Is the concept of "God" necessary, let alone real?

[Reflex]

Reflex, you had a lot to say but do you actually have reasoning to refute the OP or only assertions. At this stage the only possible response to your post is, "Thank you for your opinions".

I see. Your assertions are "informed judgments" and mine are only "opinions." For example, if I were to say, "In truth, we could readily dispense with the notion of God altogether and, in terms of understanding reality, nothing would be lost," it would merely be my opinion, but because you said it, it's an informed judgement. But when I said that God has been posited as the ground of being for centuries, that is more than a mere assertion or opinion: it goes to the very heart of classical theism. So, thank you for your opinions, but it is clear that you don't want to dialogue with someone who challenges your preconceptions.

I do agree with your statement: "I imagine you started out crawling on on your belly, matured to crawling all fours and then later to standing on two feet". That's the path for all of us.

Yes, it is. And diminishes your argument about "a deity who started out as a childishly absurd anthropomorphism" to mere rhetoric.

[henry quirk]

Good Omens: a decent read.

[Dubious]

Is it not possible to feel tremendous love and gratitude towards the Earth, the Sun, the galaxy and universe - even to feel worshipful

No. Only a person can love and be loved. The concept of the personality of Deity facilitates fellowship; it favors intelligent worship; it promotes refreshing trustfulness. Interactions can be had between nonpersonal things, but not fellowship. The fellowship relation of father and son, as between God and man, cannot be enjoyed unless both are persons. Only personalities can commune with each other.

No! That's clearly YOUR limitation among all the other ones you register. Personally, I may not feel it to that degree Greta or anyone like her does (of whom there are many) but I do understand why one would be receptive to that intense emphatic sensation with the rest of existence. Their spectrum is simply much greater than yours. If you feel happy living in a black box with your god, that's your choice but don't tell others how they're supposed to feel...or is that simple extension also beyond you!

Also since when is god a person?

[Reflex]

...Their spectrum is simply much greater than yours.

Or vice versa.

If you feel happy living in a black box with your god, that's your choice but don't tell others how they're supposed to feel...or is that simple extension also beyond you!

Back at ya! As Jordan Peterson might say, stop playing the victim in this discussion. Grow up!

Like Greta, you fail to see that you're objecting to the very thing you're doing. It's like the "Antifa" movement using fascist tactics in objecting to what it perceives as "fascism." It's only aim is to shut down discourse and protect fragile egos.

Also since when is god a person?

Since forever and eternity. The doctrine of divine simplicity, I think, represents the state of the altogether hypothetical pre-existence. It's what was before the beginning that never was. (Please don't state the obvious, that theologians will disagree with this comment.)

Modernity tends to forget that the first scientists were motivated to search for the laws and mechanisms in nature precisely because they believed the universe was designed by a rational agent; they expected to find an ordered, rational structure in nature. So, instead of showing that God is unnecessary, science can be seen as confirming that original hypothesis.

More importantly, you highlighted but ignored the words "and be loved." While it is possible to feel tremendous love and gratitude towards the Earth, the Sun, the galaxy and universe, to feel loved in return demands an agent (and a broader spectrum).

[Dubious]

Back at ya! As Jordan Peterson might say, stop playing the victim in this discussion. Grow up!

..you mean UP to your size! For me that would be a downer so...no thanks!

[Greta]

Greta wants to apply the scientific method for philosophy

Not quite. I try to apply scientific(-ish) discipline to philosophical matters so as to avoid cul-de-sacs.

Time and again I see people on philosophy forums finding an idea they love that seems possible. Then they follow that track as if it was the only possibility rather than just one of them. The mistake is not always in the standard of their reasoning but the scope of that reasoning; they simply neglect to consider all possibilities, apparently for emotional reasons.

This dynamic is so common that it's clearly an easy mistake to make, so I am trying to not to make that error. I recognise times in the past when I have done so. While it's limiting to work through philosophical issues in what I think of as a "scientific straitjacket", it's at least as limiting to attempt philosophy without fairly strong scientific knowledge and understanding. There is also always the option of looking within and comparing notes with what one senses and observes "outside" without making a commitment to one's observations, rather just considering.

If we are to better understand reality, all information would ideally be considered - be it within or outside, and no matter what the time period or culture. Throughout the world and history people undergoing experiences we cannot even imagine, and thus we can learn from them. This does not mean giving inordinate attention or primacy to the ideas of one group of people (Arabs/Jews) at one time (the Iron Age) but including their ideas in the vast bodies of knowledge accumulated in human history - and it's only a very small part.

Thus, taking a monotheistic deity as an a priori fact rather than just one supposition is a disproportionate focus that logically stems from the long time cultural domination of Abrahamic believers: "History is always written by the winners".

There is cause to question the dominant cultures' assumed (and at times enforced) "truths". For instance, the God idea - that intelligence and awareness is omnipresent rather than emergent. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. How would we know if we lived within a larger intelligence, like cells in a body? Believers speak about "tapping into" the deity like a programmer who can code in machine language, but that may also be just the potentials of continually emerging and developing consciousness.

However the experience of understanding comes through intuition or remembrance.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: people who respect the scientific method also have intuition. We really do. We are actually human and not programmable AI and to be human is to have intuition. It is impossible not to have intuition although, as with everything, these things vary not only between individuals but during the course of a life.

The logical error here is your assuming that anyone who does not trust their intuitions implicitly and uncritically lacks intuition per se. Rather, disciplined thinkers take evidence seriously and try to balance the inside-out and the outside-in perspectives rather than giving complete primacy to themselves and their own minds and interests.

Why do we surrender like that, Nick? Why don't some of us defiantly stand up for our intuitions rather than submit to the minds of others?

For me, it's mainly because I, as an individual, can only experience a very tiny part of reality while the larger body of humanity experience so much more. There are over seven billion people, each saying based on their experience, "reality is like this". Who to believe? The ancient Greeks and Islamic philosophers grappled with this question and largely decided that it was critical for thinkers to question themselves and others rather than believe their preferences implicitly.

]The value of the scientific method for philosophy is to isolate the question and open it to conscious contemplation. I try to share questions while Greta wants to argue superficial opinions.

I suggest that most observers would say the opposite.

The value of the scientific method for philosophy is to provide extra data, which rather helps when humanity currently has knowledge (and only scanty) about 5% of the universe's constituents. It would be nice to know a bit more before considering coming to any firm conclusions.

[Greta]

Reflex, you had a lot to say but do you actually have reasoning to refute the OP or only assertions. At this stage the only possible response to your post is, "Thank you for your opinions".

I see. Your assertions are "informed judgments" and mine are only "opinions." For example, if I were to say, "In truth, we could readily dispense with the notion of God altogether and, in terms of understanding reality, nothing would be lost," it would merely be my opinion, but because you said it, it's an informed judgement. But when I said that God has been posited as the ground of being for centuries, that is more than a mere assertion or opinion: it goes to the very heart of classical theism. So, thank you for your opinions, but it is clear that you don't want to dialogue with someone who challenges your preconceptions.

Yes, that statement lacks appropriate qualifiers, a bit like your post, as you noted. It should have read: "In truth, we could dispense with the notion of God altogether and, in terms of understanding reality, seemingly nothing would be lost". It sounded more certain than I meant.

BTW God is not the only notion being posited for centuries so why do you assume that it's the only possibility and so grumpily deny the possibility that it doesn't exist?

I do agree with your statement: "I imagine you started out crawling on on your belly, matured to crawling all fours and then later to standing on two feet". That's the path for all of us.

Yes, it is. And diminishes your argument about "a deity who started out as a childishly absurd anthropomorphism" to mere rhetoric.

The angry and "jealous god" of the OT that was only interested in the welfare of Middle Eastern people was indeed a childishly absurd anthropomorphism. That's the basis on which more sophisticated conceptions of God grew. If one's ancestors are embarrassing there's no point denying it.

So yes, theistic ideation was once childish and silly and it's grown up (somewhat), but that initial basis of Yahweh should at least be questioned. What conceptions might be devised in lieu of that "initial condition"?

[Nick_A]

Greta, you still miss the essential point which serves as the basis for all the ideas I have presented which repulse you. It is natural for you to build a philosophy from the bottom up. Anything else appears naïve. A belief in God from the bottom up invites all sorts of self deception and you assume God can be nothing else but self deception. I take the opposite approach. For the God concept to have answers for the essential questions of the heart, a top down approach is a necessary beginning with the hypothesis of a source. Without this source the paths of science and the essence of religion cannot be reconciled and Man cannot have any objective meaning and purpose. There can be nothing other than the eternal arguments over opinions that you so cherish as the glory of the Great Beast.

You must remain closed to perennial philosophy which begins with the premise of a Source. You are with the majority content to argue opinions. A minority seek to experience the essence of religion or the reality which transcends opinions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy

Perennial philosophy (Latin: philosophia perennis),[note 1] also referred to as Perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a perspective in modern spirituality that views each of the world's religious traditions as sharing a single, metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has grown.

Perennialism has its roots in the Renaissance interest in neo-Platonism and its idea of The One, from which all existence emanates. Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) sought to integrate Hermeticism with Greek and Jewish-Christian thought,[1] discerning a Prisca theologia which could be found in all ages.[2] Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–94) suggested that truth could be found in many, rather than just two, traditions. He proposed a harmony between the thought of Plato and Aristotle, and saw aspects of the Prisca theologia in Averroes, the Koran, the Cabalaand other sources.[3] Agostino Steuco (1497–1548) coined the term philosophia perennis.[4]…………………………………..

All of the major traditions beginning with a conscious source and with a God concept similar to the ONE which you must deny to sustain your secularist philosophy must be denied at all cost.

However the process of deduction revealing the laws of involution creating the conscious universe and Man’s purpose within it provides a perspective essential for human understanding..

Man is at the beginning of a potential reconciliation between science and religion. Science will become more sophisticated in its exploration of facts concerning the laws of the earth. Those who explore and practice techniques for opening the mind to the vertical third dimension of thought and experiencing objective conscience and the higher values natural for Man not caught up in defending cave life will experience the natural relationship between science (facts) and the essence of religion; higher values natural for Man who has escaped the confines of Plato’s cave.

Of course you must hate this God concept since perennial philosophy begins with a premise and the process of deduction rather than scientific induction for the cause of meaning. You prefer to accept Man, a being in search of meaning described by Plato, as having no meaning or purpose other than what the Great Beast provides it. Perennial philosophy including the conscious and triune universe offers an alternative to the supremacy of the Beast. You would prefer to eliminate it while I prefer to further such ideas in the world for those capable of avoiding being gobbled up by the madness for the sake of becoming themselves.. We have chosen our paths.

[Reflex]

Greta, you still miss the essential point which serves as the basis for all the ideas I have presented which repulse you. It is natural for you to build a philosophy from the bottom up. Anything else appears naïve. A belief in God from the bottom up invites all sorts of self deception and you assume God can be nothing else but self deception. I take the opposite approach. For the God concept to have answers for the essential questions of the heart, a top down approach is a necessary beginning with the hypothesis of a source. Without this source the paths of science and the essence of religion cannot be reconciled and Man cannot have any objective meaning and purpose. There can be nothing other than the eternal arguments over opinions that you so cherish as the glory of the Great Beast.

Personally, I don't think the expression "Great Beast" is useful. However, the rest of this paragraph is right on.

You must remain closed to perennial philosophy which begins with the premise of a Source. You are with the majority content to argue opinions. A minority seek to experience the essence of religion or the reality which transcends opinions.

This, also, is true. To express something that recognizing the reality of bottom-up and top-down experience is not telling someone what they feel or should feel, nor is it an opinion any more than saying dropping a bowling ball on my foot hurts. Critics of this dual experience should at least make an effort at being consistent. If you're going to use phrases like, "Feel[ing] tremendous love and gratitude towards the Earth, the Sun, the galaxy and universe - even to feel worshipful," call it what it is: pantheism. But love without interpersonal communion is mere sentiment.

Of course, critics of theism resent hearing things like this because it implies a narrower spectrum of experience than what theism enjoys. The concept of truth might possibly be entertained apart from personality, the concept of beauty may exist without personality, but the concept of divine goodness is understandable only in relation to personality (in spite of what Dubious believes).

Of course you must hate this God concept since perennial philosophy begins with a premise and the process of deduction rather than scientific induction for the cause of meaning. You prefer to accept Man, a being in search of meaning described by Plato, as having no meaning or purpose other than what the Great Beast provides it. Perennial philosophy including the conscious and triune universe offers an alternative to the supremacy of the Beast. You would prefer to eliminate it while I prefer to further such ideas in the world for those capable of avoiding being gobbled up by the madness for the sake of becoming themselves. We have chosen our paths.

Is it hate, or fear? I'm not sure.

[Reflex]

BTW God is not the only notion being posited for centuries so why do you assume that it's the only possibility and so grumpily deny the possibility that it doesn't exist?

Because I like consistency. Like I said, modern science can still be said to confirm the beliefs of the first scientists. It is not in any way opposed to those beliefs.

The angry and "jealous god" of the OT that was only interested in the welfare of Middle Eastern people was indeed a childishly absurd anthropomorphism. That's the basis on which more sophisticated conceptions of God grew. If one's ancestors are embarrassing there's no point denying it.

Embarrassing? I marvel at the idea of human beings coping under those primitive conditions. I trust you're not suggesting that you would be able to cope any better under those circumstances!

So yes, theistic ideation was once childish and silly and it's grown up (somewhat), but that initial basis of Yahweh should at least be questioned. What conceptions might be devised in lieu of that "initial condition"?

What conceptions having explanatory power might be devised in lieu of that "initial condition" is a better question. Theism's answers are a far cry from those early conceptions.

Atheism doesn't have one. Neither does agnosticism.

[Greta]

BTW God is not the only notion being posited for centuries so why do you assume that it's the only possibility and so grumpily deny the possibility that it doesn't exist?

Because I like consistency. Like I said, modern science can still be said to confirm the beliefs of the first scientists. It is not in any way opposed to those beliefs.

Well, what people believe is one thing, what actually is is another. Like Dubious, I personally find it frustrating that I have been so conditioned by the God concept that it seems to narrow one's conceptions to always lead to a One.

There is no logical reason for this, though, when you question the notion. Maybe there is no God of the universe - maybe the godlike entities are galaxies, stars, black holes, solar systems or worlds? Just because polytheist cultures were invaded by the greater military aggression of monotheist armies does not mean they were proved "wrong" by their captors.

Why not stay open to all manner of possibilities?

So yes, theistic ideation was once childish and silly and it's grown up (somewhat), but that initial basis of Yahweh should at least be questioned. What conceptions might be devised in lieu of that "initial condition"?

What conceptions having explanatory power might be devised in lieu of that "initial condition" is a better question. Theism's answers are a far cry from those early conceptions.

Atheism doesn't have one. Neither does agnosticism.

Like movies, theism only has explanatory power if one suspends their judgement and ignore the plot holes. Fair enough, if one's aim is to enjoy the ride without probing too much but not if one is curious about the "plot holes".

Scientific conceptions today do have much more rigorous explanatory power IMO regarding possible early universe scenarios that resulted in today's situation. However, the subjective human emotional situation - how does one optimally live a life and what does "optimal" mean in context? - requires a more intuitive approach. This is because researchers cannot access a huge part of reality, ie. many billions of simple and complex animal and human minds that are largely opaque to all others. So intuition is far more important in the personal than the public domain.

[Greta]

If de Chardin is right, then something like God will evolve in the later universe (many billions of years, possibly a trillion or more) but at this stage, the universe seems more chaotic and formative than ordered, in which case God would only exist as an evolutionary potential.

Yes. His overall description of it being cosmogenesis based on the involution of the organic from simple to complex which corresponds as a "correlative" increase in consciousness described by him as "interiorisation"; a sublime idea while remaining deeply questionable on both fronts, human & cosmic.

I must have missed that but first thought is that something like interiorisation is actually happening all the time. What aspects did you find questionable?

The idea of effectively "programming oneself" with an algorithm, ie. training or conditioning oneself, is to be "idiot proofed". That is, in moments of distraction our conditioning prevents error.

It may sound perverse, but I don't relish the idea of being "idiot proofed" and doubtless proved it a few times too. Programming preempts insight as to what caused the idiocy forgoing both the analytical and psychological lessons which normally follow. The brain was made to think and not groove itself to some autonomous algorithm which pre-decides response. It is certainly useful for functions like the one you mention and many others but only as a subset called into service when required.

I suggest that this is indicative of your work roles. "Personal programming" is needed when one must operate in real time at a speed too fast for conscious processing such as sport, the performing arts and warrior and hunting roles. As you note, though, efficiency comes at a cost. Chris Cutler, experimental drummer formerly of Henry Cow described the dichotomy as such:

Since I was self taught, I didn't find out about rudiments until I had already been playing along with records for a while and I suspect that's why I formed, from the very beginning, a top-down rather than bottom-up approach to playing; and why the sound, rather than the rudiments, became the centre from which I instinctively worked.

Perhaps I should clarify this. Books and teachers start with the elements: tiny modules, individual patterns and exercises, and then show you how to use them to assemble a complete drum part: you take this pattern, add that one, spice it up with grace notes and syncopations - and there it is. This is a thinking built on modules and assembly.

I learned the opposite way, thinking, hearing or imagining a whole and then trying to discipline my hands and feet to produce it. Using this method, individual parts simply emerge as epiphenomenal effects. When I say I was driven by sound, I mean the whole that I heard I heard as a sound rather than an agglomerated rhythmic pattern. It was this sound that I was trying to make happen, not the discrete elements of a rhythm.

It should be noted that the drummers with the greatest physical skill and capacity are almost all trained as children in the rudiments and take that "modular" approach CC refers to.

However, with the gains I also think something is lost - an original voice, and thus drummers today are far less identifiable than they once were. However, the changing requirements of society only require drummers to provide a skeleton around which music can happen rather than partake in the musical dialogue. A fair analogy could perhaps be made as regards society's approach to individual capacities.

This is a major aim of religion. As a musician, I practice for muscle memory, and theists practice a culturally specific form of "moral memory" what is moral to "the tribe".

Yes! What you denote is the difference between using a function as required by musicians and being controlled by one as supervised in virtually every practice of theism. There's the voluntary "training" function and the kind one involuntarily succumbs to.

I think you would be surprised (or maybe not, haha) at how inflexible musicians can be as regards technique - to many it's almost a moral issue - if you wish to be a musician and not prepared to work furiously hard, then you have no right to speak about music - not matter how experienced one may be. It's like what theists would consider "scientific fascism" - the closed-minded dismissal of all alternative ideas stemming from intuition rather than from acknowledged experts.

Experts tend to be blamed for the unthinking application of our bodies of knowledge. However, they are not to blame for the misapplication of knowledge that happens when people take a religious approach to information - that is, believing there is such a thing as one-size-fits-all. Knowledge only requires awareness, not obedience. It is information to take into account in one's deliberations, not a stricture. What is good for most people is not necessarily good for the individual so in the personal domain we sometimes need to take the averaged results of scientific research with a grain of salt.

So why bother? Either the entire God project needs some serious adjustment, or the slate would ideally be cleared as much as possible to see what interesting ideas might emerge in God's stead.

Cleared indeed but not forgotten because it's these that caused the vacuum. I often wondered how the human brain would manifest completely devoid of all god inclusions...or some alien civilization when upon mention of God would inquire, "who or what is God? We aren't acquainted with that concept!" What would their psychology and thus their civilization be like!

That's your original idea on which I based the thread. Yes, there was no clean slate, so the notion is theoretical only, alas. Well, at least for humans on Earth ...

[Serendipper]

Modernity tends to forget that the first scientists were motivated to search for the laws and mechanisms in nature precisely because they believed the universe was designed by a rational agent; they expected to find an ordered, rational structure in nature. So, instead of showing that God is unnecessary, science can be seen as confirming that original hypothesis.

I'm not sure.

We suspected the earth to be flat, but it proved round, but not perfectly round as if designed, but an oblate spheroid with a wobbly spin that precesses every 26,000 years.

We thought the earth to be geocentric, but heliocentrism proved true, but not with nice round orbits and numbers as if designed since one solar revolution takes 365.2422 earth revolutions.

The persistence of counter-intuitive findings led to Eddington's aphorism: Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.

[Dubious]

For the God concept to have answers for the essential questions of the heart, a top down approach is a necessary beginning with the hypothesis of a source.

So you invent (hypothesize) a source amounting to a myth of some sort to make your existence feel more comfortable by having a meaning supplied by the source you invented. Of course the hypothesis you mention remains a hypothesis during your life and forever after. Not a problem if that's what you want to believe but why keep on preaching it through thousands of posts? Are you lonely?

Btw, the heart doesn't have any questions but it does supply blood to the organ which does.

Without this source the paths of science and the essence of religion cannot be reconciled and Man cannot have any objective meaning and purpose.

Theists never seem to tire in affirming their naive and sentimental views separated, by Can or Cannot's, as if they were actual mandated laws! Who says science and religion must be reconciled for man to have meaning and purpose? You keep preaching that what's true for you must be inferred as being true for everyone else or be considered a secular heretic within the armies of the Great Beast. If that isn't preaching and proselytizing then what is.

Like a good Jehovah's Witness - who also used the phrase "Great Beast" from what I recall - you're trying to pass on the same mental memes that cause brain paralysis to others...by which I mean refusing to employ one of the main methodologies by which both science & philosophy thrive but considered anathema by theists who don't appreciate having their sacred resolutions questioned.

To quote Nietzsche: It's not doubt but certainty which drives one insane!

What comes across as especially egregious after a few thousand posts is not your anorexic spirituality but the certainty by which you proclaim it causing a 100 % trade deficit in debate; your canonical statements to be accepted without any infringement of collateral views which may force further analysis. DAS IST VERBOTEN. One must defend one's precious spiritual imperatives and claim superiority in having done so.

Purpose presupposes meaning; it's created through accomplishment from the bottom-up and not by some bargain basement edition of grace to supply your spiritual necessities. Purpose is an ongoing act of discovery, not some cheap source of enlightenment engendered by quotes.

[iolo]

The 'God' concept was once a logical one, replacing a lot of godlets, myths, etcetera etcetera, and giving a coherent pattern, but the more we know of reality the less compatible this concept seems with it, particularly 'God' as a father, and so on. The only argument that seems to have any weight with me is that Jesus of Nazareth, whom I find a hugely morally impressive early socialist , believed in it so strongly that he found himself caught up in it and 'worshipped'. This leaves, I suppose, an emotional uncertainty somewhere, but not a strong one.