(January 13, 2021 at 3:00 pm)Klorophyll Wrote: The hypothesis of an extremely advanced technology doesn't solve the problem of infinite regress. If it has the properties of a deity, then you can just substitute the term "advanced technology" with the term "god", If it doesn't, then there is a more powerful cause behind this slightly less powerful technology. And we will keep going into the regress.
If we consider a chain of actual causes -i.e. real things outside our mind, and not numbers for example-, then infinite regress cannot occur, since this universe, us, is an element of this causal chain. Clearly it cannot be preceded by an infinite number of causes.
I am going to agree with you here. Any sane definition of a unitary god will have to be something like Paul Tillich's "ground of being".
However, anything that demands worship, and intervenes in reality at the behest of followers, is clearly not a "ground of being". The more attributes you give a god, the more you take away from its possibility of being a first cause.
If it is a jealous god, how did it get that way? What formed the attributes of this god? I want the backstory of "god as a kid" where it got these insecurities. The point is, that if you give any attributes to a god, you get yourself back into infinite regress, because you are now forced to answer "what is the source or cause of these attributes?"
I'm not convinced that infinite regress is impossible -- it is only impossible within the rules of this universe The idea of "everything must have a cause" may be faulty in a reality with no time or where time is emergent and not foundational. The current universe has a finite age, and our minds and our physics may never grasp "ultimate reality".
God is either irrelevant and ineffable, or doesn't exist. Same difference.
