It hinges on the meaning of 'to exist'. As I said, it sounds a pedantic quibble, but it is a philosophy forum, and this is a basic question of ontology and metaphysics. — Wayfarer

Or it hinges on what this "God" you folk talk about is supposed to be?

It's not just about half a dozen or so quotes about obscure abstracts, but also about what people actually believe, and their actions.
Championing such obscure abstracts, and hijacking the terminology for the occasion, isn't particularly representative.
Also ask ministers, pundits, imams and pagans what their "God" is supposed to be, and their ($fulltime) apologists how they justify.

Seems the word "God" is up for grabs, maybe we all ought come up with something of our own. :)

: "God does not exist."
Some atheist: "God does not exist."

Hm.

Some theist: "God exists."

Possible worlds is just a way of talking and reasoning about modal logic.

necessarily p (holds for all consistent worlds): □p ⇔ ∀w∈W p
possibly p (holds for some consistent world): ◊p ⇔ ∃w∈W p

where W = consistent or non-contradictory worlds, or some subset thereof under consideration

If you don't like it or don't like modal logic, well, then you're free to throw it out or ignore it. :)
I guess we sometimes think of (alternate) possibilities in terms of "free will", "could have done differently".

Modal realism is the hypothesis that all possible worlds are real (not just hypothetical).

salvation
natural life [...] unsatisfactory
missing [...] Higher Life of true happiness — Wayfarer on Royce

Emotive appeals aside, @Wayfarer, it then seems a bit ironic that these enterprises have led to people surrendering moral agency to (man-made) scriptures and invisible "someone"s that can't be asked.
Is that "salvation"? As far as I can tell, at most rendering a false sense of "salvation" (and hit-or-miss self-improvement).

Philosophy is as much concerned with finding errors as whatever else.

By the way, the copy/paste'd arguments above are mostly concerned with the highly elaborate religions, real life denominations/sects/cults.
Not much is being said about unassuming deism or panpsychism for example.

It is a peculiar habit of God's that when he wishes to reveal himself to mankind, he will communicate only with a single person. The rest of mankind must learn the truth from that person and thus purchase their knowledge of the divine at the cost of subordination to another human being, who is eventually replaced by a human institution, so that the divine remains under other people's control. — Patricia Crone

Let the gods speak for themselves.

Silence — Banno

There are many inconsistent revelations and messiah avatar Buddha Jesus Mahdi claimants.
∴ Hence there are personal experiences that are wrong in what's purported. — jorndoe

Nothing sensible can be said here. — Banno

You're not helping. — Baden

Banno So you're basically a positivist, then? — Wayfarer

I'll toss some arguments in. Copied from elsewhere:

Is your deity real?

Everyone knows that not all gods can be real.
∴ Hence some or all gods are imaginary/fictional.

Some adherents are convinced through faith. Diverse faiths work.
∴ Hence faith works for imaginary/fictional gods.

Many adherents are convinced through directed indoctrination.
∴ Hence indoctrination works for imaginary/fictional gods.

Different adherents are convinced by their love of different gods.
∴ Hence imaginary/fictional gods can be loved.

Everyone knows that not all holy scriptures are true.
∴ Hence scriptures contain fictions.

Different adherents are inspired by different gods and holy scriptures.
∴ Hence fictions can inspire.

There are many inconsistent revelations and messiah avatar Buddha Jesus Mahdi claimants.
∴ Hence there are personal experiences that are wrong in what's purported.

Deities are neither evident nor necessary when religions spread.
∴ Hence nothing but humans are needed to spread religions.

We differentiate real and imaginary/fictional by evidence and reason together.
Many gods cannot be differentiated real or imaginary/fictional.
∴ Hence it stands to reason that many or all adherents are wrong.

Seriously, what should you believe...?

Meanwhile, religions build empires, proselytize, indoctrinate children, has waged wars and conquest (which fortunately has waned), ... We're not just talking the 5-day weather report for Manhattan, we're talking fantastic claims that supposedly apply to everyone, everything even.

Sorry @Pattern-chaser, the point was just that there can sometimes be other reasons (like morals) involved.
There are all kinds of thought experiments and ideas, p, where all evidence is compatible with both p and ¬p, some of which were mentioned above.
What Bateson called differences that makes no difference (non-information).
I'd say other reasons can occasionally make a difference, though.

Brush off or brush on?
Surely there are sufficient reasons to brush off?

1. morality is social
2. solipsism is not
3. therefore there are morals impertinent to solipsism
4. solipsism is side-lined by anyone with moral awareness

Brushing on looks like a performative contradiction to me.
Either way, I'd find it a bit rude if you thought me a mere figment of your mind.
Brush off. (y)

(Englitch is my 2^nd language, please let me know if "impertinent" is the wrong word above.)

The Newton's theory is still a theory - but is it objective? — Damir Ibrisimovic

It's a model.
Models are not the modeled.
Unless you're thinking about thoughts, the thoughts are not that which you're thinking of.
...

Shameless plug.

Why would anyone take the following samples as more than archaic, barbaric customs and stories, that we've since outgrown?

When you draw near to a city to fight against it, offer terms of peace to it.
And if it responds to you peaceably and it opens to you, then all the people who are found in it shall do forced labor for you and shall serve you.
But if it makes no peace with you, but makes war against you, then you shall besiege it.
And when the LORD your God gives it into your hand, you shall put all its males to the sword,
but the women and the little ones, the livestock, and everything else in the city, all its spoil, you shall take as plunder for yourselves. And you shall enjoy the spoil of your enemies, which the LORD your God has given you.
Thus you shall do to all the cities that are very far from you, which are not cities of the nations here. — Deuteronomy 20:10-15

And Moses was angry with the officers of the army, the commanders of thousands and the commanders of hundreds, who had come from service in the war.
Moses said to them, “Have you let all the women live?
Behold, these, on Balaam’s advice, caused the people of Israel to act treacherously against the LORD in the incident of Peor, and so the plague came among the congregation of the LORD.
Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him.
But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.
Encamp outside the camp seven days. Whoever of you has killed any person and whoever has touched any slain, purify yourselves and your captives on the third day and on the seventh day.
You shall purify every garment, every article of skin, all work of goats’ hair, and every article of wood.” — Numbers 31:14-20

(Quarrels about translations, context, what have you, are irrelevant if this cruft can be used to justify immoral actions, and is installed in impressionable children.)

As to war strategies and tactics there are other ancient writings that are much better, e.g. Sun Tzu's The Art of War.

All people have a right to state their mind here, after all, this is a philosophy forum.

Those who refuse Christ are under the law, and the law brings death. — Waya

Yeah, but it's not a Christian fundamentalist preaching forum.
You've been called out.
Echo'ing @Banno's comments above:
Deferral to someone else (that cannot be asked in particular) is to forfeit being considered a moral agent.
Refusal to take responsibility for one's actions is moral cowardice.
Anyone doing this stuff ↑ are likely inconsistent or pathological.
Does that describe you?

You may consider it a working presumption, if you like, which enables all kinds of things, including our talk. — jorndoe

How so? That some objects may not be self-identical doesn't seem to have anything to do with me talking. — MindForged

Perhaps. Yet, that ↑ is what you meant, right? Not something else (non-identity), or the contrary (contradiction)? Otherwise, this chat will lose traction rather quickly. :confused:

The way we can truly know what God wants is by reading the Scripture, not by interpreting things any which way we please. — Waya

Scriptures...? :o Good luck with that, here's a list of maybe 50 of them.

And [for] their saying, "Indeed, we have killed the Messiah, Jesus, the son of Mary, the messenger of Allah." And they did not kill him, nor did they crucify him; but [another] was made to resemble him to them. And indeed, those who differ over it are in doubt about it. They have no knowledge of it except the following of assumption. And they did not kill him, for certain. — Quran 4:157

The Bible alone has tediously long lists of problems. But, hey, ambiguities and inconsistencies do have a sort of strength to them. When one verse is inconvenient, just find another, or interpret in whatever presently convenient way. Which has happened.

Adam, Eve, and Jesus don't figure in the Vedas. Can't have been that important I guess.

Certifiably non-authoritative.

Past theocracies has indeed been run by clergy. Deities neither evident nor necessary in the first place, just humans. If some such deity wants something in particular, then it should be a walk in the park to let everyone in on that. Meanwhile I'll do the talking on the one really true deity's behalf. Good with you?

Likewise, there are instances where Stephen Hawking indicated his distaste for any cosmological theories that implied the idea of an absolute beginning (see Why Physicists can't Avoid a Creation Event). Here again is an attempt to avoid a disliked metaphysical inference by steering research and consideration away from that direction. — Wayfarer

That may have been Hawking's sentiment, but the "edge free" model didn't originate with him.
See XXXI. The Possibility of a “Finite” and Yet “Unbounded” Universe by Einstein for an earlier discussion.
That's the first here:

• the universe is not infinite and did not have a definite earliest time (< 14 billion years)
• the universe is finite in duration and had a definite earliest time (= 14 billion years)
• the universe is infinite in past duration (∞)

The model wasn't concocted in order to defy religious apologists.

But ...

never let the truth stand in the way of a good story — attributed to Mark Twain

@SophistiCat, @andrewk, yeah, the fine-tuning arguments seem kind of fine-tuned (to an end) themselves.
An assessment would perhaps have to include something like modal realism, which isn't really feasible.
In a very large probability space, the probability of any observed particulars (in our universe) becomes very small, whether involving us, or life, or the rocky moons in our Solar system, or whatever.
Also, how would we assess the chances of a hypothetical über-designer intentionally coming up with our universe (without begging the question)?
And maybe we're just a side-effect of an über-designer studying micro-chaos versus macro-constraints or whatever?
How would we differentiate?
Looks to me like the Texas sharpshooter fallacy applies.

How would we go about making such an assessment?

These two seems partially at odds:

• observation: life as we know it seems somewhat rare, not a hospitable universe
• proposal: the universe was designed for (conscious) life, perhaps us specifically

The constants found in physics (and similar sciences) are but part of such an assessment. We'd have to take entirely different ontologies/structures into account as well, or we'd still just be looking at ours. (For that matter, we don't change π, and expect to find circles.) Not a simple assessment to make; how would we come up with such alternate universes...? This would converge on considering modal realism.

Following evidence + current models thereof, life, as we know it, has a window somewhere between formation of solar systems and the beginning of the degenerate era, ever marching towards heat death (cf expansion of the universe). Heat death involves an unfathomable amount of time (even compared to 14 billion years), ruled by the lonely photon in deep cold.

In the meantime, life seems rare, at least from what we currently know. Our present universe is largely indifferent/hostile to life. It's vast, open spaces and lots of radiation, with rocks here and there, gases and stars, and the occasional black hole and supernova blast. Life on Earth requires free energy from the Sun to stay around; energy that temporarily partakes in food chains before dispersing ever on (entropy + expansion).

Isn't it somewhat self-elevating to think of life as a pre-determined purpose of the universe...? Or more specifically, like some seem to think, us? :o Anthropocentric self-importance (even narcissism)? Douglas Adams' puddle comes to mind.

What are the chances of a hypothetical über-designer coming up with our universe?

If we're getting into probability calculations, then let's calculate (or at least assess) the probability on the 2^nd of January in the year 601, that we'd be chatting here, at this moment, under these circumstances, with these words. In order to get an impression of how this works, and to compare, let's also make the calculation for the year -816. We might invoke quantum mechanics and general relativity, just for the heck of it. :)

Texas sharpshooter fallacy (Wikipedia)

I think it was Gassendi that brought the same objection up way back in the 1600s, @Marcus de Brun. (y)
When it comes to pure deduction, you don't get much for free (non-ampliative), rather "cogito therefore thinking exists".
Compare: something exists, since otherwise this wouldn't be.
But of course, I don't really need Descartes or anyone else to tell me that thoughts (and I) exist, whatever it all may be. :)

An observer of what is obvious. No physical thing exists if it is not perceived. — raza

A subjective idealist (and solipsist), then. :meh:
Presumably you regularly experience other folks' bodies and gesturing and such?
Not their self-awarenesses, though.

Red marks conundrum:

That's conflating epistemology with ontology. — numberjohnny5

Yep (y)

The Right To Freedom is the Right To Oppress Others — Agustino

Not really.
Those others also have right to freedom.
The constraint is to ensure others' same right.

Is this more traditional sketch reasonable?



(the attached knowledge-traditional-1247x610.png is easier to read)

Belief » Formation (Wikipedia)

(Yes yes, the Gettier cases, but they're more a refinement, than a reason to bin it all.)

So, that's not so much about know-how, as it is about propositional knowledge.
Seems the work lies in justification.

Is the case for fine-tuned for life that good?

The constants found in physics (and similar sciences) are but part of such an assessment. We'd have to take entirely different ontologies/structures into account as well, or we'd still just be looking at ours. (For that matter, we don't change π, and expect to find circles, I don't anyway.) Not a simple assessment to make; how would we come up with such alternate universes...?

Following evidence + current models thereof, life, as we know it, has a window somewhere between formation of solar systems and the beginning of the degenerate era, ever marching towards heat death (cf expansion of the universe). Heat death involves an unfathomable amount of time (even compared to 14 billion years), ruled by the lonely photon in deep cold.

In the meantime, life seems rare, at least from what we currently know. Our present universe is largely indifferent/hostile to life (by far). It's vast, open spaces and lots of radiation, with rocks here and there, gases and suns, and the occasional black hole and supernova blast. Life on Earth requires free energy from the Sun to stay around; energy that temporarily partakes in food chains before dispersing ever on (entropy + expansion).

Isn't it somewhat self-elevating to think of life as a pre-determined purpose of the universe...? Or more specifically, like some seem to think, us? :o Self-importance (even narcissism)? Douglas Adams' puddle comes to mind.

Texas sharpshooter fallacy (Wikipedia)

What do you mean by that? — Posty McPostface

A hyper skeptic parsimonious solipsist weirdo may doubt anything beyond mere appearances (cf "esse est percipi").
Say, when taking a walk on the street they may doubt there's anything more to the buildings and pedestrians than what they experience.
So, no other minds, no other self-awarenesses, no other experiences (that we generally ascribe to each other), for example, just the solipsist's own experiences. ← implosion

↑ what the experiences are could be doubted

But, whatever all those experiences are, their mere existence cannot be doubted.
Analogous to: something exists, since otherwise this statement wouldn't.
Not exactly informative, but, hey, ... :)

↑ that experiences exist, whatever they may be

Red marks conundrum:



(from something I typed up elsewhere (can maybe reproduce here if anyone cares))

I suppose a solipsist cannot doubt that their experiences exist (like everyone else), but they could doubt whatever ideas about what they are.

Have you considered what would come of things, if we were to reject identity, the 1^st law?

• onto/logical: x = x
• propositional: p ⇔ p

You may consider it a working presumption, if you like, which enables all kinds of things, including our talk.

x and y are implicitly bound variables, so there's an ambiguity involved:

∀x∈S ∀y∈T p(x,y) = ∀y∈S ∀x∈T p(y,x) ✓

∀x∈S ∀y∈T p(x,y) ⇔ ∀y∈T ∀x∈S p(y,x) ? commutative type thing

@SophistiCat, are you referring to the former? If so, then I'd say you're right.

@Rayan may be referring to the latter, under some system, with some rules, not specified in the opening post.

Uhm...
Sex is fun, not a sterile fertilization ritual. :roll:
Deny natural fun all you like, it's just self-alienating.

I never understood this constant obsession with the sex lives of others. Is it envy? — Jeremiah

Good question.

Partly to allow free will. God will tell each individual through their conscience what He wants. They will not be forced to listen nor forced by unassailable texts. — EnPassant

Hm. Then it seems this God figure is no longer needed here. Falls out of the equation after a fashion.

Anyway, if we go by the Biblical narratives (and others), then God has meddled plenty in human affairs, though.

But did that, by itself, remove free will...? Seems more like rendering degrees of doubt/conviction, than removing free will.

6000 years old — wellwisher

Is that a Biblical timeline you're going by there...?

Human evolution (Wikipedia)

Colloquially, infinite is a quantity that's not a number, $|\mathbb{R}| \sim \infty \notin \mathbb{R}$.
But it's ambiguous (hence the $\sim$).
As it turns out there's more than one infinite, there are infinitely many different infinites, no less (Cantor).
Anyway, Dedekind and Tarski came up with different (general) definitions that can be shown equivalent.

The omniscience paradox is once again a straw man. For one, if God is omnipotent and omniscient, then the capacity for God to change his mind would be logically impossible. But for classical theists, God is eternal and outside of time, so it is inappropriate to speak of God "making choices". — darthbarracuda

Right, atemporal renders decision-making impossible or incoherent.
Moreover, it seems that minds are strongly temporal altogether, meaning that an atemporal mind (and atemporal sentience) is equally impossible or incoherent.
(Poll: God is an incorporeal mind that's not spatiotemporal)
Something atemporal would inherently be inert and lifeless, maybe like abstract objects?

Supposing that X is temporal, on the other hand, does lead to something odd about "changing one's mind" while also being omniscient.
(Note, this is not about human "free will", but rather X's own "changing X's mind".)

The omnipotence paradox is a straw man, since it requires that God have a logically incoherent power. God could only be omnipotent if he lacked the power to do something that was logically possible. Demanding God do the logically impossible is like demanding he design a square circle. — darthbarracuda

I don't think anyone demands anything here, do they? :)
All there is to go by is a definition, there isn't anything to point at which makes us go "omnipotent!".

Simply declaring that X can do exactly what is logically possible, does not really solve the conundrum, but just pushes it one out and leaves it hanging there.
You still have to decide whether X can create anything or X can lift anything, because X seemingly cannot do both, yet omnipotence means both.
(That's an exclusive or by the way.)
Recall, we only have these weird definitions to go by.
So, both (create and lift), one and not the other (create or lift), or neither; you have four options to deal with.

Where things get even more hairy is when defining that X is atemporal.

Godsplaining:

The attempt to earn cultural capital or seduce by explaining spiritual concepts to people even though no one has asked for or needs an explanation.

To attribute divine significance to something, usually in a forced manner

Source: Urban Dictionary

What kind of clarification would you accept? — Txastopher

Don't know. Maybe show up for supper on occasion? We're personable hosts, supper's on us. Oh, and grant me omnipotence for a bit, the fun I'd have. :) All-knowing includes knowing such stuff.

Let's say God did appear and said that, "yes, homosexuals should be euthanised". Would this make you change your mind? — Txastopher

Maybe an appropriate response could be: "Well, you best get on with your dirty work, then."
According to some stories, I guess it wouldn't be the first time.

Either way, humans clearly aren't reliable.
Sathya Sai Baba claimed to be a Shiva avatar, and has 100,000s of followers (actually might be in the millions) across the globe, some of whom claim to have witnessed him doing supernatural magic. Some Abrahamic religious folk, on the other hand, claim it's all demonic, followers bound for the grand BBQ. Go figure.
Suppose I was to take the countless fantastic supernatural human babble serious. My head would be filled with just about anything imaginable, mutually incompatible, incoherent babble.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear. — Thomas Jefferson (1787)

If God made Himself unequivocally known, Pascal's wager becomes a sure thing. — Rank Amateur

Assuming s/he/it made their demands and identity clear, and that no trickery was afoot.

Well, it's not exactly parsimonious, and lends itself to a regress ...



Programmers of a simulation can do whatever, beyond the usual cheat console in some games.
Reliability goes out the window, which undermines our efforts to understand the world.

_{Guard In Video Game Under Strict Orders To Repeatedly Pace Same Stretch Of Hallway (The Onion, Oct 2014) :)}

Instead of all the "Much Ado About Nothing", wouldn't it make more sense to be a bit more specific?

• "nothingness" = absence of anything and everything
• nothing = common use, like "there's nothing in the fridge", out of beer :o

The former would then be like a referent-less word, since anything and everything already is all-inclusive, and hence "nothingness" is our way of talking about it's non-existing all-exclusive complement.

The latter we may quantify with zero.

Isn't the opening post a bit along the lines of Frege and Russell (the abstract number is the set of all sets with the concrete number as it's cardinality)...?
I think it was Frege and/or Russell anyway (from memory), might have others (as well).

By the way, the dimensions of units would have to be fairly general.
You could have, say, "I own the Moon, my left ear, and the range from my front-door to the street", which could be construed as just "3 items".
(Yes, the Moon is mine I tell you.) :)

@GreenPhilosophy, I think any answers to your inquiry may differ depending on context.

In a civilized society, things may be sort of complex, but most look after their citizens.
Actually, this might be a good measure of how well-developed such societies are.

I don't think you can demand that another individual provides for you as such.
(Surely you don't "blame" nature for suffering? The universe is largely indifferent to our troubles.)


Hey @jm0, a fellow Dane, who knew. :)

@apokrisis, incidentally, I think the peculiar fractal'ish thing applies to self-knowledge in particular.
(This coincides with documented (evident) introspection illusions, an illusory information horizon necessitated by a finite self-model.)

Instead, the simplest map just tells you where are the obstacles, where are the paths. That is, where are the constraints, where are the degrees of freedom.
[...]
The kind of tool we are talking about here is a map. And maps are interested in the global structure of an environment, not its inessential details. — apokrisis

Right.

If we abandon the peculiar fractal'ish structure, then it seems that the only exhaustive map is the territory.
It's just that, by that line of thinking, the term "map" is then implicitly bent around instead (or "territory" is).
Where maps (models, understandings, idealized abstracts, information, memories, etc) are epistemic - they're ours - territories are ontological.
But then, by collapsing maps and territories, we sort of populate it all with us (like a self-externalizing hypostatization), if you will.

Maybe omniscience-granting maps, or otherwise entirely accurate maps, are a pipedream.
Still useful (cf your pragmatism), if not required, just in a domain of excluding particulars, or flattened as you put it (if I'm reading your comments right).

And there could also be the most complete map possible map. The Map of Everything. — apokrisis

You'd then have to have the map being part of it all.
Or, in other words, the map would have to include itself as a proper part.
A bit fractal'ish I suppose, infinite in depth where the map maps itself.
While not impossible, it would give a peculiar structure of it all.

And if scientists said all things were made of pixie dust, rather than particles, then these would also be commitments. Since they are commitments about what exists, they are metaphysical commitments. — Moliere

Right.
There's a difference between merely that something exists (∃) and what exactly something is (quiddity), though.
Shamelessly pointing over at an old post: ∃ and quiddity
In general, the sciences tend to suppose that something is, and then try to learn more about what it is.
That said, of course some make commitments to specific metaphysics about what exactly things are, but, on the angle above, the sciences don't really care much.

Suppose things were made of pixie dust.
The scientific methodologies wouldn't change a bit.

In (very) short, science is self-critical, bias-minimizing model → evidence convergence, where tentative hypotheses can be derived from the models.
Evidence, observations, experimental results accumulate, and the models convergence thereupon.
The convergence protocols are what scientists do.

So, on that angle at least, only regularities are required, without which everything would be incomprehensible chaos anyway.

Wouldn't fare well with scriptural accounts or among church/mosque folk.
Abstracts aren't sentient or causal, for example, but kind of inert.
Religious believers typically envision deities as active, alive.