Square-circles Vs. God

[robvalue]

As Tracie Harris prompted me to realize a while ago, it may not be possible that anything like a "God" could exist. Just because we can describe it vaguely, that doesn't make it possible. It gives another answer to the God question, not just "I don't know" but "I don't know if that's even possible." So really, the contradictions and problems God could cause, and dillemas about him booting up his own universe are entirely speculative.

I can't understand this dissidence people have where they think God is both completely unknowable, beyond our comprehension, unreachable by science, untestable, outside of anything you try and put him in... Yet they know everything about him down to his inside leg measurement, know all this motives and innermost thoughts and chat to him daily.

Only one explanation I can think of here... You're talking to an imaginary friend. And he's a clone of you, who agrees with you about everything.

I used to have an imaginary friend. But I actually labelled him as and understood him to be imaginary. I was 5.

[The Reality Salesman01]

But now they have to admit the metaphysical necessities, the most fundamental basics of reality are outside and beyond God. Naturalism is proven logically.

This fundamental naturalism is necessary in the technical sense. But God in this regard is dispensable if the theists can't demonstrate a God that fits into this scenario actually exists and can be squared with their favorite revealed theology. The burden of proof most certainly shifts to the theist here.

Agreed. The conclusion from this line of reasoning is that if there is a God, there can be no coherent version of God that is compatible with the natural laws (logic included). While we can speculate about the possibility of this "God", any attempt to define it's properties can be readily dispensed as illogical. All we could say is that "There may be something, and you can call it God, or whatever you want". But you can't really stake claim to anything else beyond that because, as Rob pointed out, there isn't anybody here that is privy to anything that everyone else is not, no extra sense that we don't all share. If it were possible for some to know things about such an entity, it would be possible for everyone, and any such entity that can understood by logic would be bound by it, and would be ultimately unqualified to be "superomnipotent" as Apo put it.

[Cheerful Charlie]

.....

I can't understand this dissidence people have where they think God is both completely unknowable, beyond our comprehension, unreachable by science, untestable, outside of anything you try and put him in... Yet they know everything about him down to his inside leg measurement, know all this motives and innermost thoughts and chat to him daily.
....

This is an interesting philosophy of theology issue. Known an skeptical theism, it also has a way of putting the proposition God exists on a slippery slope to disproof. Skeptical theism is a concept worth googling for.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/skeptical-theism/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeptical_theism

Consequences for morality[edit]

A critical response to the skeptical theist proposal is that accepting the argument is akin to adopting a skeptical approach to morality. The argument goes that if one is unable to determine whether some particular good or evil is truly good or evil, such that we cannot even believe that there exists at least one instance of gratuitous evil, how can we be said to have any meaningful morality?[2][3]

[Mudhammam]

It's hard to fathom why "god" should be bound to the laws of logic just as it is to conceive that the Universe truly operates on principles that our brains in one insignificant corner of an ordinary galaxy evolved to mimic. After all, logic is only an operating system of sorts by which the content of our senses becomes eligible for intelligibility after being disseminated into names and definitions. There's probably a lot of phenomena that remains hidden in the translating process that begins when an object becomes an image in the senses and is then apprehended in dialectic. What could be more counter to logic than the notion that space-time began from a Singularity with a burst of perpetually revolving forces that take shapes which then contemplate their existence?

[The Reality Salesman01]

It's hard to fathom why "god" should be bound to the laws of logic just as it is to conceive that the Universe truly operates on principles that our brains in one insignificant corner of an ordinary galaxy evolved to mimic. After all, logic is only an operating system of sorts by which the content of our senses becomes eligible for intelligibility after bring disseminated into names and definitions. There's probably a lot of phenomena that remains hidden in the translating process that begins when an object becomes an image in the senses and is then apprehended in dialectic. What could be more counter to logic than the notion that space-time began from a Singularity with a burst of perpetually revolving forces that take shapes which then contemplate their existence?

Very good. That reminds me of "The Most Astounding Fact" by my boy Neil. For the longest time, I've felt that our nature to identify patterns is what makes us inherently vulnerable to prescribing purpose in otherwise purposeless things. If a spec of dust gained consciousness within the bagless tank of my vacuum, it's wildest postulations could not begin to capture the reality that lies beyond it's realm. It would be bound by it's nature, and forever trapped in an inanimate tank for as long as my actions did not result in its freedom. Even if that spec were capable of concluding that I determined it's purpose, the answer it arrived at could only explain why I saw fit to place it in the tank. It would remain clueless about why it exists at all. And before it could even hope to know the answer to that question; that spec of dust would need to know that it is but a long since dead cell that was once apart of me. And if so inclined, that cell might wonder about my purpose and my origins. For all our efforts, we find ourselves asking the same questions that the cell might ask, and we are unable to find any prescribed answer. We are to the universe as the cell is to us. I don't think there is any answers regarding cosmic purpose, and I've decided that it doesn't matter. The purpose to our existence is revealed to us individually through our experience of existence. Searching for anything else is akin to contemplating the purpose of dust that can be sucked into a vacuum.

http://youtu.be/9D05ej8u-gU

[Whateverist]

I don't see why God couldn't be superomnipotent, yet these laws of logic are something he created. If he created the other laws, then why not the laws of logic?

I suppose he could. Honestly, that's the only way I think it could make sense. If any God were real, then it would be of that kind.

I tend to go the other way. In the theatre of my imagination, I can only imagine a god that is a tinkerer with a limited number of underlying components to choose from which work in the ways they do. He doesn't just blink shit into existence, he builds them up using great skill. His range is much more limited than is often imagine, no where near 'omni' in any regard.

But I admit I have no talent for wrapping my head around the whole god-idea. It doesn't make any sense to me at all in a metaphysical way.

[The Reality Salesman01]

Ok, but doesn't it imply that a tinkerer must tinker from one thing to another and wouldn't they not be motivated by one reason or another to abandon one attempt in pursuit of another? This seems very much on par with how I would build a tire swing

I think I see what you're saying though, and it makes sense. Perhaps God is a Grand Tinkerer, and the tools at his disposal would be just a bit more impressive than tires, bolts, ropes, and washers?

While this isn't the type of work we should expect from an omniscient God that tinkers with our best interests as the motivating factor for its creations, it does leave the door open for a supremely careless being that ought to be taught a course in artistic ethics (if such a thing/class could exist).

[Whateverist]

I'm not invested in such a god existing, mind you. Makes no difference to me. But with such a broad array of candidates, who really knows what anyone else has in mind when they discuss gods? Not me.

[The Reality Salesman01]

lol, you? No. Ha ha ha..but the right way to make universes is just so fun to spitball over! I guess everybody is a critic.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

It's hard to fathom why "god" should be bound to the laws of logic just as it is to conceive that the Universe truly operates on principles that our brains in one insignificant corner of an ordinary galaxy evolved to mimic. After all, logic is only an operating system of sorts by which the content of our senses becomes eligible for intelligibility after being disseminated into names and definitions. There's probably a lot of phenomena that remains hidden in the translating process that begins when an object becomes an image in the senses and is then apprehended in dialectic. What could be more counter to logic than the notion that space-time began from a Singularity with a burst of perpetually revolving forces that take shapes which then contemplate their existence?

So you really think that the Earth and plant life was created before the SUn and the Moon and all of the stars in the universe?