BBC : Agnostics

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

It is impossible to know that the probability of anything is 0, outside of a maths book.

At some point, to function as humans, we decide that some things are "certain." I am certain that I'm not going to be hit by a pink dragon falling from the sky in the next 30 seconds. I have no way of knowing that the probabilty of that happening is actually 0, but am I looking up constantly worrying about it happening? No. Are you? I doubt it as well.

For an agnositic to say that we cannot know God doesn't exists and therefore there is a possibility he does exist is rather silly. We cannot know anything. But I doubt that agnostics apply this fact to all areas of their lives. If they did then an agnosistic could never be certain of anything ("Honey, will you get some milk from the shop?" "Umm, many, its impossible for me to say for sure, I might get hit by a dragon, can't be sure")

Ah. The dragon that falls on you head - hello again! I've been expecting you.

To state that something is not impossible is not the same as saying it might hit you on the way to the shops. Even those who believe that God exists do not expect every trip to the Centra to turn into the road to Damascus.

Many people, theists included, are practical atheists. They act as if the possibility of God intervening in their lives is so remote as to be practically non-existent. This is not difficult to reconcile with a philosophical viewpoint that includes God's definite existence - the questions are separate for most people.

Wicknight wrote:

So the question, that I actually find more interesting than all this logic, is why apply it in such as strict manner to the question of God?

Eternal damnation! The stakes, in other words, are very high. In addition, atheism is actually not a widespread viewpoint. Privately, one's reasons for atheism can be what they like, but publicly, an imperfectly defensible position gives the debate to the theists.

Wicknight wrote:

We are always playing with odds. That is how life is. Unless you can name one thing we actually know for absolute certainty.

What are the odds that Star Wars didn't actually happen exactly the way it is portrayed in George Lucas's movie? Would you refuse to state that it certainly didn't actually happen?

I would be forced to state that it had a vanishingly small probability, but is not, of itself, impossible, except where clear breaches of the laws of physics are involved...in a big enough Universe, even the vanishingly improbably becomes a reasonable possibility.

Wicknight wrote:

Gods are a human invention.

As to this - mere repetition of the assertion will not turn the hypothesis into fact. Otherwise, you know, JC would certainly have made the Flood a fact by now, and evolution would have ceased somewhere around page 100...

cordially,
Scofflaw

aidan24326

Scofflaw wrote:

That's right - it's begging the question because you are assuming that God is only a human invention, which is definitely not proven.

That there is a good and coherent reason why humans would invent God, is not the same as proving that God is invented.

Technically you may be right, but once again we can say with a high degree of probability that god was a human invention. Why? There is much evidence for it for a start. Secondly, if god wasn't a human invention, that begs the question as to how the concept of a god came to be in the first place? Did god reveal himself to an earlier civilisation? Most unlikely when you consider the number of variations of him/it. Were some earlier civilisation privy to some deeper insights about the true nature of the universe? Again highly unlikely. So where did the idea come from? I suggest it came from the same place as all ideas, from human psychology, and I can think of no other way, short of god having revealed himself. Which, fantastical stories in the bible aside, did not happen in recorded history.

Scofflaw

aidan24326 wrote:

Technically you may be right, but once again we can say with a high degree of probability that god was a human invention. Why? There is much evidence for it for a start. Secondly, if god wasn't a human invention, that begs the question as to how the concept of a god came to be in the first place? Did god reveal himself to an earlier civilisation? Most unlikely when you consider the number of variations of him/it. Were some earlier civilisation privy to some deeper insights about the true nature of the universe? Again highly unlikely. So where did the idea come from? I suggest it came from the same place as all ideas, from human psychology, and I can think of no other way, short of god having revealed himself. Which, fantastical stories in the bible aside, did not happen in recorded history.

What if I suggested the following:

That God exists, and is entirely incomprehensible to us. That all human gods are derived from our partial and incomplete glimpses of deity (cf the Blind Men and the Elephant), followed by a good deal of inventiveness. That we accept the inventive elaborations of the various described gods because we recognise that there is something there, although we cannot tell what. That God intervenes in the Universe constantly - indeed, is the Universe, and that we cannot recognise Its interventions because we have never been without them. That It is gravity, and electromagnetism, and all the other forces - the unifying force behind them all. That we fail to recognise god as fleas would fail to recognise the dog they live on. That at death our egos fall apart on brain-death, and all our material returns to being an unconscious part of god itself?

What, in all of that, is disprovable?

cordially,
Scofflaw

pH

Which all brings up how defining atheism as something to do with 'belief in God' ends up in the same argument again and again. In my mind a person is a theist if they worship a God or take actions in their life on the basis that God exists.

If not they're atheists in my book.

aidan24326

aidan24326 wrote:

and I can think of no other way, short of god having revealed himself. Which, fantastical stories in the bible aside, did not happen in recorded history.

Clearly the bhagavad gita had the right of it

aidan24326

Scofflaw wrote:

What if I suggested the following:

That God exists, and is entirely incomprehensible to us.

Possible. I never said otherwise. An incomprehensible god is not totally improbable, though would be unknowable, which leaves us back where we started.

That all human gods are derived from our partial and incomplete glimpses of deity (cf the Blind Men and the Elephant), followed by a good deal of inventiveness.

Not too sure what you mean here. The first part of that sounds like the same kind of mumbo-jumbo that you argue against over on the christianity forum. How would 'partial and incomplete glimpses of deity' be any different from just admitting we made the whole thing up? I agree with the inventiveness bit alright, heavy on that there chef.

That we accept the inventive elaborations of the various described gods because we recognise that there is something there, although we cannot tell what. That God intervenes in the Universe constantly - indeed, is the Universe, and that we cannot recognise Its interventions because we have never been without them.

I don't recognise that there is anything 'there', bar the universe itself. And why call the universe god? Surely we might as well just call it the universe? And how does it 'intervene' exactly? By making the rain fall? By setting off the odd supernova when it's angry? If we cannot recognise the interventions because we were never without them, then I don't see what importance they could possibly have, other than implications for freewill perhaps. Though I believe that freewill and the illusiuon of freewill are the same thing anyway.

That It is gravity, and electromagnetism, and all the other forces - the unifying force behind them all. That we fail to recognise god as fleas would fail to recognise the dog they live on. That at death our egos fall apart on brain-death, and all our material returns to being an unconscious part of god itself?

Scofflaw you are descending into more mumbo jumbo claptrap. It's true we may fail to recognise god at all, as fleas and dogs. I said this earlier myself, that it might be like asking an ant to understand human knowledge, such as advanced mathematics. For all we know, our material, on death, returns to the earth from whence it came. In fact that's all we know. What could it possibly mean to say that our consciousness 'becomes part of god itself', beyond wild fanciful specualtion?

What, in all of that, is disprovable?

Well not a whole lot really. Since you're being deliberately obscurantist. I imagine your friend JC would be amused to see your esoteric ramblings on this thread.

Dades

aidan24326 wrote:

Since you're being deliberately obscurantist.

If I learned nothing else today, at least I learned a new word.

robindch

> Which all brings up how defining atheism as something to do with 'belief in
> God' ends up in the same argument again and again. In my mind a person is
> a theist if they worship a God or take actions in their life on the basis that
> god exists. If not they're atheists in my book.

hmmm... that's a good way of putting it -- nice one.

Scofflaw

aidan24326 wrote:

Scofflaw you are descending into more mumbo jumbo claptrap. It's true we may fail to recognise god at all, as fleas and dogs. I said this earlier myself, that it might be like asking an ant to understand human knowledge, such as advanced mathematics. For all we know, our material, on death, returns to the earth from whence it came. In fact that's all we know. What could it possibly mean to say that our consciousness 'becomes part of god itself', beyond wild fanciful specualtion?

Well not a whole lot really. Since you're being deliberately obscurantist. I imagine your friend JC would be amused to see your esoteric ramblings on this thread.

Thanks! It's a talent, I guess...certainly I'm better at it than he is (!!!!).

It serves a purpose - I can pretty much guarantee I could sell my deliberately obscurantist version of God to quite a lot of people. So an incomprehensible and indeed unknowable God is not necessarily going to put people off theism. Not only that, but I think such a god would also be worshippable - not through the 'fear and trembling' route that fundies like, but through the 'joyous celebration of oneness' route.

pH wrote:

Which all brings up how defining atheism as something to do with 'belief in God' ends up in the same argument again and again. In my mind a person is a theist if they worship a God or take actions in their life on the basis that God exists.

If not they're atheists in my book.

Yup. Actually, the majority of people are well on their way to atheism by any practical definition.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

To state that something is not impossible is not the same as saying it might hit you on the way to the shops. Even those who believe that God exists do not expect every trip to the Centra to turn into the road to Damascus.

But why not is the question?

If one accepts that God is possible, how does one then decide that he isn't actually going to appear to me this morning. And why would an agnostic say that the first is within the realms of possibility, but that the other certainly won't happen.

This is what I mean about holding the question of God as some kind of special question, where without odds of 0 we should leave the possibility open, that it is best not to be too sure about it, where as other questions that we still don't have odds of 0, we easily let slide as simply "not going to happen"

Scofflaw wrote:

Eternal damnation! The stakes, in other words, are very high.

I think agnostics go to hell just like the atheists....

Scofflaw wrote:

I would be forced to state that it had a vanishingly small probability, but is not, of itself, impossible, except where clear breaches of the laws of physics are involved...in a big enough Universe, even the vanishingly improbably becomes a reasonable possibility.

So you are open to the idea that Star Wars might have actually taken place exactly as written by George Lucas, involved a character that looked exactly like Han Solo, and an Empire mad up of British sounding storm troopers?

I would also point out that to an agnostic there are no clear breaches of the laws of physics, since it is possible that these laws are not laws at all.

Scofflaw wrote:

As to this - mere repetition of the assertion will not turn the hypothesis into fact.

True, but I didn't simply make the assertion up. It is based on an assessment of the evidence. Do you disagree?

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

What if I suggested the following:

That God exists, and is entirely incomprehensible to us.

Then "it" isn't God, since "God" is a construct of the human mind, and as such we could not construct an idea around something of which we have no comprehension.

Scofflaw wrote:

That all human gods are derived from our partial and incomplete glimpses of deity (cf the Blind Men and the Elephant), followed by a good deal of inventiveness.

That argument has been made before on this forum, that there is some kind of universal truth running through all religions that might point to an actually entity. But if you examine the history of world religions it is very hard to see any universal pattern, beyond the idea that gods are simply humans with the power to alter nature, and this is far more easily explained by the need for humans to view the world in the context of human behaviour.

Scofflaw wrote:

That we accept the inventive elaborations of the various described gods because we recognise that there is something there, although we cannot tell what.

There is no evidence to support that idea, and a lot of evidence to suggest otherwise.

Scofflaw wrote:

That God intervenes in the Universe constantly - indeed, is the Universe, and that we cannot recognise Its interventions because we have never been without them.

Again that would not be "God", since for us to form a concept we need to be aware of the entity in the first place. Crocodiles and dragons.

Scofflaw wrote:

That we fail to recognise god as fleas would fail to recognise the dog they live on.

I don't know why people keep using this analogy. Flees are aware of the dog they live on. And again, if they weren't aware of the dog they live on they could not define it as a "dog", just like we could not define this entity the way we have with "god".

Scofflaw wrote:

What, in all of that, is disprovable?

You don't have to disprove God to be an atheists, since disproving anything to such a level of certainty is impossible, in the same way to you don't have to disprove Star Wars theory to believe it didn't happen a long time ago in a galaxy far far away.

Do you believe that Star Wars really happened? I would imagine no.

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

If one accepts that God is possible, how does one then decide that he isn't actually going to appear to me this morning. And why would an agnostic say that the first is within the realms of possibility, but that the other certainly won't happen.

Paucity of recorded interventions - they are clearly not everyday events.

Wicknight wrote:

I think agnostics go to hell just like the atheists....

Probably - but that doesn't change the importance of the existence of God.

Wicknight wrote:

So you are open to the idea that Star Wars might have actually taken place exactly as written by George Lucas, involved a character that looked exactly like Han Solo, and an Empire mad up of British sounding storm troopers?

Yup. Not to the point, however, that I would act on that openness. I am, as they say, practically atheist about it, but philosophically agnostic.

Wicknight wrote:

I would also point out that to an agnostic there are no clear breaches of the laws of physics, since it is possible that these laws are not laws at all.

Really? That sounds like an extraordinarily wide definition of agnosticism. Do you not accept that one can be agnostic about one thing, a believer in another, and an atheist about a third?

Wicknight wrote:

True, but I didn't simply make the assertion up. It is based on an assessment of the evidence. Do you disagree?

To be clear - I am arguing that the assertion that "gods are only a human invention" is unproved. As far as I can tell, it requires you to prove all human experience of deities is delusional, and that no god can possibly exist.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

Then "it" isn't God, since "God" is a construct of the human mind, and as such we could not construct an idea around something of which we have no comprehension.

I am not certain how you arrive at this conclusion. If such a thing exists, then it is not a construct of the human mind. There is also absolutely nothing to stop us slapping a mental construct around something incomprehensible - we do it all the time.

Wicknight wrote:

That argument has been made before on this forum, that there is some kind of universal truth running through all religions that might point to an actually entity. But if you examine the history of world religions it is very hard to see any universal pattern, beyond the idea that gods are simply humans with the power to alter nature, and this is far more easily explained by the need for humans to view the world in the context of human behaviour.

Again, I would consider that an extremely dismissive view - erroneously so. In addition, the argument works equally well for my hypothesis - that it is the chosen construct to cover the incomprehensible.

Wicknight wrote:

There is no evidence to support that idea, and a lot of evidence to suggest otherwise.

And no amount of evidence will prove there isn't. We are sure of nothing but that we don't know everything - and that leaves a lot of room.

Wicknight wrote:

Again that would not be "God", since for us to form a concept we need to be aware of the entity in the first place. Crocodiles and dragons.

That certainly doesn't follow. I am, as I say, pretty certain I can sell that description as a notion of god - and many people would certainly say they have awareness of such an entity. You are confusing awareness with evidence.

Wicknight wrote:

I don't know why people keep using this analogy. Flees are aware of the dog they live on. And again, if they weren't aware of the dog they live on they could not define it as a "dog", just like we could not define this entity the way we have with "god".

The point of the analogy is that (as far as we know), the flea will certainly have an awareness of the dog, but is extremely unlikely to have any comprehension of it. It shows the difference between awareness and comprehension.

Imagine, if you like, a flea theist. He lives on a dog, and is certainly aware of the dog. However, he has no comprehension of the dog - knows nothing of its life, its eating habits, its sex drive, family relationships, etc etc. He may tell other fleas that the Dog has spoken to him, and revealed various things, which he is going to write down in a book. He may also describe the Dog as "like unto a giant flea", simply because he cannot imagine the Dog itself except in his own terms. What is so peculiar about this? Have you read Flatland?

Wicknight wrote:

Do you believe that Star Wars really happened? I would imagine no.

See previous answer!

cordially,
Scofflaw

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

Yup. Not to the point, however, that I would act on that openness. I am, as they say, practically atheist about it, but philosophically agnostic.

Are you not then an atheist who simply realises that he might be wrong, as I think most atheists are?

Scofflaw wrote:

Really? That sounds like an extraordinarily wide definition of agnosticism. Do you not accept that one can be agnostic about one thing, a believer in another, and an atheist about a third?

Not without being rather hypocritical about being a "philosophical agnostic". It is not agnosticism itself, it is the logic behind your support for agnosticism.

Your argument is basically that we cannot prove God doesn't exist so being agnostic is the most sensible outlook to the question. But that stance can and does hold equally for anything and everything that humans can question or imagine, from dragons to the laws of physics. Using that strict definition of "know" we don't actually know anything, and using the extention of that logic applied to everything not just god then being agnostic to everything is the most sensible outlook.

While that might work as a philosophical axom, it really doesn't work back here in the real world. As I think you realise already, based on the "practical atheists" comment.

Scofflaw wrote:

To be clear - I am arguing that the assertion that "gods are only a human invention" is unproved.

I'm not sure how one could "prove" that to the standard you would require to state it as an absolute truth. It is an assertion that has a lot of support behind it.

Scofflaw wrote:

As far as I can tell, it requires you to prove all human experience of deities is delusional, and that no god can possibly exist.

Not really, it simply needs to show that at some point humans invented gods. This is pretty clear from the fact that all known religions could not exist together and as such some of them must have been invented. This shows that human can and do invent gods and religions. The reasons why they would want to do this are also quite clear.

So given the reason why humans would invent gods, and the knowledge that they have in the past done so (at least once or twice), it is not a great leap to suppose that humans invented religion. It is a far greater leap to assume that these religions, that can be explained in the context of human behaviour, are actually based on a real entity or force.

Granted this isn't "proof" in the mathematical or scientific sense, but as we have established such a proof is rather impossible for most questions that we confront day to day, but we still struggle on regardless. I'm not sure that anything can ever be proven in history to the standard you require.

Scofflaw wrote:

I am not certain how you arrive at this conclusion. If such a thing exists, then it is not a construct of the human mind.

But our concept of it is. They might, by some fluke, be exactly the same, "God" might be exactly like "bob", but that is a random fluke. The two concepts are different.

Think of it this way. I imagine my perfect woman, I get a mental picture in my head. We will call her "Cindy" after another perfect woman. Now, by some fluke, a girl might actually exist that looks and acts exactly like this "Cindy". We will call this other girl "Laura".

When I'm imagining my perfect woman I'm imagining "Cindy", not "Laura". Laura exists sure, she is exactly like Cindy, but the two concepts are not the same. One is a construct of my imagination, the other is a real life person. They just happen to be identical. If I proceed to talk about Cindy, draw a picture of her etc I'm not at the same time drawing a picture of Laura, I'm not talking about Laura.

I might actually met Laura, but my concept of Laura does not morph into Cindy. They are two seperate concepts. And most importantly I can still reject Cindy as not being real, without this rejection effecting the concept of Laura. Laura might or might not exist, but Cindy certainly does not exist.

Scofflaw wrote:

There is also absolutely nothing to stop us slapping a mental construct around something incomprehensible - we do it all the time.

I'm not sure how if it is incomprehensible. You end up with Cindy, not Laura.

Scofflaw wrote:

Again, I would consider that an extremely dismissive view - erroneously so.

It is dismissive, very dismissive, because I cannot see a univeral pattern beyond the univeral needs of humans to view events within the context of human behaviour. I see very little difference between gods and super heros, or gods and father figures of children.

If you want to try and convince me otherwise feel free.

Scofflaw wrote:

I am, as I say, pretty certain I can sell that description as a notion of god - and many people would certainly say they have awareness of such an entity.

You assume though that because someone claims to be aware of such an entity they actually are. That is a huge assumption. It is far more likely, that even if such an entity exist that the person is actually aware of their own imaginary concept of such an entity.

If you asked an explorer in 1242CE if they had seen a "dragon" they might tell you they certainly have, they saw one the last time they travelled to Northern Africa. Of course they haven't seen a dragon, though the concept of the dragon is very real to them. They saw a crocodile, probably in captivity. A "dragon" doesn't exist as a real concept, despite the fact that a lot of people have this concept in their minds.

Scofflaw wrote:

He may also describe the Dog as "like unto a giant flea", simply because he cannot imagine the Dog itself except in his own terms.

That is kinda my point. To the flee the dog isn't a dog, he is "god" But in reality the dog isn't a god, he is a dog. The concept the flee makes of the "god" is not real, any more than the dragons to the 11th century explorer are real, of Cindy is real to me. In reality its a dog, and in reality it is a crocodile.

Which is why I state that I reject the concept of "god" as being a human invention. If something does exist out there it is not "god", it is the dog except we have no idea what the dog actually is. It is not Cindy, it is Laura, except we have no idea Laura exists.

When (if) we ever do discover the actual entity (if it exists) we wil define a concept of it based on what it actually is.

stevejazzx

you two guys need to get a room

you obviously love each other!

Scofflaw

Hmm. I see - what you are saying is that we cannot genuinely imagine (mentally construct) something incomprehensible, because it is incomprehensible. To be able to make a mental construct of something we must, obviously, be able to comprehend it.

That suggests that in order for us to be able to create a 'mental construct' of a car, we need to understand cars. Clearly, however, this is not the case. A failure to understand the operation of the internal combustion engine, or ABS brakes, or what all the microschips are doing, doesn't prevent even a child from building a mental construct of a car.

The mental construct so created does not map one-to-one onto a real car - but then it is not expected to - nor is it expected to be fully accurate. Certainly the more someone understands about cars, the more accurate the mental construct will be.

To come back to your Laura/Cindy example. Obviously, you can physically meet Laura, which you cannot do with Cindy. However, you will never actually understand what 'being Laura' is really like, because you will never be Laura. Therefore, the best you can do will always be a mental construct of Laura - in which case she might as well be Cindy, since neither is actually real.

All of us exist, to a very large extent, in a world of mental constructs. When our mental constructs are accurate, we can predict to a greater extent the probable actions of those things represented by our mental constructs.

One of the key characteristics of our constructs is that they will always be limited - indeed, they are intended to be merely 'fit for the purpose'. I have, for example, a mental construct of the poster JC - I have a pretty good idea of what he will say on any given topic, within limits. However, I have only the fuzziest concept of JC the person behind the poster - I cannot predict what he drinks, for example, or what sort of music he prefers, or even his gender.

JC is, therefore, in a real sense incomprehensible to me - and I know that. I have, nevertheless, a limited construct of JC which is sufficient for my dealings with him. In addition, I am certain that JC is a real person.

So, to say that we cannot make a mental construct of something incomprehensible is not true. So a proof that an incomprehensible God cannot exist that relies on our inability to construct mental models of the incomprehensible is clearly unsustainable.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

stevejazzx wrote:

you two guys need to get a room

you obviously love each other!

What we need is a bar!

cordially,
Scofflaw

stevejazzx

honestly theres no need to get him drunk first...he'll go willingly

Zombrex

stevejazzx wrote:

honestly theres no need to get him drunk first...he'll go willingly

Ah, I see my reputation from college preceeds me

Whorely,
Wicknight

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

Hmm. I see - what you are saying is that we cannot genuinely imagine (mentally construct) something incomprehensible, because it is incomprehensible. To be able to make a mental construct of something we must, obviously, be able to comprehend it.

Pretty much. That doesn't mean we cannot make a mental construct of something, but the mental construct we produce is not going to be an accurate representation of the actual thing, and the two constructs are going to be different. Like the dragon and the crocodile. A dragon is not a crocodile, even though the formation of the former might have been influenced by the real world presence of the latter. I don't believe in dragons. I do believe in crocodiles. The fact that the original idea of a dragon might be influenced by 3rd hand observations of crocodiles doesn't make me increase my belief in dragons.

Scofflaw wrote:

That suggests that in order for us to be able to create a 'mental construct' of a car, we need to understand cars. Clearly, however, this is not the case. A failure to understand the operation of the internal combustion engine, or ABS brakes, or what all the microschips are doing, doesn't prevent even a child from building a mental construct of a car.

But the child does comprehend the car to the degree of his model. He comprehends that it is a big shiny metal object, that his parents drive. He doesn't understand how the car moves forward, but then his model in his mind does not require him to understand how it moves forward, simply that it does.

If the chlid had truely no comprehension of a car he could not construct a mental concept of it, no matter how simplifed, in his head beyond his imagination

Scofflaw wrote:

Therefore, the best you can do will always be a mental construct of Laura - in which case she might as well be Cindy, since neither is actually real.

No she might not as well be Cindy. That is the important part. They might both be mental constructs, but they are not the same mental concept and that is the important bit to remember. Laura is not Cindy. To assume she is simply because of similarities between them would be a grave mistake.

Scofflaw wrote:

JC is, therefore, in a real sense incomprehensible to me - and I know that. I have, nevertheless, a limited construct of JC which is sufficient for my dealings with him. In addition, I am certain that JC is a real person.

But he is not as a whole incomprehensible to you. Parts of his life are, and you have wisely not created a mental construct of these parts of his life, or at least if you have you realise that they are simply products of your imagination. If people did that with "God" we would not be having the conversation.

The whole point of my posts is that we should know the difference. You should, and clearly do, know the difference between the mental constructs of JC that are based on what he actually has done, and the bits that are products of your imagination.

I have a mental picture of what JC looks like in my mind. That mental construct, I can say with all out certainty, is wrong, since it is simply a product of my imagination. The fact that I have read JCs postings on Boards.ie doesn't change that. It could, by some crazy fluke, be exactly what he does look like. But I would view that as being so doubtful as to be certain that he doesn't actually look like the mental imagine I have in my head.

I can therefore say that the mental construct in my head of how JC looks (we will call this construct JC-A) is nothing like the mental construct I would create if I actually met him (JC-B). JC-A would still exist in my mind, filed away somewhere. But it is still wrong, and the important point is that JC-A never existed in reality.

To try and tie this back to religion, I'm an atheists because I view "God" as an imaginary concept in the same way that JC-A is. There might be something out there that actually exists, the way JC-B does. But that doesn't make JC-A any more a concept grounded in reality, or any less incorrect.

Even if by some fluke JC-A does look exactly like JC-B, that still doesn't mean JC-A was originally a valid representation of reality. It isn't because I didn't base it on reality, I based it on my own imagination. I could be, by a fluke, correct, but it is still imagination. It would be accurate despite itself, and such an event is quite unlikely.

Scofflaw wrote:

So, to say that we cannot make a mental construct of something incomprehensible is not true.

Well all the examples so far you have given the person did comprehend the item they were modelling sufficently enough to model it. The child comprehends the shape, texture, colour and function of the car, and as such is able to construct a model in his head based on the shape texture colour and function of said car.

The only factor was the level of comprehension. Not understanding how a drive shaft works doesn't mean you find a car incomprehensible. It might mean you find a drive shaft incomprehensible.

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

Pretty much. That doesn't mean we cannot make a mental construct of something, but the mental construct we produce is not going to be an accurate representation of the actual thing, and the two constructs are going to be different. Like the dragon and the crocodile. A dragon is not a crocodile, even though the formation of the former might have been influenced by the real world presence of the latter. I don't believe in dragons. I do believe in crocodiles. The fact that the original idea of a dragon might be influenced by 3rd hand observations of crocodiles doesn't make me increase my belief in dragons.


But the child does comprehend the car to the degree of his model. He comprehends that it is a big shiny metal object, that his parents drive. He doesn't understand how the car moves forward, but then his model in his mind does not require him to understand how it moves forward, simply that it does.

If the chlid had truely no comprehension of a car he could not construct a mental concept of it, no matter how simplifed, in his head beyond his imagination

You are overloading the word 'comprehension' - what you mean here, I think, is 'apprehension'. Both can be used to mean 'mental grasp', but only 'comprehension' carries the additional implication of a deeper understanding.

Wicknight wrote:

No she might not as well be Cindy. That is the important part. They might both be mental constructs, but they are not the same mental concept and that is the important bit to remember. Laura is not Cindy. To assume she is simply because of similarities between them would be a grave mistake.

Sorry. I was unclear - I do not mean that they are the same, only that they are both mental constructs, and it is equally possible for either to be entirely unrelated to any real person.

Wicknight wrote:

But he is not as a whole incomprehensible to you. Parts of his life are, and you have wisely not created a mental construct of these parts of his life, or at least if you have you realise that they are simply products of your imagination. If people did that with "God" we would not be having the conversation.

The whole point of my posts is that we should know the difference. You should, and clearly do, know the difference between the mental constructs of JC that are based on what he actually has done, and the bits that are products of your imagination.

I have a mental picture of what JC looks like in my mind. That mental construct, I can say with all out certainty, is wrong, since it is simply a product of my imagination. The fact that I have read JCs postings on Boards.ie doesn't change that. It could, by some crazy fluke, be exactly what he does look like. But I would view that as being so doubtful as to be certain that he doesn't actually look like the mental imagine I have in my head.

I can therefore say that the mental construct in my head of how JC looks (we will call this construct JC-A) is nothing like the mental construct I would create if I actually met him (JC-B). JC-A would still exist in my mind, filed away somewhere. But it is still wrong, and the important point is that JC-A never existed in reality.

To try and tie this back to religion, I'm an atheists because I view "God" as an imaginary concept in the same way that JC-A is. There might be something out there that actually exists, the way JC-B does. But that doesn't make JC-A any more a concept grounded in reality, or any less incorrect.

Even if by some fluke JC-A does look exactly like JC-B, that still doesn't mean JC-A was originally a valid representation of reality. It isn't because I didn't base it on reality, I based it on my own imagination. I could be, by a fluke, correct, but it is still imagination. It would be accurate despite itself, and such an event is quite unlikely.


Well all the examples so far you have given the person did comprehend the item they were modelling sufficently enough to model it. The child comprehends the shape, texture, colour and function of the car, and as such is able to construct a model in his head based on the shape texture colour and function of said car.

The only factor was the level of comprehension. Not understanding how a drive shaft works doesn't mean you find a car incomprehensible. It might mean you find a drive shaft incomprehensible.

Nearly all the models we use in our lives are rough approximations, and often admit of our inability to comprehend 'inner workings' of the actual object so modelled. That is, we cannot model what we do not comprehend, but we can certainly model an object we do not fully comprehend - that is, we can model according to our limited understanding of the object.

In my original piece of obscurantism, I specifically invoked the idea that we could have only a limited understanding of God - the Blind Men and the Elephant. That is to say, each person carries a mental model of God, and this mental model is what they relate to, despite its acknowledged incompleteness. I certainly don't know any theists who would claim their picture of God is complete - in fact, the ultimate unknowability of God is a regular theme (and cop-out) in theism. Equally, it is generally accepted that different people have different conceptions of God, of different degrees of sophistication.

There is, therefore, no reason why God should not be incomprehensible, and his worshippers relate to him through what they themselves acknowledge to be incomplete 'models' of him. QED.

cordially,
Scofflaw

beans

For all we know, our material, on death, returns to the earth from whence it came. In fact that's all we know. What could it possibly mean to say that our consciousness 'becomes part of god itself',

I think this was offered in light of his earlier statement about 'god' being the universe around us. In that respect he's right on the money - brain turns to dust, energy disperses and back we go into the ground.

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

You are overloading the word 'comprehension' - what you mean here, I think, is 'apprehension'. Both can be used to mean 'mental grasp', but only 'comprehension' carries the additional implication of a deeper understanding.

Not really, you are defining the need have comprehension of a specific aspect (how the car engine works) to have comprehension of the car itself. That isn't really true. The child can comprehend the nature of the car. Because those parts are not the parts you understand does not mean that the child does not comprehend the car, only that the child does not comprehend the car to the same degree you do.

Scofflaw wrote:

Sorry. I was unclear - I do not mean that they are the same, only that they are both mental constructs, and it is equally possible for either to be entirely unrelated to any real person.

It is equally possible, but not equally likely. The mental construct of Cindy does not exist in the real world. At all. But having met Laura the mental construct one creates of Laura will, assuming ones brain is functioning normally, be based on a real entity.

It is the difference between mental constructs based on imagination and those based on perception.

Scofflaw wrote:

Nearly all the models we use in our lives are rough approximations, and often admit of our inability to comprehend 'inner workings' of the actual object so modelled.

True, but the point is that they are not all equally "rough." Some models we have are based on actual real world observations, others are complete fantasy.

If we invent a model based on complete fantasy, that fact doesn't change if by a fluke our model actually appears to relate to something in the real world. The example would be sci-fi. Lots of sci-fi authors have invented, out of simply their own imagination, views of the future, such as Auther C. Clark famously coming up with satellites. But that doesn't mean that Clark's concept of a satellite is actually real. It was just a coincendence, or clever imagining on the part of Clark, that his imaginary concept turned out to eventually be reflected in reality. But Clark didn't base his satellites on real satellites, since they didn't exist when he came up with the idea. He based it on his imagination.

It is entirely possible that something might exist out there that resembles the human concept of "god". But that doesn't make the human concept of god any more valid. I reject the concept as not being based on reality, just as I would reject Clark's concept of a satellite as not being based on reality.

As a side, I would also say that it believe it is very very unlikely that something like a god exists, though that is a different argument to why I reject the human concept of god and am an atheist.

Scofflaw wrote:

That is, we cannot model what we do not comprehend, but we can certainly model an object we do not fully comprehend - that is, we can model according to our limited understanding of the object.

True, but again the point is to recongise that any aspects of these models that "fill in" the gaps in our understanding based on our imagination are not valid when saying that these concepts are real.

For example, if a child saw a car he could probably form a mental model in his head about the shape, colour, motion etc of the car. This model would be grounded in reality. But since a child is unlikely to understand how the car is actually moving he would probably also invent a model of how the car moves based solely on his own imagination. He might say that magic fairies make the car move.

I would, straight out, reject the child's concept of magic fairies. This is not because I have proven, either to him or to myself, that the car isn't actually moved by magic fairies. I reject that concept because it comes from the childs imagination. He might be right, but if he is right it is a fluke.

If I later discover that the car is actually driven by magic fairies, that model will still be independent of the childs imaginary fairy concept, despite them being similar concepts.

I hope that kinda explains why I'm an atheist. It is not because I have proven the concept of God is wrong, it is that I believe that the concept comes solely from human imagination and as such is simply invalid. It might, by some fluke, actually resemble a real entity, but I will wait to form my concept and model of that unknown entity when or if I ever come across it.

Scofflaw wrote:

That is to say, each person carries a mental model of God, and this mental model is what they relate to, despite its acknowledged incompleteness. I certainly don't know any theists who would claim their picture of God is complete

But that is working on the assumption that some part of this model, no matter how small, is actually based on a real "god", just as the child bases their model of the car on a real car, even if the model is very incomplete.

I see no reason to believe this is true.

I suppose the question is at what point is God not God. For example, if a child sees a train and says "car!" their parents will probably say "no honey, that is a train". The child might confusingly ask what is the difference.

It seems to me that lately the concept of "god" is being made so vast and unspecificed that it includes anything we can imagine. But again that is more of a reason to reject the concept of "god" as not having a basis in reality.

Scofflaw

beans wrote:

I think this was offered in light of his earlier statement about 'god' being the universe around us. In that respect he's right on the money - brain turns to dust, energy disperses and back we go into the ground.

Exactly. Actually, what I said was "That at death our egos fall apart on brain-death, and all our material returns to being an unconscious part of god itself?" - which contains no statement that "our consciousness 'becomes part of god itself'".

It is not quite so much obfuscatory as obnubilatory.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

Exactly. Actually, what I said was "That at death our egos fall apart on brain-death, and all our material returns to being an unconscious part of god itself?" - which contains no statement that "our consciousness 'becomes part of god itself'".

It is not quite so much obfuscatory as obnubilatory.

cordially,
Scofflaw

But since when did the ground become "god"? That is just an absract definition of God as to have almost no meaning. Why not just say it is the ground?

Personally I never really got the human need to alter definitions of things like God to fit around something. It seems easier to simply drop the definition of God. Its like the child trying to get "car" to fit around the concept of a "train", without realising that they are not the same things at all. God is god, the ground is the ground. Why change "god" so it can also be the ground?

Zombrex

Anyway, JC is back, so I suggest we put this light hearted (really, it doesn't actually matter if one is agnostic, practically atheists, or die-hard atheist, the outcome is similar) aside for the moment and get back to good old fashioned Creationists bashing.

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

Anyway, JC is back, so I suggest we put this light hearted (really, it doesn't actually matter if one is agnostic, practically atheists, or die-hard atheist, the outcome is similar) aside for the moment and get back to good old fashioned Creationists bashing.

From the Sublime (can one make a mental construct of the incomprehensible?) to the cor blimey (may I gently remind you....evolution is like a thing that doesn't work, so...evolution doesn't work!!!!!!!:cool: ).

You're sure you're not just running away?

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

But since when did the ground become "god"? That is just an absract definition of God as to have almost no meaning. Why not just say it is the ground?

Personally I never really got the human need to alter definitions of things like God to fit around something. It seems easier to simply drop the definition of God. Its like the child trying to get "car" to fit around the concept of a "train", without realising that they are not the same things at all. God is god, the ground is the ground. Why change "god" so it can also be the ground?

Well, again, I don't think I mentioned the ground, did I? I think the "God is everything" schtick is pretty standard. It's not a definition, but an observation.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Zombrex

Scofflaw wrote:

You're sure you're not just running away?

Sir, them be fighting words

Scofflaw wrote:

Well, again, I don't think I mentioned the ground, did I? I think the "God is everything" schtick is pretty standard. It's not a definition, but an observation.

But what does that actually mean?

God is "everything" Again it is such an abstract definition of "God" as to have no practical meaning. Of course it is impossible to disprove, as would saying "Bob is everything". But what conclusions or arguments can one draw from such a statement? It is a pointless definition that as far as I can tell is simply an attempt for some "spiritual" people (read "hippies") to set up a false axiom for further rather pointless statements such like "all energy flows between us and binds us together" (as I heard one 16 year old hippy saying to the other a few years ago at a performance festival).

It sounds nice, and it might be a comforting idea, but that doesn't mean it isn't nonsense. In fact the fact that it is a comforting idea is more reason to believe it is simply made up to offer comfort to those looking for it.

Scofflaw

Wicknight wrote:

God is "everything" Again it is such an abstract definition of "God" as to have no practical meaning. Of course it is impossible to disprove, as would saying "Bob is everything". But what conclusions or arguments can one draw from such a statement? It is a pointless definition that as far as I can tell is simply an attempt for some "spiritual" people (read "hippies") to set up a false axiom for further rather pointless statements such like "all energy flows between us and binds us together" (as I heard one 16 year old hippy saying to the other a few years ago at a performance festival).

It sounds nice, and it might be a comforting idea, but that doesn't mean it isn't nonsense. In fact the fact that it is a comforting idea is more reason to believe it is simply made up to offer comfort to those looking for it.

Well, "God is everything" isn't a definition of God - it's part of the description. The definition is the "incomprehensible" bit. As to being impossible to draw conclusions from, that's like saying it's impossible to draw conclusions from Mount Everest. The important point is that Everest is there. God "being there" is all that most people need. It's like monarchy - many people find it emotionally satisfying, but certainly don't want their monarch personally intervening in their lives, or personally telling them what to do.

Of course this is all made up. I made up that piece of mumbo-jumbo specifically for that post. The question is why?

It is made up to illustrate the point that a description of God so vague as to be totally unfalsifiable can nevertheless provide a vision of God sufficiently compelling to be worshippable by many theists. Even the fact that I personally made it up is apparently irrelevant - after all, I might be right.

(Oh, sure, they'll hang all sorts of bits and pieces of comforting nonsense onto the vague outline provided. When they do, I will say, with a bland and avuncular smile "well, we don't know, do we - God is an Infinite Mystery. Let us worship Him in an appropriate way by celebrating our lives as he might wish. Also, the roof needs repair."

Now my only problem is differentiating my product from the mass of disprovable Gods with more flamboyant characteristics.)

Therefore, the atheist is met head-on by a worshippable deity who is also undisprovable. This leaves the atheist with the rather weak argument that "he made it all up", to which a proper theist will retort "God spoke through him", and then onto the stake you go, with a pop and a sizzle!

cordially,
Scofflaw