Deism for non-believers

[Skepsis]

Unlike the Most Tangible God, it is plausible because it doesn't contradict anything in the physical world.

Just because something doesn't contradict something else in the physical world doesn't make it any more valid than it would be otherwise.

Your biggest mistake lies in the fact that you are presenting a subjective God whose only duty in his existence is to fulfill a role on someone's mind as a being who, depending on the person, could do anything from creating the universe and everthing in it 6,000 years ago to acting as a simple unfalsifiable overseer of the universe.

Without evidence, you cannot very well say that something exists simply because it doesn't contradict the universe in any way.

See Russell's teapot.

[cratehorus]

I thought god was Tyler Durden?

[FallentoReason]

How would you determine this, if it were immaterial?

I am going by the assumption that the material and immaterial don't interact.

Yet the concept could exist even if it were completely in error, could it not? Apply the same to your "plausible god" proposal.

Agreed, it could exist. I don't get the next part though.. apply it to the 'plausible god'.. so, it could exist even if it's completely in error? Maybe you meant to say something else?

Nope, it isn;t divine, its completely natural, and birds do exist, biologically and aerodynamically speaking there is no reason that such a bird could not exist..so, on your scale of plausibility, wouldn't my 80 foot bird be even more plausible than you plausible god? Do you see any 80 foot birds laying about?

I see what you're saying, but the bird can't be inserted into my scale because my scale's requirement is that the 'being' has to at least posses the attribute of being a 'universe creator'. You need a new scale altogether that deals with hypothetical physical creatures or species, but would fail entirely because all the entries on the scale are making physical claims like an 80 foot bird that don't exist.

p.s. on a side note, aerodynamically it would not fly I'm sure. It would be way too heavy! There's a reason why the birds that do exist are the size that they are i.e. relatively small!

You'd have to actually provide an arbitrary event for us to explain it scientifically, what you have provided is your concept of something arbitrary, which is not scientific, and therefore not something that we would even ask science to explain for us. In the event that you did, and we could not explain it, as per your musing about truth earlier, that doesn't mean that there is no scientific explanation, simply that it is unavailable to us (for whatever reason).

True. I guess the explanation for my arbitrary motion can be given eventually.

That you remain alive isn't exactly solid proof of your possessing any reason, now is it? Unless by "possessing reason" you mean "hasn't "swallowed a large crayon and remembers to breath".

I take it you're pointing out that non-rational beings (animals) are also alive but posses no 'reason'?

So you need reason to kick a ball in this statement here, just a few breaths after proposing the existence of an arbitrary act? Which one is it going to be? If you can sit down and stand up arbitrarily then a person can kick a ball arbitrarily.

You're right, I've contradicted myself.

Let me clarify what I meant when I brought up the example, because I'm rather confused where we're going with this 'reason' talk. Basically, science can tell us how exactly my leg moved and how much energy I transferred to the ball, but it can't tell us why I decided to kick a ball in the first place. Although, I guess we have already covered this when you said that one day we might be able to explain my reason for kicking it scientifically...

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Unlike the Most Tangible God, it is plausible because it doesn't contradict anything in the physical world.

Just because something doesn't contradict something else in the physical world doesn't make it any more valid than it would be otherwise.

Your biggest mistake lies in the fact that you are presenting a subjective God whose only duty in his existence is to fulfill a role on someone's mind as a being who, depending on the person, could do anything from creating the universe and everthing in it 6,000 years ago to acting as a simple unfalsifiable overseer of the universe.

No, wrong. That's the whole point of the scale. You just asserted that a god could do anything like creating the world in 6 000 years. Well that's a physical claim that can be tested and as far as I know, that god in particular is an impossibility. Therefore you have to move further down the scale.

Without evidence, you cannot very well say that something exists simply because it doesn't contradict the universe in any way.

See Russell's teapot.

Through discussion, I think we have fleshed out the idea more and we're not exactly talking existence but rather plausibility. I don't know what it would take to make a definite jump from plausibility to existence though.

[The Grand Nudger]

I am going by the assumption that the material and immaterial don't interact.

Your assumptions only have value outside of a thought exercise if a truth value can be assigned to them. Again, if the immaterial and the material don't interact than all immaterial things are incapable of contradicting the natural world, so any immaterial being is exactly as plausible as your "pluasible god" (judged by the metric of not contradicting the natural world alone). Immaterial strawberry shortcake, for example. But how would we determine this?

Agreed, it could exist. I don't get the next part though.. apply it to the 'plausible god'.. so, it could exist even if it's completely in error? Maybe you meant to say something else?

You have good instincts. The concept [Bohrs Model] could exist even if it were not a factually accurate representation of the reality of [an atom] (or if there were no such thing as [an atom] at all). Now insert " a plausible god" in the brackets.

I see what you're saying, but the bird can't be inserted into my scale because my scale's requirement is that the 'being' has to at least posses the attribute of being a 'universe creator'. You need a new scale altogether that deals with hypothetical physical creatures or species, but would fail entirely because all the entries on the scale are making physical claims like an 80 foot bird that don't exist.

Why do I need a new scale, just add "that is a creator" to the birds attributes and the bird's creator bit is just as unlikely (read undemonstrated) as the gods creator bit but all the pros of the bird hypothesis (being that birds exist etc) remain. It's still more plausible by sheer force of the demonstrable existence of birds.

p.s. on a side note, aerodynamically it would not fly I'm sure. It would be way too heavy! There's a reason why the birds that do exist are the size that they are i.e. relatively small!

Tell that to Pterosaurs and 757's. In fairness, the largest bird we've ever found is estimated to have had a wingspan of only 23ft.

[Skepsis]

Through discussion, I think we have fleshed out the idea more and we're not exactly talking existence but rather plausibility. I don't know what it would take to make a definite jump from plausibility to existence though.

I hadn't understood that this had progressed to a scale of plausibility rather than existence. I did kinda take a TL,DR in the case of this topic.
This tosses your idea that all atheists should be deistic out the window, doesn't it?

In any case, human beings can make any concept that isn't physical a "plausible" idea. That doesn't make it any more likely, which makes your scale less appropriate and Dawkin's scale more so, being as it is a scale of plausibility, possibility, and probability that take into account primarily the plausible but further reads into whether or not things are worth believing. The crux of the matter is that, through selectively hypothesizing the existence of any given thing, anyone wuold eventually be drawn into a sea of musings whose aggregate purpose is their own pleasure.

[The Grand Nudger]

Ah, by the by since I was having a discussion about deists gods elsewhere on the boards it reminded me of something I forgot to mention to you. Your plausible god is not the god of deism. The deists god is a creator god. It interacted at least once (and since it made the terrible mistake of doing so, it would be theoretically possible to measure it's influence).

[Angrboda]

The question I have about a deist god is how that god avoids inevitably sliding into the god of Apatheism — he exists, but he is completely irrelevant to our existence. And any properties of this Deist god that you assign to "rescue" it from irrelevancy in the end becomes a property by which that* god can be falsified, or at least persuasively undermined by the traditional avenues of theodicy, justice, Euthyphro's dilemma, inconsistent attributes and so on. Any deist god worth caring about ends up being one of the ones we can't believe.

I just finished reading a fascinating book by Pascal Boyer called "Religion Explained," and a number of fascinating consistencies in supernatural / religious beliefs emerge. Nobody cares about a god who only exists on Wednesdays, or who is aware of everything, but has no power to do anything about it. People's supernatural agents are organized around various dimensions, one of which he calls relevancy — the supernatural agent is capable of acting in ways which matter to us, from the threat of eternal hellfire to the belief that malevolent witches caused your roof to collapse. Being a religious being means mattering. Otherwise, what's the point. In Buddhism, there are plenty of gods, but nobody cares, because they aren't relevant. How do you make your Deist god relevant without at the same time sowing the seeds of its destruction?

(I've got the Shermer book, but alas I rarely read aside from book club and group assignments these days. But I'll keep it in mind — I actually hauled it out recently with the aim of getting a taste of it, to encourage pursuing it; at present, it's now underneath a book on epistemology, a fiction book, computational neuroscience, an intro to Buddhism and Stenger's "God: The Failed Hypothesis". I keep meaning to read some personal selections; I just never have the time. [In the past two weeks, in an unusually heavy load, I read 4 books in preparation for discussion groups, only one of which coincided with a book I had on my personal reading list — and that exception was unusual; I rarely have interest in these books prior to having them assigned])

[FallentoReason]

Your assumptions only have value outside of a thought exercise if a truth value can be assigned to them. Again, if the immaterial and the material don't interact than all immaterial things are incapable of contradicting the natural world, so any immaterial being is exactly as plausible as your "pluasible god" (judged by the metric of not contradicting the natural world alone). Immaterial strawberry shortcake, for example. But how would we determine this?

I think I'm allowed to assume things because I'm not making the claim that the plausible god then exists based on these assumptions that can't be tested (like the immaterial properties). Through the scale we can come up with a theory for a god but we can't do much else after that.

You have good instincts. The concept [Bohrs Model] could exist even if it were not a factually accurate representation of the reality of [an atom] (or if there were no such thing as [an atom] at all). Now insert " a plausible god" in the brackets.

This situation could be plausible I suppose.

Why do I need a new scale, just add "that is a creator" to the birds attributes and the bird's creator bit is just as unlikely (read undemonstrated) as the gods creator bit but all the pros of the bird hypothesis (being that birds exist etc) remain. It's still more plausible by sheer force of the demonstrable existence of birds.

Haha.. ok so the bird is divine now. Well quite obviously this hypothesis gets shot down straight away. There is no such bird-god in existence. This example isn't any more plausible than my Most Tangible God in the OP because you have made a material claim and that claim is false.

Ah, by the by since I was having a discussion about deists gods elsewhere on the boards it reminded me of something I forgot to mention to you. Your plausible god is not the god of deism. The deists god is a creator god. It interacted at least once (and since it made the terrible mistake of doing so, it would be theoretically possible to measure it's influence).

I did mention somewhere that the bare minimum for a god to be included in my scale was that it must have created the universe. Do you think that's in violation of physics?

I hadn't understood that this had progressed to a scale of plausibility rather than existence. I did kinda take a TL,DR in the case of this topic.
This tosses your idea that all atheists should be deistic out the window, doesn't it?

What's TL,DR mean?

This thread is meant to demonstrate that there are more plausible gods that could eventually exist than gods that violate the universe. The scale is a way of knowing roughly where one can stop and not be able to disprove the plausibility of a god. Therefore, taking it one step further, I think the probability that a sort of god could eventually exist becomes rather high. I don't know how one could go from the plausibility of said god to showing that it is real.

In any case, human beings can make any concept that isn't physical a "plausible" idea. That doesn't make it any more likely, which makes your scale less appropriate and Dawkin's scale more so, being as it is a scale of plausibility, possibility, and probability that take into account primarily the plausible but further reads into whether or not things are worth believing. The crux of the matter is that, through selectively hypothesizing the existence of any given thing, anyone wuold eventually be drawn into a sea of musings whose aggregate purpose is their own pleasure.

What's Dawkin's scale?

The question I have about a deist god is how that god avoids inevitably sliding into the god of Apatheism — he exists, but he is completely irrelevant to our existence. And any properties of this Deist god that you assign to "rescue" it from irrelevancy in the end becomes a property by which that* god can be falsified, or at least persuasively undermined by the traditional avenues of theodicy, justice, Euthyphro's dilemma, inconsistent attributes and so on. Any deist god worth caring about ends up being one of the ones we can't believe.

You can answer your own question. I gather that your threshold on the scale is fairly low to the extent that a plausible god must be apathetic towards us.

I just finished reading a fascinating book by Pascal Boyer called "Religion Explained," and a number of fascinating consistencies in supernatural / religious beliefs emerge. Nobody cares about a god who only exists on Wednesdays, or who is aware of everything, but has no power to do anything about it. People's supernatural agents are organized around various dimensions, one of which he calls relevancy — the supernatural agent is capable of acting in ways which matter to us, from the threat of eternal hellfire to the belief that malevolent witches caused your roof to collapse. Being a religious being means mattering. Otherwise, what's the point. In Buddhism, there are plenty of gods, but nobody cares, because they aren't relevant. How do you make your Deist god relevant without at the same time sowing the seeds of its destruction?

I think you're assuming too much about me. I've never appealed to any desire for there to be a god. The only desire I have is to uncover truths wherever I can that are based on reason. Having said this, I don't see any reason for a god to have to matter to us. Things in the universe exist because they exist. Our beliefs and desires are meaningless and trivial and they don't come into the equation at all. A god could exist whether we want it to or not.

I think what is key here is dropping any preconceived ideas of what a 'god' is. If anything, the gods of religions are all pretty much at the material extreme of my scale and if defined entirely by their 'chosen' peoples (which rarely happens...), they could be shown to be non-existent. I think the plausible gods aren't necessarily thinking beings with masterplans, but something even more 'basic' than that.

[Skepsis]

What's TL,DR mean?

This thread is meant to demonstrate that there are more plausible gods that could eventually exist than gods that violate the universe. The scale is a way of knowing roughly where one can stop and not be able to disprove the plausibility of a god. Therefore, taking it one step further, I think the probability that a sort of god could eventually exist becomes rather high. I don't know how one could go from the plausibility of said god to showing that it is real.

Too Long, Didn't Read. Used to be common on teh interwebz.

Yes, but your thread started taking on the stance that atheists are left with no option but a belief in some plausible God when they get however far down your scale it takes for that version of G-d to be unfalsifiable, and that is simply wrong, is it not?
The probability of a God existing and its existence are separate, and you seem to be bordering on an argument from ignorance in that you are saying that a plausible God is a likely God.
Like I said before, just because you can create a mental God who fits the criterion the universe arbitrates doesn't make that particular God or any Gods like it any more likely to exist than Russell's teapot.

What's Dawkin's scale?

Mentioned as a way of judging belief in a higher power in The God Delusion, Richard Dawkin's scale determines to what extent you can hold to the belief that a given God exists. Varying degrees require varying certainty, and while God can exist in a personally satisfactory way, or rather, be more likely when he has reached a level of plausibility that satiates the palette of the individual, that God cannot rise above a 1 because he lacks evidence. And this might be rather haphazard of me, but in order to prove anything, including God, you need evidence.
(Evidence can be logical, as long as it is based on reality and not some metaphysical daydream, abstracted and sundered from any trace of actuality.)

[Angrboda]

I wasn't claiming you believed any particular thing beyond that there is a devil and the deep blue sea problem with Deism.

If we follow the logic of the No Free Lunch theorem with respect to evolutionary algorithms, and don't bind our notion of a Deist god by the shell of the past, the probability ends up being that the most likely god is of the Lovecraftian sort, about which we're probably better off not knowing.

Did you ever pause to consider how many more malevolent and evil gods are compatible with the world we see, than any gods possessed of good nature?

In a sense, I see Deism falling into the same trap as agnosticism — attempting to break free of tradition only to create a new tradition that is a synthesis of the old and some noble sentiments; they never reach escape velocity to break free of the problems of the past. Just ask yourself which Deist god is more probable, the impersonal shadow of Christianity, or my blessed Kali who orders the warp and rhythm of creation. Did you ever consider Shaktism as an equally plausible alternative to your Deism? If not, why not?

I think what is key here is dropping any preconceived ideas of what a 'god' is. If anything, the gods of religions are all pretty much at the material extreme of my scale and if defined entirely by their 'chosen' peoples (which rarely happens...), they could be shown to be non-existent. I think the plausible gods aren't necessarily thinking beings with masterplans, but something even more 'basic' than that.

"I believe in God, only I spell it Nature."
— Frank Lloyd Wright

As noted, this is trending towards irrelevancies. It's consistent with the laws of physics as we understand them for there to be several billion universes just like our own, coexisting in the same space as our own, so long as none of the existents in a particular universe interact in any way with those in another. Is this possible? Sure is. Would it matter if it was true? I think you're equivocating on the meaning of matter; if a Deist god is indistinguishable from nature, or existentially irrelevant, in what sense do they matter.

In a sense this is like Tillich's definition of God as "the ground of being". It's an impressive phrase, but what does it really mean? What conclusions can you draw from this that you couldn't have drawn without it? Nothing? Everything?

Sorry, but to me, Deism smacks of replacing your long lost Teddy Bear of childhood with an ethereal ever-present but untouchable substitute. And to me, that smells like an emotional cop-out.