RE: Can a slug be God?
May 29, 2016 at 12:36 pm
(This post was last modified: May 29, 2016 at 12:37 pm by Ignorant.)
(May 29, 2016 at 7:33 am)robvalue Wrote: I'm referring to the concept of god as it's presented to people. People generally don't come up with all this on their own, it will be a mixture of what their parents/community tell them and reading they have done.
I'm saying that parents can't tell their children that god is something that demonstrably doesn't exist. It has to be mysterious and untestable. And as science has been able to test more and more, so the concept has become less and less testable.
I'm not accusing you of becoming more vague, I'm talking about the history of the concept of god. Clearly 2000 years ago god was pretty much a humanoid, with obviously human emotions and desires, and he lived in Heaven which was "above" Earth while hell was below. That's a big generalization, but I'm pointing out that god was placed just outside the limits of exploration at the time. They thought the earth was flat, and that the sky was basically a route to the heavens. This last point especially has biblical support.
As it became clear the earth was round, there was no "under" the earth, and that heaven was nowhere to be found in the sky, everything become more ethereal. Heaven moves to another dimension; god, nowhere to be found either, now starts losing all his attributes (he's non-physical, timeless, formless, apart from this reality...)
I am sorry, Rob, but this is a really poor generalization. Was god clearly and pretty much a humanoid 2000 years ago? This generalization may be too big indeed. Same goes for the flat earth. I would invite you to look into that history a second time. It isn't nearly as simple as you generalize.
Quote:I'm not accusing anyone in particular of anything, I'm noting the progression that the god concept has taken as compared to what science has learnt. Every time science reaches out a little further, so the god concept gets moved a little further away. Again, it has to, or else it would be falsified and the game would be up.
Quote:You couldn't tell, and here's why: If "one of these gods" was not involved with a particular reality, that reality would not exist. If that reality didn't exist, then there is no difference to observe because there is nothing to observe at all. If you are proposing that a reality might exist without involvement in the "act-of-existing", then I simply don't know what you mean.
I don't think you intend to, but this seems to be word games to me. You're working "god" into the definition of the [?]universe[?] and existence, so that it becomes necessary. [1] Just calling god the "act of existence" is fine; but it's an equivocation fallacy to then suppose this tells you anything further, by association with the word "god". [2] If god is merely the universe, or part of the universe, then it's nothing to do with any sort of deity. It's just renaming what we already have. [3]
1) I don't think I'm working god into anything. You asked if god could be identical to a creative slug. I said no, based on the little I know about what god is. God isn't conceived of so-as-to-BECOME "necessary". Instead, our experience of reality leads to the conclusion that something about reality, namely: "the-act-of-existence" IS BEING, by necessity.
It does not follow that, because god is the subsistent "act-of-existence", god is identifiable with the universe.
2) This is not a question about demonstrating that the "act-of-existence" IS god. Instead, it was a question about the understanding of the "what" of god, and a comparison of that "what' with a slug able to create.
When I say, god, I mean the subsistent "to be", the subsistent "act-of-being", the subsistent "act-of-existence", the burning bush's "I AM", and all of the related ways of putting it. A slug can't be that, and any reality can't "be" at all without it.
3) God is not the universe, nor is he "part" of the universe.