RE: What would you consider to be evidence for God?
January 9, 2016 at 4:05 am
(This post was last modified: January 9, 2016 at 4:12 am by Mudhammam.)
I wouldn't consider the following "evidence for God," for the two reasons that A) it need not refer to God in the sense of a personal deity or an entity with intentionality or teleology, and B) it wouldn't fall into the category of things for which I would consider a demand for evidence to be appropriate, but certain speculations have led me towards the inclination that materialism is false, and, if materialism is false then it leaves the door open for some thing or things that theologians have traditionally identified with God's essence - I simply insist that they have taken their speculations too far.
I'm inclining towards the belief that materialism cannot be true because 'truth,' 'value,' 'being,' and other such concepts - which comprise the entirety of our mental lives outside of raw sensation - appear to only possess intelligible being, which is to say, these principles, not unlike physical laws, don't exist in material objects. I don't know what it could mean to say that they do. Rather, they exist in intellects. But if they are to have any relation to the external world, if to say 'X is true' is to have any meaning outside of how I, one individual, relates to the world, then the very notion of 'truth' must transcend the intellect. I can see no other refutation of the Protagorean doctrine that "man is the measure of all things' i.e. truth is relative, unless "the true" is an identifier of some abstract quality that subsists independent of my intellect, that is, objectively, by which statements of truth or falsity can be measured against it. And the result of this is the plain fact that nobody, to take one example, can deny absolute truth without affirming it. There are some propositions that are universally, absolutely, objectively true, such as "God either exists or does not exist," and these such statements seem to have a quality to them that is eternal and immutable; another is the fact that 7 has always been a prime number, regardless if any brain sufficiently advanced enough to formulate its truth in language has only recently begun to exist. The same, I believe, goes for morality or, as I said, any other principle that we either have an innate understanding of or know through experience and discovery - yes, discovery - as opposed to invention. I do not believe that humankind invented the truth that 2+3=5, or that causing another to suffer for no reason is wrong, or that two separate events in time and space sometimes have a causal connection, or even reason itself; these are rather ideas that we discovered, using a language that we did, indeed, invent. That much at least I think is defensible. As to what this abstract reality is, how it is connected to material beings such as ourselves, I do not pretend to understand in the slightest degree. Nor do I know what is the difference between saying that something exists in the abstract, and yet is objective, or external, and saying that there is a 'spiritual dimension.' Whatever is meant by these terms, I do know that truth exists in such a way that it is not material on any definition of materialism as I have come to understand it.
I'm inclining towards the belief that materialism cannot be true because 'truth,' 'value,' 'being,' and other such concepts - which comprise the entirety of our mental lives outside of raw sensation - appear to only possess intelligible being, which is to say, these principles, not unlike physical laws, don't exist in material objects. I don't know what it could mean to say that they do. Rather, they exist in intellects. But if they are to have any relation to the external world, if to say 'X is true' is to have any meaning outside of how I, one individual, relates to the world, then the very notion of 'truth' must transcend the intellect. I can see no other refutation of the Protagorean doctrine that "man is the measure of all things' i.e. truth is relative, unless "the true" is an identifier of some abstract quality that subsists independent of my intellect, that is, objectively, by which statements of truth or falsity can be measured against it. And the result of this is the plain fact that nobody, to take one example, can deny absolute truth without affirming it. There are some propositions that are universally, absolutely, objectively true, such as "God either exists or does not exist," and these such statements seem to have a quality to them that is eternal and immutable; another is the fact that 7 has always been a prime number, regardless if any brain sufficiently advanced enough to formulate its truth in language has only recently begun to exist. The same, I believe, goes for morality or, as I said, any other principle that we either have an innate understanding of or know through experience and discovery - yes, discovery - as opposed to invention. I do not believe that humankind invented the truth that 2+3=5, or that causing another to suffer for no reason is wrong, or that two separate events in time and space sometimes have a causal connection, or even reason itself; these are rather ideas that we discovered, using a language that we did, indeed, invent. That much at least I think is defensible. As to what this abstract reality is, how it is connected to material beings such as ourselves, I do not pretend to understand in the slightest degree. Nor do I know what is the difference between saying that something exists in the abstract, and yet is objective, or external, and saying that there is a 'spiritual dimension.' Whatever is meant by these terms, I do know that truth exists in such a way that it is not material on any definition of materialism as I have come to understand it.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza