God is an Impossibility

The term “human things” comes pretty close to a contradiction.That was the reason why my question above was a more rhetorical one.

Tell me, how can an illusion be real within an empirical-rational reality?? This is one of the central theme of Kant’s thesis in the CPR.
This is why I know and insist your philosophical views are very narrow and shallow.

Btw, the idea of God is a transcendental illusion which is another level beyond the illusion relating to the empirical senses.
Note I spent 3 years full time researching on Kant, so I know what he is talking about. The only provision Kant opened for the possibility of God is on Moral grounds and I don’t agree with that.

How can you claim to be more educated when you are using the the above spurious rhetoric.

It is very stupid to equate ‘God’ = wisdom, truth, logic or reason, then condemn those who insist God is impossible as illogical, irrational, against reason & truth and the likes.
This is the most stupidest idea I have come across in a philosophical discussion.
Show me any reasonable dictionary that equate the above to ‘God’.
Wisdom, truth, logic and reason are very specific philosophical topics with their own specific definition and has no direct association with an illusory God.

Note how ‘god’ is used in other ways;
-a person or thing of supreme value: had photos of baseball’s gods pinned to his bedroom wall; ‘don’t make money your god’
-a powerful ruler: Hollywood gods that control our movies’ fates

In this OP, I have explained and defined what is the idea of God is taken to be.
Note I raised the OP and it is up to me to define what is God with reference to this topic.

See my reply to JSS above.

To clue you in, in the Critique of Reason, Kant raised a detailed chapter [N K Smith] regarding;

Chapter III. The Ideal of Pure Reason …
Section 4. The Impossibility of an Ontological Proof of the Existence of God … 500
Section 5. The Impossibility of a Cosmological Proof of the Existence of God … 507
Discovery and Explanation of the Dialectical Illusion in all Transcendental Proofs of the Existence of a Necessary Being 514
Section 6. The Impossibility of the Physico-theological Proof 518
Section 7. Critique of all Theology based upon Speculative Principles of Reason . . . . . 525

In the finality following the above, Kant presented the conclusion, the idea of God is an impossibility within empirical-rational reality. re B397 I quoted above. The conclusion of B397 is based on one big argument represented by the whole of the Critique of Pure Reason.

Gees… you err on so many levels simultaneously. First, you seem to be conflating “illusion” with “delusion”. Especially in Kant’s day, a “illusion” was not a necessarily incorrect imagining. An illusion was simply something that was not actually witnessed by the senses (much like most of what you believe that you read). For example, the image in your mind of a gravitational field pulling a rock toward the Earth, is an illusion. It is an illusion because you cannot actually see a gravitational field. You deduce that the field is there and then might imagine what it would look like if you could see it. As it turns out, all of Newton’s forces are illusions, as well as Einstein’s Relativity ontology, and especially Quantum Physics ontology.

But beyond that, merely because one has never seen a unicorn, doesn’t mean that a unicorn “is impossible”

You claim that I am narrow minded because you can only see your own warped view thus maintain the illusion that if I disagree it can only be because I am incapable of seeing it too. You maintain the illusion that you are right, despite the extreme amount of rationale that everyone has posted displaying the errors in your reasoning.

ALL of what you have been posting is illusionary.

You have the illusion that such actually means anything. People study writings all of their lives and still argue view points that contradict others who have done the same. We have a number of Nietzsche worshipers at this site who quite often argue over what Nietzsche actually mean by what was said and have been doing so for some 10 years.

I couldn’t care less if you spent 100 years studying Kant. When you are wrong, you are wrong.
And sense you imagine yourself such a postmodern intellectual, look up “Nullius in verba

Again, try to pay attention to what you read without so much presumptuous bias. I did NOT say that I am more educated. Read it again.

Sorry, but the claim that you just made is “stupid” and senseless, not to mention again of its ignorance.

So the hatefully, presumptuously bias and undereducated would imagine.

So you’re saying that Truth, Logic, and Wisdom have never had supreme value to anyone??? Even to those you image to have been senseless moneys?

The thought there is a Reality above and more powerful than the magic show was once a new thought.

And you don’t think that Truth (aka “Reality”) is not the true, supreme ruler of your universe??? You think the universe was created by and obeys lies? You believe that there is a power above Reality???

As I stated before, you are supporting the magic worshipers that you profess to be against.

Out of ignorance, sure.

Many people have explained your ignorance to you.

You are so arrogant as to imagine yourself more clever and wise than all of them, yet cannot seem to come up with actual valid logic (or even know what it is). You have been wrong in so many ways, I can’t even keep track of them.

That is partially true. You have the authority to choose WHICH definition of “God” you are trying to refute. But then as a part of that, you would have to prove which claims about God were referring to your defined God verses any other. And more importantly, something you have ignored, is that your “definition” must not be ambiguous, which it is, as you have been told many times.

Your erroneous claim is that THE ONE GOD of the Bible is the one that you have ambiguously defined.

==========================

And then you continue your display of ignorance with this:

In every single case, Kant was stating that coming up with a PROOF was impossible. He never said that God was impossible.

Obviously you do not understand Kant.

Yet you maintain such an illusion.

And then beyond that, Kant happens to be wrong about that conclusion. Even Thomas Aquinas came up with 5 such proofs. Being clueless when it comes to logic, you wouldn’t be able to argue against Aquinas either way. And there are greater proofs than those.

The statement “God is an impossibility” (Prismatic 567) and the statement “The Impossibility of an Ontological (or Cosmological or Trancendental or Physico-theological) Proof of the Existence of God” (Kant) are different statements. You believe that the fact that Kant and you used the word “imposibility” proves the impossibility of God? You are wrong. Note that Kant meant “the proof of God” and that you mean “God” (God himself). Linguistically said: In Kant’s sentence, the object is “proof” (whereas “God” is merely the second gentive object, thus: not the object itself); in your sentence, the object is “God”. “Proof of God is impossible” does not mean “God is impossible”.

So again:

Kant did not say “God is impossible”.

Kant presumably said what he thought was true. But how was he able to demonstrate that what he thought was true about God is that which all rational men and women are obligated to believe is true in turn?

It would seem to come down to this: that there is what we can grasp/know a priori and what we can grasp/know a posteriori. And then, out in the world with others, how the two are intertwined in any particular discussion of a God, the God, my God.

As the Objectivists suggest: “God is not a concept created from perception.”

And:

“The basic idea behind a priori knowledge is that comes without experience, without specifying what the source is. However, Kant took this further, and said that a priori knowledge has a “transcendental” source – based on the form of objects, rather than our experience of them.”

Platonic “forms”?

Not quite, right?

But what then? Kant posits this transcending font as an intellectual contraption that seems necessary in order to motivate folks to always tell the truth when the “inquiring murderer” comes around.

Without God [and the immortality/salvation linked to Him] why would anyone truthfully inform the murderer where his/her victim is?

Unless perhaps it is perceived [in any particular context] to be in your own best interest that the murderer succeed in killing the victim.

For example if the murderer insisted that unless the location was disclosed he/she would kill you too.

In other words, for mere mortals, in a world where it is presumed [by some] that God does not exist, it all comes down to subjective points of view, conflicting goods, and those who have the power to attain and then to sustain a particular set of behaviors.

As a general description of “how things work”, probably. But there is still the part where our conception of God becomes intertwined in our actual perceptions of the world around us. Perceptions embedded in turn in the existential trajectory that encompasses/embodies our own personal experiences. Such that the definitions and the meaning that we give to the words used in our argument/analysis [regarding God] are fleshed out: intellectual contraptions able to be verified or falsified empirically, phenomenally.

Something that all agree on regarding God is a consensus. But that is not necessarily the same thing as an objective fact true for all of us.

But “such a God” is still basically one that is defined or deduced into existence. Which is not the same as demonstrating that in fact God is an impossibility. We just don’t/won’t know that until a frame of mind can be concocted wholy in sync with whatever a priori and a posteriori truth/reality actually is.

In the interim we all take own own leap of faith to one or another set of assumptions.

The distinction I make here, though, is between those who embrace what I construe to be an objectivist frame of mind and those who don’t. In other words, the extent to which someone encompasses an argument about God that seems to revolve entirely around the assumption that unless others share it they are necessarily wrong. Why? Because the objectivists insist that their own arguments are necessarily right.

But right how?

By definition? Based of a set of premises, precipitating a particular meaning [conclusion] presumed to the necessarily true? Where is the part where the words can be wholly integrated into a world that can in fact be demonstrated to be true for all of us.

Sooner or later words like “absolute” and “perfect” either define or describe a God able to be encompassed empirically, or they don’t.

Okay, but how do they grapple with morality in a world where it is presumed that there is no immortality and salvation? A world in which right and wrong are clearly emboddied historically, culturally and experientially?

How [in a world sans God] are they able to interact with others and not tumble down into this:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

From my own frame of mind, this is no less applicable to the practitioners of Eastern philosophies.

I agree. But this doesn’t make the horror of extinction or an essentially absurd and meaningless world any less daunting for the No God folks.

And, given that, I don’t expect that God and religion will ever wither away entirely. Or not even for the majority of actual flesh and blood human beings.

Subjectivists are those who insist that their own arguments are necessarily right. The word “own” already stands for this. Additionaly, subjectivists have more reasons to insist that their own arguments are necessarily right, because they lack objectivity, at least always more than objectivists lack subjectivity. It is not difficult to be a subjectivist, it is more difficult to be an objectivist. Objectivists consider the objects before considering their own emotions and other endogenous affects - that is difficult enough and probably not completely possible. Subjectivists do just the opposite - that is not difficult, although probably not completely possible either.

There are nonetheless many people who state to be, but are not objectivists. So, I am not talking about those alleged objectivists here. Most people are subjectivists, regardless whether they know it or not.

You are off track in all your replies, I will not waste time on all of them.
One clear example is the above,

Note I did not claim the above use of “impossibility” by Kant in those sections is translated to Kant proving God’s existence is an impossibility.

Note I begin the point with;
“To clue you in…”

I give you another clue re Kant stating the idea of God is an illusion, thus cannot be real within empirical-rational reality. Kant sense of ‘illusion’ in this case refer to ‘a transcendental illusion’ and not as empirical illusion.
In all cases whether it is an empirical or transcendental illusion, such illusions cannot be real within empirical-rational reality.
You have to have a thorough understanding of Kant’s CPR to know how Kant’s conclusion is God is an impossibility within empirical-rational reality.

It is advised by many who are in the know, to understand Kant reasonably one has to spent at least 3 years full time [this is what I did] or 5 years part time researching and reading Kant. From what you have posted of Kant, I don’t see you have understood Kant’s philosophy and thus your critiques and counter are really baseless and has no credibility to say Kant is wrong.

What don’t you read up Kant’s point [at least 3 years full time] and provide your counters to them?

All truths = means ALL regardless of
“how things work” or otherwise.
Thus to assess the “truthfulness” of any conclusion we must assess the reliability of the elements and basis of the specific Framework.
For example, it is obvious scientific truths has high objectivity and credibility because of its Framework [with its assumption] and openness to verification, repeatable testing by anyone and producing consistent conclusion subject to its framework.

The claims of God’s existence has consensus of the majority [90% of humans] but the framework it relied upon is loose [not like the one from science] and not credible, i.e. cannot be empirically tested and verified, and I have extended to prove it is an impossibility within an empirical-rational reality.

Yes God is actually ‘abduced’ not deduced into existence based on primitive* reason [instinctual] rather than based on the higher cortical faculty of reason. * Most higher animals would use such low level instinctual reason.
I have proven when such a reasoned God is cornered it will end up as an absolutely perfect God which is an impossibility within an empirical-rational reality.

I have stated the actual grounds and basis for the emergence of a God is due to psychological reason driven by an existential crisis. The problem is most theists are ignorant of this and rather would be driven to look outside themselves as they have been relying for psychological security from external parents, so by habits and customs, an external God [Hume’s constant conjunction].

Not sure of the above.
As stated earlier, whatever is claimed to be right or true must be qualified to the framework they relied upon. As for the ‘objectivists’ I note they have questionable assumptions within their framework.

DNA wise, the drive for morality is inherent in all humans.

Religions do promote Morality & Ethics, that is one pro but it is only a very limited one.
The problem is the Abrahamic religions froze whatever ideas of morality in immutable holy books from God and thus stop it from its natural development to cope with inevitable changes within humanity and reality.

Since there is an inherent drive for Morality & Ethics within humans, the non-religious are improving and making progress on Morality naturally to cope with change.
The drive for Morality & Ethics are represented by real neurons and its relevant neural circuits within the brain. There is no way immutable holy verses can stop its progress.

One example is slavery. The Abrahamic religion implicitly condone and promote slavery and this is based on immutable verses from God which cannot be changed eternally.
OTOH, the secular authorities has banned slavery all over the World with serious penalties for non-compliance. No doubt some people will still practice slavery illegally but at least humanity has something legal to work towards the elimination of slavery.
This is one pro [advancing] over religions.

As far as Morality is concern it is stagnant in the dirty immutable pools of theism but Morality unchained will progress within secularism.

I agree theism [at present, not future] is a critical necessity for the majority to deal with an inherent unavoidable existential crisis. Therefore I will not advocate the elimination of theism at present nor the very near future.
But given the evidence that the cons of theism* are progressing toward outweighing its cons, humanity must strive at the present to embark on a project to wean off [voluntarily] and replace theism expeditiously with foolproof alternatives to deal with that same inherent unavoidable existential crisis.

  • from the Abrahamic religions especially Islam which has moral support from theism in general.

The Eastern non-theistic religions [e.g. Buddhism, Jainism, Taoism, etc] are already resolving that same existential crisis without any evil baggage, so it is possible to wean off theism in the future or ASAP.

Your new scape-goat now is “Within Empirical-Rational Reality”.
:laughing:

Got news forya:

Here of course we can get into the entirely technical discussion between epistemologists regarding precisely what it means to distinguish subjective from objective. Indeed, in a wholly determined universe the distinction would seem to be an illusion. The trick of a mind convinced that “I” is actually able to make these distinctions autonomously on threads like this.

Me, I draw the line between those things that we think we know and those things we are able to demonstrate that all rational men and men are obligated to know in turn. Something is true objectively to the extent that we can determine that it is true for all of us.

But: only to the extent that we can accomplish this given the gap between what any particular one of us think we know here and now and all that would need to be known in order to encompass [ontologically] What Existence Is. And then [teleologically] Why It Is What It Is.

Does existence serve some purpose?

God’s, perhaps?

Instead, all too often these rather ponderous discussions revolve more around an exchange of “general descriptions” like this one:

What on earth are we to make of this?! Describe a particular context in which flesh and blood human beings interact and note these distinctions with respect to actual behaviors. Behaviors seemingly rooted in the either/or world [true essentially for all of us] and then our reaction to those behaviors as this becomes embodied/entangled in the is/ought world [true existentially from a particular point of view].

Liberals do not qualify as rational so many people will be excluded for liberals live subjectively in their heads disregarding the surrounding objective reality that is shared by all.

Natural/known by all rational men and women…heterosexuality is normal (90% of the population), homosexuality is abnormal (10% of the population), beastiality is more abnormal (8% of the population), pedophilia is even more abnormal (3% of the population), transexualism is even more abnormal (1% of the population).

Abnormal-Not typical, usual, or regular; not normal; deviant.

A deviant is someone whose behavior falls far outside of societies norms. Liberals are deviants who support other deviants (homosexuals and transexuals currently) and promote deviant behaviors (homosexuality and transexuality).

Crap…off topic. What to say about God? God is more real, more possible than a liberal. :evilfun:

That is one of more possible reasons why “liberals” believe that God is “impossible” (Prismatic 567) or at least less possible than they themselves are: they are less possible than God, and as “liberal” god(wannabe)s they do not tolerate God besides them. :wink:

Again you missed my point!
As I had asserted, your philosophical views are too narrow and shallow.

I wonder you understand Kant’s ‘woken up from dogmatic slumber by Hume’. Before Kant there was the serious position of the dichotomy between empiricism versus rationalism [the twain will never meet]. Kant reconciled the differences and demonstrated both need to work in complementarity with each other to understand reality. This give rise to the philosophical view of the Empirical-Rationality Reality.

Empirical-Rationality Reality is the interpretation of reality based on the empirical [Science, etc.] and complemented by philosophical [logic, wisdom, and all relevant tools] thoughts.
The empirical element in Science is cannot be strong credibility for knowledge, it has to be complemented with rational elements of a framework [Scientific Method, assumptions, peer review, etc.] that is philosophical.
To understand reality per-se humanity need to understand its imperative and inevitable empirical based to be complemented with Philosophy-proper [as defined].

With the idealized God, it is void of any empirical element to start with and thus is moot and a non-starter for consideration whether it is real [empirical-rational] or not.

Let me clue you in re Russell in History of Western Philosophy, where he presented a realistic view of reality where empiricism [e.g. Science] merges with the rationality of philosophy rather than the dogma of certainty from theology;

What kind of philosophical view is that?
An absolute perfect one Reality is an impossibility.

What??
So what is ‘objective’?
‘Objective’ is none other than intersubjective consensus based on empirical evidence.
Do you agree accepted ‘Scientific Theories’ are objective, i.e. can be repeated tested by any one and arriving at the same conclusion.

I can guess, your sense of objective are those Plato’s Forms, the theistic God that exist independent of human conditions which can never be proven to be real within an empirical-rational reality.

Yes, it is Crap, not off topic, but way off in countering the OP.

Btw, are you aware of the Normal Curve aka Bell Curve.

The main principle of the Bell Curve is for large populations like 7+ billion humans, human variables [as evidenced] are Normally [natural] Distributed as within the elementary principles of the Bell Curve.

Thus for each variable considered there is the mean, average and opposites on the extremes of both sides of the Curve.
For example take “intelligence,” of all humans, what we have is 66% average, 30 above and below average intelligence and at the extreme we have 1% of highly intelligent people and at the other extreme 1% of very stupid people.
Yes, the 1% of highly intelligence people deviated extremely from the mean, but to label them ‘deviant’ in a pejorative and derogatory is immorally wrong in this particular context. It is the same for labeling the very stupid as deviant.

So when we take human sexuality into consideration, by the principles of the Bell Curve, there will be naturally a percentile [say 5%] whose sexuality will deviate from the mean or average. Since it is natural, it is immorally wrong to label them as ‘deviant’ with a pejorative and derogatory attitude.

Take human height, there will be a percentile of people [adults] with a range of average height but at the extreme we have 1% who are below 3 feet and 1% above 7 feet.

It is the same for the political spectrum, there will be the majority average and those at both ends of the extreme.

To merely call out the liberal for condemnation is very philosophical immature. What we have are the small % of extremes from the ‘Right’ and ‘Left.’

Btw, I am neither left nor right. I don’t agree with such specific dualistic labels.

Where are your proofs?
This is a philosohical forum and it thus not proper simply to make such unsupported assertions.

P1: God must be a divine being.
P2: Anything less than a divine being is not God.

Humans are unable to “entirely” conceive of the divine.
Therefore: anything of which a human may conceive is necessarily less than divine.
Therefore: anything of which a human may conceive is not God.

If God may not be conceived by a human, then humans are unable to conceive of God.
Therefore anything conceived by a human “as God” is not “God”.

QED: God does not exist to humans.

At least a well stated argument.

But it is commonly accepted that man cannot truly conceive of the actual God. It is accepted that God cannot be conceived of by man, and that is a part of what God, God.

But even still, the conceivablity of God is merely one of many characteristics attributed to God, not a definitive attribute.

And btw, the Bell curve truly fits almost nothing concerning people.

Could God not just reveal himself to humans without them having to first conceive of him
And then would that revelation not be how they would conceive of him from that point on