only convince ourselves that the aspect of the simulation has an objective component.

Think about it.

Jay M. Brewer
blog.myspace.com/superchristianity

ww.superchristianity.com

(A hypothesis of what was going on within the mind of Jesus Christ while dying upon the cross, in an easy-to-read comic book)

13

I’m not going to waste my time arguing metaphysical fluff with a teleological ideologue.

“Reality” is a linguistic device for describing experience. “Reality” is not an object that can have knowledge of something. Unless of course you have Reality on your speed dial and have dialogged with him/her that I am unaware of and cannot disprove.

Points of view may change, the fact that experience is a physical process of biochemical and biomechanical instances, makes points of view irrelevant outside the individual, perceptions of experience may be subjective, that experience is a continuing process, quantifiable, is objective.