Your inability to use logic is showing here. — NKBJ

If you don't expect that you, or anyone, will learn as they proceed through life then your claim that age is irrelevant is reasonable.

If you do expect to learn as you proceed through life, then your claim that age is irrelevant is nonsense.

I actually don't think it's my supposed "snottiness" that's getting to you. — NKBJ

I'm not taking offense, I'm just very bored by such poses because they are so VERY common on philosophy forums. And I have the personal weakness of often getting grouchy when I'm bored, so I'm putting some effort in to trying to overcome that. I'll likely run out of such effort before much longer.

I think you just have nothing to counter and you're irritated that you can't make a good, strong case for your mysticism — NKBJ

I'm irritated at myself (not at you) for yet again getting sucked in to trying to talk reason with atheist Jehovah's Witnesses who are probably just barely old enough to vote. You know, I'm looking my old self who should surely know better by now in the mirror and asking, "Dude, why don't I get a life you moron???" Sorry to report, aging doesn't solve everything.

Let's leave it here and preserve the opportunity to chat again sometime.

My age is immaterial to the discussion, as is yours. — NKBJ

In other words, you have no expectation of learning anything as you proceed through life, which perhaps raises the question of why you would bother to do philosophy.

Yes, it's religious dogma if I have to do some voodoo carp like meditation to ascertain some illogical, mystical truths/untruths/halftruths/beyond truths. — NKBJ

That's not how meditation actually works, though it's surely understandable that you might think that. Lots of people meditate and then present some explanation, which is of course reasonable questioned just as you would like to do.

Explanations are not meditation. Explanations are explanations, thoughts, the opposite of meditation.

At no point have I suggested you should meditate so that you will then believe XYZ. I haven't even suggested that you should meditate. I'm only pointing out that thought/reason/logic is not the only process which can deliver value.

Your age-difference justification is just... Reaching? — NKBJ

Ok, so let me ask you this young man. Do you plan learning anything as you proceed through life? Or is it your expectation that your level of insight and understanding will always remain the same?

Do you perhaps see how effortlessly I am slamming your snotty comments back down your throat? That's not because I'm smarter than you, which is probably not true. It's only because I've been playing this game since before you were born, maybe since before your parents were born.

Perhaps we can talk again some time when you've had a chance to calm down and let go of some of this teenager atheist ideologue snottiness. Sadly, becoming 67 does not automatically liberate one from impatience with noisy children. :smile:

The problem is that I think the positivist attitude really doesn't take into account the possibility that knowledge, even that gained by way of science, is limited in some fundamental respect. — Wayfarer

My take would be that of course knowledge is limited, because the medium it is made of is, like everything in all of observable nature, limited. Thought is an electro-chemical information medium, a part of nature, it has properties and characteristics which define it's limitations just like everything else.

About one’s deeply held beliefs, what sometimes may happen is that a person (often at a crucial moment of their life) has an internal experience. An experience that seems to cut to the core of their very being, in terms of identity, feelings, perceptions, and more. This feels seismic, and they intuit that it would be unwise to completely ignore it as a reaction to eating pizza late at night, or something. So far, so good.

Problems appear when a person expects anyone else to immediately feel the same fear and trembling awe. — 0 thru 9

Or, to put it another way, problems appear when we try to translate an experience in to an explanation. A better approach may be to skip the explanations, and offer some practical tips on how the other person might have their own experience. An even better approach would probably be to wait until they ask for such tips. :smile:

For me, the funny part is that you're so quick and happy to accept my worldview as "just an opinion" but you're so insistent on having some grand, sage-like insight into the world, while at the same time contending it to be incomprehensible. — NKBJ

I'm 67 and have been considering such topics for at least 50 years. If you are of a quite different age that may explain why we aren't connecting. If true, we can continue trying if it interests you, or just let it go, agreeable either way.

Sorry, but your assertions seem to amount to little more than faith. — NKBJ

And this assertion sounds like little more than atheist dogma chanting. Sorry, have no personal beef with you, just reporting what I hear.

You keep waving at some unknown unknowable realm that can't be seen or heard or reasoned that I'm just supposed to believe in. — NKBJ

First, I'm not asking you to believe in anything. In case you haven't already read this elsewhere, I'm not a theist.

I do apologize for not making my posts more tangible to you. Have you ever meditated? If not, useful experience outside of thought is available to be explored at any time you might wish to do so. There's no need to believe anything. Try it if you want, come to your own relationship with it. Maybe it's not for you personally, I have no idea.

I'm only saying, your notion that logic is the only process which can deliver value is simply incorrect. That said, I have no objection if you wish to cling to an incorrect view for awhile longer. Rome was not built in a day etc.

The naïveté, hubris, or emotional longing that compels us to declare and define absolutely the nature and existence (or non-existence) of the Absolute is quite understandable and all-too-human. — 0 thru 9

Agreed, very understandable and very human. I'm attempting to develop more compassion for this need and a more realistic acceptance of it. I managed this a long time ago with the religious, but apparently still have considerable work to do in regards to the atheist true believers.

To put in Buddhist terms, let not desire or aversion lead us into ignorance. — 0 thru 9

I'm not debating here, just suggesting that if ignorance is the reality of our situation then let's embrace it and mine this asset for the value that it offers. Not sure how this relates to Buddhism though. For now it's merely Jakeism. :smile:

Yup, I agree. Except, there is no realm where not using logic is useful. — NKBJ

Or more precisely, you personally don't know of any realm where not using logic is useful, and you're trying to inflate your personal limitations in to a universal maxim describing all human experience. That is, you're trying to turn logic in to a "one true way" religion.

So, ok, go ahead and do that.

My universal maxim reflects the facts better than yours. Again, I am not against logic. I'm only against efforts to turn logic in to some kind of religion.

We should happily use logic where it has been proven useful, and proceed with caution where no such proof is available. This is logic. Pretty good logic. Better logic than trying to make logic in to a god.

You can go down that rabbit hole if you choose to. I have no interest in it. That which is nonsensible is simply not of interest to me. — NKBJ

As personal choice I have no complaint. I'm objecting only to any effort to turn a personal choice in to a universal maxim.

But don't say I didn't warn you if you get lost or stuck or just plain bored on your fantastical spelunking adventure. — NKBJ

Thought is the source of boredom. These are the kinds of things one may never learn if one turns thought in to god.

I'm of the view that there's no way to determine likelihood for these sorts of things. — Terrapin Station

Every single one of the millions of species which have existed on Earth for millions of years have been of limited ability.

This doesn't conclusively prove anything, agreed. But it does give some weight to one side of the question.

It's also possible that there is nothing that we can't really understand. — Terrapin Station

Yes, possible. Not very likely in my view, but this is clearly debatable.

Yeah, but it's THE tool. You literally can't make sense without it. — NKBJ

No, it's not THE tool. It's a tool. A useful tool without question. You seem to be assuming that making sense is the only valid operation. So you should watch this excellent (very entertaining!) video called....

Stop Making Sense

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzFfV-02-Ts

As for the insane bit: if we allow for insanity, it's all just a jumbled mess and there's no point to any of it. — NKBJ

We have thousands of hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throat, an ever present self extinction threat which we typically find too boring to discuss. I'm unable to offer you a better example of insanity.

I show up at your house for the philosophy club meeting. I have a loaded gun in my mouth. You are very concerned, but I roll my eyes and blow off your "hysteria" and continually change the subject to all kinds of trivial topics.

I am insane. Looney tunes. Ready for the psyche ward. I am humanity.

As one example, logic is obviously made of thought. Thought is an element of nature, and like all elements of nature it has certain properties and characteristics, which both give it powers and create the boundaries of it's ability.

Thought operates by dividing the single unified reality in to conceptual parts. This is an extremely useful power for it allows us to rearrange reality in our minds, to be creative. But it is this same process of division which makes us insane, because it creates the experience of reality as being divided between "me" and "everything else", a perception that gives rise to fear, and thus most human problems.

Logic is just a tool, not a god.

If we cannot understand those parts of reality, it makes no sense to try and talk about them. — NKBJ

Ah, but we can explore the ways in which we are ignorant, insane and otherwise limited, and we can talk about that.

What could be our grounds for positing that there are things, or that there could be a "nature" to some things, that don't make sense to us, though? How could we know this? — Terrapin Station

Knowing this is a tall order that I can't deliver on.

However, it's entirely reasonable to note that every species ever born on this planet has had a limited ability to see beyond it's niche. To argue that we live outside of this very long established all pervasive pattern is basically wild (self serving) speculation in my view.

Are we smarter than other species? Yes, proven.

Are we smart enough to grasp everything in all of reality? A completely different issue.

The establishment is always by definition slow to catch on. — Joshs

Indeed. Because once one is in the establishment one has something to lose, and thus can't take the risks that are often necessary. You know, if I'm a philosophy professor with 3 kids about to enter college, I don't have much choice but to color pretty carefully within the lines of the academic group consensus.

In my view, trying to turn activities like philosophy and religion in to a business is generally not such a great plan.

Logic: it's inherently illogical to try and make a logical argument against logic. — NKBJ

It would be inherently illogical to argue against logic in general, for it has clearly proven it's usefulness in too many tasks to begin to list.

It's not at all illogical to use logic to explore the boundaries of what logic may be able to accomplish.

You can tweak rules of logic, maybe, but you can't just do away with it altogether and maintain sense. — NKBJ

There is no law of nature which requires all of reality to make sense. It's entirely possible that we are only able to see the components of reality which make sense to US, a tiny half insane semi-suicidal creature on one little planet in one of billions of galaxies etc.

A dog would describe the Internet as a square shiny thing covered with blinking lights. A pretty good description from the perspective of a dog's observation, but also a thoroughly inept explanation of a level of abstraction which is simply beyond the ability of even the very smartest dog.

We might be wary of any attempt to impose our own severe limitations upon all of reality, a realm we currently can't confidently define in even the most basic manner.

In many threads on the forum it seems it would be beneficial to shift some focus from the battle of competing answers to a closer inspection of the question being debated. If a question is somehow inherently flawed, a battle of competing answers seems unlikely to be very useful.

In this thread the question is, Are Causeless Effects Possible?

If we start from the assumption that time runs in only one direction, this is an interesting provocative question to ask. If the nature of time is far different than what we typically assume from our everyday experience, then perhaps not.

In other threads (so many! :smile: ) the question is, Does God Exist? This could be a useful question if our understanding of existence aligns with the nature of reality. If our understanding of existence is totally screwball, then a billion competing answers aren't likely to accomplish much.

In many threads the hidden underlying question is, Is Human Reason Capable Of Understanding This Issue? If the answer is shown to be yes, then a philosophical inquiry may indeed be warranted. If the answer is no, or if the qualifications of reason for a particular task can not be established with some confidence, then the entire discussion may be a total waste of time.

What may be obstructing such an examination of the questions of such threads is that, by and large generally speaking, we often aren't actually that interested in the topic itself, but are instead motivated primarily by a desire to debate. If that's the case that could explain why we so often ignore inspecting the validity of the question and dive immediately in to the competing answers contest.

The entire question is pointless — Possibility

Then one wonders why we are endlessly discussing it in thread after thread after thread....???

But, there may be a good reason for that. If the process eventually leads us to the understanding that we have no idea what we're talking about, that could be useful information that could be acted on in a productive manner.

Got a long way to go yet though, eh?

The following excellent video on the subject of time may help confuse the issue further. :smile:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Qu9XaF2K10

The video explores a variety of time related issues, some proven fact, others only interesting theories.

As example, it's proven that time runs at different speeds in different circumstances.

The video claims that there's nothing in the laws of physics that would prevent time from running backwards.

The video speculates that all moments in time, past, present and future may exist simultaneously.

As best I can tell, the speculation and unproven theories in the video are all based on reference to current physics. That is, it's not a new age video or anything of that nature.

Point being, if we can't firmly establish that time runs in only one direction, then cause and effect may be a meaningless concept.

The necessity to attach belief to atheism only seems like a way to undermine what it's about through rhetoric. I would argue that if theists were even interested in understanding the atheistic perspective, belief should be left out of the terminology for defining it. — Christoffer

Belief can not be left out of the analysis so long as BOTH sides of the God debate have faith in the qualifications of their chosen authority to deliver meaningful statements regarding the issue being addressed in the God debate, the most fundamental nature of everything everywhere (a realm we can't define in even the most basic manner).

Your making the classic mistake which defines atheism. You start with the agreed upon fact that reason is very useful at human scale, and then leap from that fact to the wild speculation that therefore reason is therefore qualified to analyze issues at ANY scale.

That wild speculation may be true. But you can't prove it. And like the vast majority of atheists haven't even tried to prove it.

I can't prove your wild speculation is untrue, nobody can to my knowledge. But there are compelling arguments which a real person of reason would be eager to inspect.

There have been many millions of species on Earth over many millions of years. Most of these species have some remarkable ability which allows them to thrive in their niche. But in no case, not one, has their ability been unlimited. In each case for every species, their ability is typically limited to what is needed for survival in their niche. Thus, it's entirely reasonable, indeed compelling, to argue that human ability is also limited. That is, it's very very likely that there are aspects of reality which we will NEVER understand, just as your dog will never understand the Internet no matter how hard or how long he might try to.

Another logical failure which plagues atheism (and humanity more generally) is that we compare ourselves to animals, and conclude from that comparison that we are very intelligent (conveniently ignoring that we have thousands of hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throats). But when it comes to the God debate, that is a useless comparison. The proper procedure in the God debate is to compare our ability to the nature of all reality, for that is the scope of God theories.

The primary obstacle for both theists and atheists to understanding any of this is that those on both sides have typically attached their personal identity to whatever ideology they are clinging to. Once one defines oneself as the "saved people" or the "smart people" the path of reason is typically lost to them, and they are reduced to ideologists chanting their dogmas over and over again in the hope that someone will validate the self flattering personal identity which they've come to cherish.

For evidence of this, just read the God threads on this forum. Observe how emotional they typically are. That emotion is all about personal identity, and has very little to do with the actual topic under discussion.

For further evidence, consider what would happen if all screen names were removed from the forum so that it became impossible to tell who said what, and all that was left were ideas. The forum would collapse in about two weeks, because the real reason that we are here (hey, look at me, I'm smart!) would no longer be achievable.

1) Our definitions of existence bear little resemblance to the phenomena of space, the vast majority of reality.

2) Our notion that time is a fixed measure which can be used to calculate the distance between events, completely wrong.

3) Our concept of intelligence, central to the God debate, derived from an immeasurably small sample.

4) Our unexamined assumption that human reason can make meaningful calculations on subjects the scale of gods, totally unproven, and not very likely.

For those few who might wish to actually learn something about religion...

Observe how you've completely ignored all of the above and continued with the same old God debate game as if none of these inconvenient facts were present.

Such a willful denial of reason, such a determined clinging to a comfortable fantasy... Not the religious condition, but the human condition.

To prove this, observe how I keep typing such things over and over again despite any evidence that it will ever do any good. Me too. Clinging to the self flattering fantasy that I can make some kind of difference here. I see the evidence of my delusion, I see the evidence is inconvenient, so I ignore it, and keep on doing the same old thing, over and over and over.

Human condition.

Experts extract complication from simplicity. — whollyrolling

This is a great cliche! Which explains why I typically don't spend a lot of time reading the experts.

which prompts the question, why post on a philosophy forum. — Wayfarer

Easy question. That's how we nerds jerk off.

For me, the problem with the God debate is that it requires a definition of ‘God’ that can be agreed upon and then objectively measured/observed. Does this particular definition of God exist - yes or no? — Possibility

But if our definitions of existence and non-existence bear little resemblance to reality, then all such questions are rendered pointless.

Thank you for your encouragement, as I clearly need it from time to time.

There are many interesting people and centres and schools exploring this space. — Wayfarer

------------

Ok, so one direction we might explore is...

If we wipe theism and atheism off the table, who is left?

------------

Another issue of interest here is the structure of authority. Is it true that authority is assigned by merit, or is it more true that authority is more a product of a competitive cultural marketplace, where whoever does the best job of giving the audience whatever it is they want is rewarded with authority?

Let's imagine some hypothetical expert who for convenience sake I will name "The Genius". Let's imagine that The Genius understands these topics far better than any of us, me and you included. Let's imagine for the sake of this thought experiment that The Genius has indeed arrived at the truth of the matter.

Under what conditions would the The Genius be assigned authority? To be less "negative" I'll use myself as an example.

Like many of us here, I'm pretty emotionally attached to my pet ideas. So, does The Genius validate anything I've been publicly stating? If he/she doesn't, will I be interested? What if what the Genius reveals demonstrates in a convincing manner that nothing I've been saying for years has any value and my posts have all been a big waste of time, fueled primarily by my ego, a not unreasonable theory. What then? Will I surrender everything I've spent a lifetime building and embrace The Genius?

If I am truly interested in the topic I would so surrender. But am I truly interested in the topic, or only in "my position" on the topic?

If The Genius can't or won't deliver what the audience wants to hear, will they become an authority? Or will cultural authorities, like successful businessmen, always be those who excel at satisfying the customer?

A lot of people but not everyone. — Wayfarer

Ok, fair enough, so introduce me to those who are challenging the foundations of the God debate. You're clearly more broadly educated on such subjects than I, so I welcome your input.

And why so negative? What’s point of starting a thread like this if it only turns out to be sour grapes? — Wayfarer

Is the above commentary negative? Or is it just inconveniently accurate?

That said, there never was a point to starting a thread like this, and I knew that before doing so, so any disappointment I might experience is entirely my own problem. Seriously.

I'm a typoholic, and I'm compelled beyond reason to type such things somewhere. If you can help me find a more appropriate place to type them, I'm all ears.

That said, the most rational thing I could probably do is to just let all this go. Working on that, making little bits of progress here and there.

Most people, theist and atheist, have little real interest in thinking such topics through for themselves. And should they have such an interest they probably don't have the ability. And so, by and large, generally speaking, people on all sides of such questions typically develop "their" position by reference to some trusted authority. Theists will reference their religious traditions, atheists will reference science or perhaps popular speakers such as Christopher Hitchens, and so on. Having absorbed some collection of concepts from the larger culture the person will then typically rebrand the ideas they've inherited as "my position".

This process might raise the question, how does one become an authority that others reference? And the answer is simple. Just like the jazz musician above, one becomes an authority by giving some sizable number of folks whatever it is they want.

The Catholic Church is 2,000 years old, is a trusted authority for many, because it excels at giving large numbers of people what they seek. Christopher Hitchens was a popular speaker because he too delivered a product that many in the public wished to consume.

In the end it is the audience who determines who the authorities are, and...

The audience isn't actually all that interested in the issue.

An example...

Consider the avant garde jazz musician who is reimagining the musical scale and chord structure. Such a reinventing of the musical wheel is fascinating to the musician, but....

What the audience wants are songs they already know, tunes they can sing along with.

The illogical jazz musician tries to shove his new form of music down the audience's throat, and winds up working as a door greeter at Walmart.

The logical jazz musician covers the same old classic American standards every jazz band covers and perhaps some Beatles tunes. Now the audience is happy and the musician can make a living playing music.

So maybe what you're engaged in, is a kind of 'reimagining' of what the original intuition was before it became encoded in the cultural tropes of what we now see as 'religion' (as I myself have devoted a lot of time to.) — Wayfarer

That's a good one sentence summary of what I'd hoped to accomplish.

However, I must admit that such a hope is illogical given that there is no market for reimagining such ancient constructs. From Nobel prize winners down to stoned college sophomores everyone is comfortable with the rules of the God debate game as it is currently configured. Nobody really cares that those rules are built upon nothing but air, they just want to play the game. Theists will keep chanting their stuff, atheists will keep chanting theirs, and everyone is happy with this pattern as it is.

Although that pattern seems a hopelessly repetitive and fatally boring process to this reader, it does have it's own logic given that life is short, thus fun is good, and the God debate game in it's currently illogical configuration has been proven to be fun for many.

Challenging the God debate on a philosophy forum might be compared to challenging the divinity of Jesus on a Jehovah's Witness forum. Yes, a clever person might be able to present devastating logical arguments, but the effort itself is not logical because it will accomplish nothing other than stir up pointless unproductive controversy, or just bore the audience to sleep. The logical thing to do in such a circumstance would be to simply leave the Jehovah's Witnesses in peace to do what they find necessary.

I guess you're a septic - and like most septics, wrong. — Ricardoc

Sorry to make fun of your harmless gaff, but I think I'll start calling all the skeptics septics too. Seems a great plan!

sep·tic
/ˈseptik/
nounNorth American
plural noun: septics

a drainage system incorporating a septic tank.

So, a lot of the dynamics of the debate are in some ways unstated or assumed, because they're, in effect, an aspect of the collective psyche, not a matter of individual choice. — Wayfarer

Thanks for continuing to enrich the analysis by helping us see how we got where we are. Everything you're saying here makes sense to me, though I don't know the history well enough to say it myself.

I would phrase it that most of the time we don't think things through for ourselves but rather reference some authority, typically some slice of the group consensus. So for example, if we see lots and lots of very smart famous people operating within the boundaries of the typical God debate, we may tend to assume that this is the way we should approach the subject as well. While this is very understandable in human terms, it's not all that interesting or productive because the same going nowhere discussions tend to get recycled over and over again, as is easily observed on any philosophy forum. So, this thread is attempting to escape that small circle to the degree it is possible, for the few who may be interested in attempting that.

Whereas a proper sacramental relationship is defined in terms of 'I-thou' (pace Martin Buber) - again, a relationship with a real being or power, not simply an abstract philosophical concept. — Wayfarer

For the purposes of exploration, we might note that even the term "relationship" assumes two separate things. This may be an appropriate conception, or perhaps not. The various possibilities seem worthy of investigation.

Catholic doctrine suggests that God is ever present in all times and places, which if taken literally would mean God IS all times and places. But, best I can tell, Catholics don't take it that far, and preserve the division between "God" and "everything else".

Space is ever present in all times and place, so if space were to have some quality of intelligence the Catholics may be on to something. But as explored above, our concept of intelligence seems hopelessly small in comparison to "all times and places" the scope of most God claims.

Which leads to another underlying dynamic, which is that in the pre-modern world, the Universe was intuitively felt to be alive — Wayfarer

This seems an important insight which I hope to address in more detail as we proceed together. For now I would just suggest that such an experience is still available, because what is obstructing it is not some collection of modern philosophies, but instead thought itself.

Whereas the overwhelming feeling of modernity is that of exile, otherness, separation, being cast out into a meaningless universe as a result of chance - a theme underlying a lot of 20th Century literature and drama. It is the plight of modernity. — Wayfarer

In my view, this is addressed quite directly in the Garden Of Eden story written some 3,000 years ago. Although that story has too much of a children's fairy tale style to appeal to many moderns, if one can get past that and translate the story in to one's own preferred language, it seems interesting to note that the modern predicament is not a new phenomena, but just an acceleration of a long existing process.

In my view, the experience of exile, otherness, separation etc arises directly out of the divisive nature of thought (ie. the apple of knowledge). And so as thought has gradually become a more dominant part of the human condition the experience of division has increasingly taken center stage.

If it is true that the experience of separation arises not so much from the content of thought (such as modern philosophies) but from the nature of thought itself, that can be very good news. None of us can steer the course of history, but we can learn how to better manage our relationship with thought.

Again, this is a consequence of the way in which the whole issue was posed by Christian orthodoxy: that God exists, and you either believe it (yes = saved) or don't (no = damned). So it's understandable to wish to side-step the entire dilemma! — Wayfarer

Yes, very understandable. But 500 years after the dawn of the Enlightenment, rejecting the ancient Catholic formula you refer to is no longer all that interesting, in my view at least.

In our time we might better invest our energy in challenging the new dogmas which modernity is generating. For just one example, recall my thread regarding challenging our "more is better" relationship with knowledge.

It's also interesting to contrast this with the formulation of the Buddhist 'middle way' principle: — Wayfarer

Please educate us further here if it interests you. I'm sure that wherever this thread is heading somebody has probably already been there. It would be helpful to see what's come before.

No, it doesn't polarize like that. With consistent standards enforced, the content remains of a consistent standard. — Baden

Consistently mediocre. To my knowledge there are few to no professional philosophers here. Many of threads are clogged to overflowing with never ending emotion fueled ego battles between folks barely old enough to vote etc.

To be fair, I would judge this forum to be better than most philosophy forums, which is why I am here. But that is a quite low standard.

This, even if possible, would result in justified accusations of elitism, impossible-to-refute accusations of favouritism, and general dissatisfaction and strife. — Baden

Elitism is what editing is about, which you would know if you were an actual editor and not just a mod working for free.

Do the editors of the New York Times worry about those who whine their submission was declined? No, they don't. Instead they focus on finding ever better sources of ever better content.

I'm agreeable that you should ignore all the above, because I knew before posting that you would, and I'm at peace with that. But just a reminder, there is no law of nature requiring you to settle for what you've currently got.

God should be the whole, not a part. — Shamshir

I'm very sympathetic to this view, with the exception that at the moment one uses any noun such as God, one has created a "thing" presumed to be separate from all other things, for that is the function of nouns. Language almost forces us to create divisions which, in my view as well, are mostly illusory.

I picture three sections of a forum.

1) At the lowest level are those banned because they just don't seem worth investing time in. We can debate particular cases, but this seems sound as a general principle.

2) At the middle level is the forum as it currently exists.

3) At the highest level there could be an invitation only section of the forum which serves as a tangible example of what kind of quality content the mods are aiming for.

There's more to being an editor than just showing the riff raff the door. Ideally there should also be an ongoing effort to recruit the kind of members the mods would like to have more of.

A challenge here is that many quality commentators have long ago given up on forums, and invitations won't be successful unless they can be provided a space where conversations are on their level.

Imho, there's a great opportunity for any mod team that understands and implements this invitation concept because few of their competitors will bother.

None of the above is particularly relevant to very many forums, but on a philosophy forum, or any forum with intellectual pretensions, the content is either going to be getting better and better, or it's going to be getting worse and worse.

If you can't or won't provide your better commentators a space where they can do their thing together what happens is that they will wander off one by one to be replaced by mediocre commentators, a process which tends to feed on itself and accelerate over time.

But the problem is, as you accurately observe, that science itself has now cast considerable doubt on how cut-and-dried the naturalistic answer actually is. There are huge debates boiling in physics and cosmology about the nature of matter, of the 'standard model', the Big Bang (which is an inherently mystical idea to begin with!), parallel universes, and so on. So once you move past the formulaic, stereotyped 'god vs atheist' frame of reference, all kinds of possibilities become available, but they're a bit arcane for popular consumption; finding reference points and new frames of reference becomes the challenge. But an interesting challenge it is! — Wayfarer

Yes to all of this, agreed.

What I liked about the documentaries linked to above is they seem to do a pretty good job of explaining some of these bizarre new insights in a manner that is pretty accessible to anyone with a sincere interest.

So in my view, that is one of the principle factors underlying the emergence of 'this secular age'. It was felt to be essential to define a philosophy which excluded reference to divinity, as a matter of principle. — Wayfarer

But we don't want excluding reference to divinity to become yet another dogma, right? We don't want yet another system of thought built upon unquestioning belief in unproven authorities, unexamined assumptions etc. We don't want to replicate some of the worst aspects of religion under a different colored flag and then delude ourselves in to thinking we've made a revolutionary change. At least this is my view.

So it's felt to be easier to answer 'no' and then to proceed as if the natural domain, the empirical, observable universe, is real, and try to ascertain its governing principles by scientific method; to flesh out, or reverse-engineer, the foundations, purely on the basis of observation and mathematical reasoning: — Wayfarer

Simpler and easier for sure, but not especially useful if we willfully ignore inconvenient observations of reality, such as I'm attempting to point to above.

I hear what you're saying about the history, that seems a good explanation of how we got here. And prior to the discoveries of 20th century what you describe was an arguably reasonable process. But 100 years after Einstein it seems to no longer make sense to assume existence is a yes or no question. It is reasonable and practical to use that yes/no paradigm in our everyday lives, but God proposals address a far larger realm than that.

In any case, what I hope to accomplish is to invite members to shift some of their focus from the competing answers to the question being asked. If it is true that the question has the fatal flaw of bearing little resemblance to reality, then it's at least possible we may be able to sweep all the competing answers off the table in one efficient movement. To me, just one vote, exploring that possibility seems far more interesting than recycling the competing answers contest for the billionth time.

I understand that my remark is besides the point. — Vince

I didn't mean to imply that, and thank you for your contribution.

Couldn't that apply to a lot of other questions as well? — Vince

Yes, of course, agreed.