Perhaps God IS “cause and effect”?
In my Pantheopsychic revision of Judeo-Christian theology, God is in every situation depending upon which of His three personalities is dominant, and upon which state of consciousness He resides.
Perhaps God is the First Cause, the Origin of Everything but that does not mean that God is the cause and effect of everything which has occurred from the beginning of time ad continuum.
Things happen, people make things happen and others are the catalysts who respond, for the good and the bad.
Did God create some kind of built-in contraption whereby the world would evolve through cause and effect? Who knows!
Do we blame this God for the evil which has transpired within the world because we do not understand and are not capable of observing how this came from that, how we ourselves have caused this because we were simply not paying attention and did not care. We have reason, intelligence, consciousness, reflection, ad continuum lol and yet we walk around with eyes shut.
I suppose that it comes down to one’s own perspective. Should Alexander Graham Bell be held responsible for every idiotic, negative, cruel conversation that comes over the phone? Is he there in any situation? That may not be a good analogy.
This is always fascinating to consider. After all, if we go back to the final, definitive explanation for the existence of existence itself, God may or may not be included.
My own current best guess: we just don’t know.
Of late I keep coming back to this:
“Each second there are about 100 billion ghostly solar neutrinos passing through the tip of your finger, and every other square centimeter of your body, whether you are indoors or outdoors, or whether it is day or night, and without your body noticing them, or them noticing your body.” ase.tufts.edu
So, if a God, the God, your God is responsible for the existence of existence itself – the whole shebang – why on earth would he make this a part of it? Why not 10 billion or 1 billion? Why neutrinos and not something else?
God and the laws of matter? What to make of that relationship?!
And what was God thinking when He came up with this:
[b]"Light travels at approximately 186,000 miles a second. That is about 6,000,000,000,000 miles a year.
The closest star to us is Alpha Centauri. It is 4.75 light-years away. 28,500,000,000,000 miles.
So, traveling at 186,000 miles a second, it would take us 4.75 years to reach it. The voyager spacecraft [just now exiting our solar system] will take 70,000 years to reach it.
To reach the center of the Milky Way galaxy it would take 100,000 light-years.
Or consider this:
“To get to the closest galaxy to ours, the Canis Major Dwarf, at Voyager’s speed, it would take approximately 749,000,000 years to travel the distance of 25,000 light years! If we could travel at the speed of light, it would still take 25,000 years!”
The Andromeda galaxy is 2.537 million light years away." NASA[/b]
And this:
“It turns out that roughly 68% of the universe is dark energy. Dark matter makes up about 27%. The rest - everything on Earth, everything ever observed with all of our instruments, all normal matter - adds up to less than 5% of the universe.” NASA
Go figure?
The definite explanation for the existence of existence itself is the existence of first-person subjective experience in the form of a particular person, the only form in which existence demonstrates itself to exist, and the only form existence has ever demonstrated itself to exist.
Honestly speaking, this is the best guess. Everything else is imagination backed by belief in the content of one’s imagination that may or may not objectively exist.
Answer: “Just because”. Existence exists in the manner in which it exists, either in the form of God and the going’s-on in the mind of God or something else…for no other reason that out of all the ways existence could have exist, it happens to exist in the way in which it arbitrarily presents itself.
And solar neutrinos, if Panpsychism is true, may not actually exist, but are constructs made up of first-person subjective experience that is the “Sauron-shape” of a particular person’s consciousness.
It may be, given that existence only appears in the form of first-person subjective experience in the form of a certain person, that matter i.e. physical matter, i.e. something that is not/is other than first-person subjective experience may not exist. Thus there is no relationship or contradiction in a relationship between God and non-existent matter.
Just imaginative stuff God puts, through the replication of others of the content of His lucid dreaming, in the consciousness of others for artistic arbitrariness. The objective Canis Major Dwarf, objective light, objective galaxies, planets, etc., however may not actually exist as only persons exist and as such the Canis Major Dwark, black holes, nebulae, stars, planets, etc. are only constructs composed only of a person’s subjective experience of them and only exist within the person, i.e. the person’s consciousness and have no existence outside the person or exist as something other than persons.
Eh, dark matter and energy probably doesn’t exist, as there is only first-person subjective experience in the form of persons.
PG
Of course all of this speculation is just another example of your very own first-person subjective experiences.
Now comes the hard part: reconciling it with all of the first-person subjective experiences of millions upon millions of others such that we can finally pin down who actually comes closest to explaining fully the relationship between God, the laws of matter, and the existence of existence itself.
Starting, for example, with actually demonstrating why what we believe about it all “in our head” is in fact the obligation of each rational man and woman to believe in turn.
You start, okay?
The problem with that is that there could not have ever been an “origin of” the entire universe. The only thing that makes sense is that God represents the principle that dictates the process of creating - “The Creator”.
And of course that process is ubiquitous.
And when whatever that process is “says” that you must act this way or that in order to get what you want - then you certainly should do exactly that. But always be suspicious of who is really representing what that principle says.
iambiguous:
True, the part that is speculation anyway. However, it’s not speculation that existence demonstrates itself only in the form of a person and that which the person experiences. It’s observable fact, as you and I prove this to be true by our very existence and the nature of our existence (first-person experiences that experience).
Well, we can’t really determine who comes closest to explaining the relationship between God and the existence of existence itself. At the end of the day, its imagination believed to objectively exist, with everyone competing with each other not in terms of actual observable fact (as the only observable fact about existence is that it always appears in the form of a person and that which the person experiences), but in terms of what is imagined to exist outside one’s consciousness.
(The laws of matter doesn’t factor, at least not to me as it probably does not exist as the only thing that may exist, inferred from the only thing that demonstrates it exists, is first-person subjective experience.)
There is no obligation ‘of each rational man and woman to believe in turn’ when it comes to propositional imagination. One can only present what one believes to exist outside one’s consciousness (re: in the absence of one’s consciousness) as something that, for all anyone knows, could actually be true provided what one presents is (1) logically possible and (2) logically non-contradictory.
What any rational man and woman should believe based on observation, however, is that existence only demonstrates itself in the form of a person, and as such existence only demonstrates itself in the form of first-person subjective experience.
PG
That “existence only demonstrates itself in the form of first person subjective experience” is counterintuitive. We manipulate matter for our own uses. We eat or have sex with what is other than ourselves, proving the efficiency of our senses. What is out there beyond the body is knowable as real and solid, not ephemeral as an idea. If the senses presented us with false information, we would not survive.
“I refute it thus.”–Ben Johnson, kicking a stone.
"
Come on, is it even possible for you to be more abstract here? This thread is about God in any situation. Okay, given your own understanding of God, place Him in a situation, place “your existence and the nature of your existence” in this situation in turn, and we can discuss that.
This part:
In other words, given a particular existential context.
Instead, as always, from my own frame of mind rooted in dasein, you gallop straight back up into your own particular spititual/intellectual cloud:
Basically, we both agree that given the gap between what we think we know about all of this here and now and all that can be known given my post above, “we can’t really determine” lots of things.
But: my “thing” here in regard to God and religion is to focus the beam less on what we think we know and believe about them, and more on what we can actually demonstrate to be true…theologically, philosophically, scientifically…instead.
In other words…
In other words, given a particular context, whatever that means to you. But, in my opinion, you go on and on in post after post on thread after thread creating these worlds of words based on your own particular TOE like dozens of others have done here over the years. I call it the James S. Saint Syndrome myself.
We’ll need an actual context of course.
Abstract? Concrete, rather. What’s so hard about seeing and understanding that yes, existence only appears in the form of a person and that which the person experiences? And that persons are composed of first-person subjective experience?
As for God being in any situation, God according to my imagination is a Person extrapolated to the size of infinity. I theorize based on the biblical verse Acts 17:28 that God provides the content of consciousness or experience of every other person, thus God is ‘in any situation’ by right of having imagined/dreamt of the situation before it is replicated/re-enacted by a human, animal, or insect (if animals and insects are not philosopher’s zombies).
Dasein is, and can only rationally be, rooted in and comprised of first-person subjective experience, which is the only existential context that probably exists. As the laws of matter are conceived as something that existed before and as such are not laws governing something that is first-person subjective experience, matter and the laws of matter probably do not and need not exist.
God and religion cannot be demonstrated, but only believed to objective exist in the external world.
By that reasoning, you would have to demonstrate the objective existence of non-brain created planets, galaxies, black holes, atoms, cells, the brain, etc, which are revealed to only things believed “in one’s head” and cannot be demonstrated in such a way as it becomes an obligation for rational men and women to believe in the objective existence of non-brain created planets, galaxies, etc.
When mentioning ‘physical’ things, we can only talk about the percepts of such things according to the Process of Perception (the brain-created “holograms” of galaxies, cells, etc. that are the experience of a person of these things [for those believing the brain creates consciousness]). The distal objects themselves (the objects independent of the consciousness of a person) probably do not exist, and even if one entertained their objective existence, being things composed of something other than subjective experience, they cannot rationally have anything to do with the percepts of such objects.
That is, when you realize when you talk of matter or physical things, evolution, etc. you refer only to first-person experience composed percepts and not non-first-person experienced distal objects, it is not rational to believe in the existence of distal objects or physical things as they cannot rationally have anything to do with the existence of consciousness or consciousness-composed objects.
But post after post on thread after thread, my TOE is probably rooted more in reality that yours, given I admit existence only demonstrates itself and appears in the form of the consciousness of a person. The moment you deny that, you lose touch with reality and logic.
The actual context of any example, as any example will only consist of first-person subjective experience and objects composed only of first-person subjective experience.
PG
Nope, not interested in being sucked up yet again into a “world of words” intellectual contraption – spiritual? philosophical? – that encompass your own rendition of James S. Saint’s TOE. His own Real God?
In other words, define “concrete”. 
Now, my interest in discussing God – given a particular situation – revolves around morality here and now, immortality there and then. Existentially as it were.
Besides, there are any number folks here who are more than willing to match you TOE for TOE to pin down, at the very least, the most cerebral deduction of all.
I voted yes, after finding another head turning ‘coincidence’
Went to church today, found that we ard in the middle of what was called Pentecost, since 1463 by Pope Urban iv
Whatever the rendition, there is probably more reason to believe in a TOE if it’s substance is the substance of existence: first-person subjective experience.
“Concrete” as in definitively experienced and known. The only thing that is definitively experienced and known with certainty is first-person subjective experience in the form of persons. Everything else is just first-person subjective experience “morphed” into the form of the thought of the concept of something other than first-person subjective experience, which of course that which is other than/is not first-person subjective experience cannot appear to show without a doubt it also exists as the only thing that appears is…well…
Probably. But in order for their TOE to be logically tenable, the substance making up their version of “how everything works” must be first-person subjective experience, the only substance that probably exists as it is the only substance that appears and perhaps can appear (because it is the only thing that exists).
PG
We believe that the phrase ‘first person subjective experience’ is ambiguous and vague at best and a non-problem at worst. With ryle and a few other analytical philosophers we claim that the Cartesian paradigm is based on a category mistake - therefore a linguistic problem and not a real conceptual problem - and that such notions as ‘qualia’ are results of this linguistic confusion.
We also argue in the same way that Wittgenstein argued against the existence of a ‘private self’ in the ‘beetle in a box’ thought experiment, that because your awareness and understanding of yourself and your experiences is structured by your language, and language is an independently existing culture prior to the presence of the individual who adopts, develops and uses it, it must have an objective existence. That is to say, a wholly objective reality exists outside and independently of anything you think, or else you would have had to invent from scratch an environment and a language before you had any understanding of what those things might be (because you haven’t a language to do it with yet).
Really subjective truth claims are legitimate in an evaluative, emotive and performative sense; they are true expressions of attitudes, preferences, values and such, as well as individual actions (this was ‘your’ marriage, or graduation, etc., and true only for you). But insofar as metaphysical or epistemological truths are concerned, they cannot be conditioned or qualified by purely subjective reasoning because attitudes, preferences, values and such do not pertain to them. If there were ‘facts’ in the world, a language used to describe and define them would necessarily mirror the logical, independently existing structure of the world in which those ‘facts’ existed.
Plus man seriously Berkeley’s radical empiricism has got all kinds of conceptual problems with it. You gotta read the criticism too, bro. You can’t just be like ‘hey this is neat I think I’ll believe it’. In fact I don’t even think I’m real now, because of all this. Thanks a lot dude. Look I don’t want to just be a perception man. I’m a real guy occupying a point in space time affectance ontology and I’m a valuing valuing value… or better a value valuing it’s valuing of value. Listen the point is I’m real and u aren’t just thinking me up, haus.
But…first person subjective experience is not at all ambiguous and vague, it’s the most obvious thing. For example, there is you and the things you experience. That’s subjective first-person experience. Therefore, given its the only thing that appears, manifests, and demonstrates its existence in the form of any person and that which the person experiences, it cannot be a category mistake or a linguistic problem or a ‘confusion’. It is what David Chalmers calls: ‘the manifest’. That which is before our eyes every day, every second we are awake: you experiencing the things around you, and the inner things that are private.
Language originates from a person and is the experience of a person. Of course a wholly objective reality exists outside and independent of what one thinks, or at least it makes more sense than pure solipsism: it is just that this objective reality, in order to logically and rationally have anything to do with the existence of consciousness or first-person subjective experience, must itself be composed of consciousness or first-person subjective experience, rather than be composed of something that is not/is other than subjective experience. It does not follow that subjective experience is created, caused, or is derived from something that is not subjective experience.
Anything other than a person and that which persons personally experience and on a universal scale, anything other than/that is not subjective experience itself, is entirely fictional and may not exist. Everything that exists exists in the form of something experienced by a person, and does not demonstrate itself in the form of something experienced by no person. Thus, existence only exists in the form of persons and that which persons experience. Ergo, metaphysical/epistemological truths must be composed of subjective experience in the form of some person as they can only appear as a concept in the mind of a person.
Such ‘problems’ stem from a critic’s denial of the manifest. It’s not a matter of ‘this is neat I think I’ll believe it’: Existence only appears in the form of persons and that which persons experience: it’s that simple. Existence does not appear in any other way, thus it may that any other way may not exist, and the only thing that exists and can exist are persons. In this regard, Berkeley is absolutely right: it may be that only perceivers and the perceived exist, and the perceived is made from the substance of the perceiver and has no independent existence.
I’m not just thinking you up: God thought you up and surplus subjective experience in His subconscious mind made a replication of that idea, which is you.
PG
Godwannabes have always failed so far.
„Godwannabes have always failed“ - at least in the long run.
Since you have reductively explained away your self, why should anybody listen to you? Or Rile or Dennett for that matter?
To answer the OP:
If Pantheopsychic Theology is true…
…yes.