Philosophy Now Forum

Terrapin Station wrote:

Immanuel Can wrote: My country has never moved. I have relationship to it. I have moved many times.

I'd say your country has moved/changed. I don't think there are any existents that are static, plus I'm a nominalist including in the sense where I do not buy any real abstracts.

I only meant geographically. Trust me...it still has the borders in exactly the same place. But that fact hasn't stopped me from sometimes living there, and sometimes living elsewhere. At times I was a national, and at some an ex-patriot living overseas. But my country was still right where it used to be.

Terrapin Station wrote: And you don't understand the comments we're making to you, unfortunately. If you're talking about the idea of change in the sense of changing relations to other things--which you just said is what you're talking about--then God doesn't need to "move" in order for him to have changing relations to other things. Only the other things needs to move.

Well, I think I understand the problem well but I have difficulty to explain it to you well: We cannot expect anything from God if He doesn't move. We cannot make him to move hence we cannot be in a mutual relationship with him. We for example can pray but couldn't we really have an answer back? Well, yes, well, no. Who knows?

Terrapin Station wrote: I think part of the problem is that you're not expressing all of the details of your view precisely, but I wonder if you've really worked out all of the details in your head to express them in the first place.

Well, I think I grasp the problem well. It just take a little time to reach common understanding on the topic.

Terrapin Station wrote:

bahman wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:
Well, someone could drop the painting on my foot, right, and I could push the canvas with my finger, no? So the painting caused an effect with respect to me, and I caused an effect with respect to it. That's just one simple example of many we could give.

Yes, that is a sort of mutual relationship. But what about when you are just looking at a painting? Is it mutual too?

Well, light waves reflected from it cause effects in you (and more "abstractly," your contemplation of it and so on is an effect it has on you), while on the other side, you have a gravitational effect on it (it also has a gravitational effect on you), light waves reflected off of you hit the painting just as well, and so on.

It would be possible to set up a scenario where you'd have no effect on it, or where we could say the effect is negligible, but it's not so easy to do that really.

Oh, well. I don't think if I can help you if you don't try to get what I mean. As what related to relationship with God I don't think if there is gravitational force or reflection of light between us.

Immanuel Can wrote: "Need" is the wrong word. Of course God doesn't "need" anything. But in a good relationship, it's not because you "need" something from someone that you love them: it's an act of free and generous love...and in the case of God, of love undeserved by its object (us). He loves us because, as the Bible says, "God is love." He does not love us because we are loveable, and certainly not because he "lacks" or "needs" anything from us.

How God could be love and respond to us, our needs and prayers, if He is changeless?

bahman wrote: Oh, well. I don't think if I can help you if you don't try to get what I mean. As what related to relationship with God I don't think if there is gravitational force or reflection of light between us.

Try to get what you mean? You'd asked me a question. I answered it. I was supposed to answer it some other way that you were hoping I'd answer it, because it's how you would have answered it?

Re God and God's relations to us, those are changing in the sense that as we move about, we change our relationship with reflected light and gravitational pull and all sorts of things. Maybe you were ignoring that sort of stuff, but aren't we talking about reality as it is? Those sorts of things are real, physical facts about the world.

bahman wrote:Well, I think I understand the problem well but I have difficulty to explain it to you well: We cannot expect anything from God if He doesn't move. We cannot make him to move hence we cannot be in a mutual relationship with him. We for example can pray but couldn't we really have an answer back? Well, yes, well, no. Who knows?

Getting back to the relativity of motion. All motion is relative. Since we're moving, God moves relative to our motion. If I walk 5 feet across the room, God has moved 5 feet in relation to me. You can interpret God as a fixed point and me as moving, or me as a fixed point and God as moving, or something else as a fixed point and both of us as moving. There's not a correct answer there. Again, all motion is relative. Hence why we do not need to write the word "relative" before "motion."

If your just saying something about God answering prayers and so on, it's better to simply phrase it that way.

Terrapin Station wrote: Try to get what you mean? You'd asked me a question. I answered it. I was supposed to answer it some other way that you were hoping I'd answer it, because it's how you would have answered it?

I didn't expect that you answer the way I like but I was expecting that you answer in a way so I become sure that we are going somewhere.

Terrapin Station wrote: Re God and God's relations to us, those are changing in the sense that as we move about, we change our relationship with reflected light and gravitational pull and all sorts of things. Maybe you were ignoring that sort of stuff, but aren't we talking about reality as it is? Those sorts of things are real, physical facts about the world.

I meant you could have a relationship with a painting because it could impress you in certain way. Could painting be impressed because you are impressed?

bahman wrote: I meant you could have a relationship with a painting because it could impress you in certain way. Could painting be impressed because you are impressed?

A painting doesn't have mental states, obviously, but if you're requiring something like mental states by "relationship," or by cause and effect, you need to specify that.

Terrapin Station wrote: Getting back to the relativity of motion. All motion is relative. Since we're moving, God moves relative to our motion. If I walk 5 feet across the room, God has moved 5 feet in relation to me. You can interpret God as a fixed point and me as moving, or me as a fixed point and God as moving, or something else as a fixed point and both of us as moving. There's not a correct answer there. Again, all motion is relative. Hence why we do not need to write the word "relative" before "motion."

God doesn't have any location hence what you said doesn't make any sense.

Terrapin Station wrote:

bahman wrote:
I meant you could have a relationship with a painting because it could impress you in certain way. Could painting be impressed because you are impressed?

A painting doesn't have mental states, obviously, but if you're requiring something like mental states by "relationship," or by cause and effect, you need to specify that.

So the answer to my question is no, we cannot impress a painting since the relationship, the way you are impressed, is not mutual. The same rule applies to God, we cannot impress God hence our relationship is not mutual.

bahman wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote: Getting back to the relativity of motion. All motion is relative. Since we're moving, God moves relative to our motion. If I walk 5 feet across the room, God has moved 5 feet in relation to me. You can interpret God as a fixed point and me as moving, or me as a fixed point and God as moving, or something else as a fixed point and both of us as moving. There's not a correct answer there. Again, all motion is relative. Hence why we do not need to write the word "relative" before "motion."

God doesn't have any location hence what you said doesn't make any sense.

The idea of an existent without location is incoherent. So that rather doesn't make any sense.

bahman wrote: So the answer to my question is no, we cannot impress a painting since the relationship, the way you are impressed, is not mutual. The same rule applies to God, we cannot impress God hence our relationship is not mutual.

So you're defining mutual not as cause and effect both ways, but as the same cause and effect both ways, and you're not saying that we cannot have a relationship with God, but we cannot have a mutual relationship with God? That would be fine to make those changes, but you'd be leaving out causes and effects such as "Cause to become 5 meters to the side of" (again noting that the idea of a locationless existent is incoherent).

Terrapin Station wrote:

bahman wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote: Getting back to the relativity of motion. All motion is relative. Since we're moving, God moves relative to our motion. If I walk 5 feet across the room, God has moved 5 feet in relation to me. You can interpret God as a fixed point and me as moving, or me as a fixed point and God as moving, or something else as a fixed point and both of us as moving. There's not a correct answer there. Again, all motion is relative. Hence why we do not need to write the word "relative" before "motion."

God doesn't have any location hence what you said doesn't make any sense.

The idea of an existent without location is incoherent. So that rather doesn't make any sense.

Like it or not. God doesn't have any location.

bahman wrote:

Terrapin Station wrote:

bahman wrote:
God doesn't have any location hence what you said doesn't make any sense.

The idea of an existent without location is incoherent. So that rather doesn't make any sense.

Like it or not. God doesn't have any location.

It's not a matter of whether I like it. Again, it's an issue of coherence versus incoherence.

Terrapin Station wrote:

bahman wrote: So the answer to my question is no, we cannot impress a painting since the relationship, the way you are impressed, is not mutual. The same rule applies to God, we cannot impress God hence our relationship is not mutual.

So you're defining mutual not as cause and effect both ways, but as the same cause and effect both ways, and you're not saying that we cannot have a relationship with God, but we cannot have a mutual relationship with God? That would be fine to make those changes, but you'd be leaving out causes and effects such as "Cause to become 5 meters to the side of" (again noting that the idea of a locationless existent is incoherent).

Mutuality was part of OP. We cannot have something back form something changeless no matter how hard we try. Relationship with God is then meaningless.