RE: The Problem of Infinite Aspects
March 29, 2012 at 2:18 pm
(This post was last modified: March 29, 2012 at 2:19 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
Great thread, NMF! I’ve struggled with infinity for quite some time. I was doing some research while working on a detailed response to the ‘problem of evil’. During my study of Swedenborg’s ‘Divine Love and Wisdom’ I noted some curious passages regarding infinity. These now make sense to me in light of your post. In general, your post applies to all things ineffable.
I’ll take premises 1 and 2 as givens.
Premise 3 assumes an orthodox understanding of God. Okay, for the sake of discussion I’ll go with that.
I take issue with the wording of premise 4. Although direct observation of infinity (a divine aspect) is not possible, it could be a reasonable inference. If a person was immortal they may find that however far they go there is still further they could go. From this they could reasonably infer that the universe extends on to infinity. This might indeed be the case, but that person could never be certain. They could just as easily be in a time-space that curves back on itself. They simply have not gone far enough to find themselves back where they started.
Premise 5 seems self-evident if I understand it to mean that humanity’s understanding of God is limited by what it is possible for human’s to experience.
Premise 6 also seems as self-evident. God is real or not real independent of how he is conceived.
If one believed that some form of deity could be reasonably inferred from their experience with reality (which is the ultimate point of contention) then why should that stop them from living according to that inference even if it may eventual prove unfounded?
I’ll take premises 1 and 2 as givens.
Premise 3 assumes an orthodox understanding of God. Okay, for the sake of discussion I’ll go with that.
I take issue with the wording of premise 4. Although direct observation of infinity (a divine aspect) is not possible, it could be a reasonable inference. If a person was immortal they may find that however far they go there is still further they could go. From this they could reasonably infer that the universe extends on to infinity. This might indeed be the case, but that person could never be certain. They could just as easily be in a time-space that curves back on itself. They simply have not gone far enough to find themselves back where they started.
Premise 5 seems self-evident if I understand it to mean that humanity’s understanding of God is limited by what it is possible for human’s to experience.
Premise 6 also seems as self-evident. God is real or not real independent of how he is conceived.
(March 29, 2012 at 5:51 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: …I am not arguing God does not exist in this case, but realistically, any evidence for his infinite aspects can only come through human means and any correspondence to a real being, is purely coincidental.Isn’t that true of pretty much everything? Classical physics describes natural phenomena down to molecular scales, but starts to unravel at the sub-atomic scale. We can never be absolutely certain about what’s going on, but we make inferences.
(March 29, 2012 at 5:51 am)NoMoreFaith Wrote: Most importantly of all, [the belief in] an infinite God is deliberately maintaining an equivalence with fiction.All human knowledge is approximate. I suppose that’s the same as saying that everything we know is a convenient fiction. But that does not stop us acting as if our best descriptions of reality were actually real.
If one believed that some form of deity could be reasonably inferred from their experience with reality (which is the ultimate point of contention) then why should that stop them from living according to that inference even if it may eventual prove unfounded?
