Proof that God exists

[Brian37]

As an exercise in futility use one or more of the following headings to prove the existence of God.

Do not ask me to define God, I won't do it; use whatever definition you wish.

Empirical
Rational
Physical
Logical
Nonsense
Telelogical
Oncological
Theoretical
Fictional
Surrealist
And finally



I respectfully request that MK and LR not respond. If in fact they are members of this Forum. Thanks.

Um no, only the admins regulate responses, If you don't like reading what an individual says there is an ignore option. 

I agree that religion is nonsense, but if you start a thread or respond to someone there are no rules outside the TOS that prevent someone from responding. Not liking their responses in and of itself does not prevent someone from responding. You can request sure, but the rules won't prevent them if they want to respond.

[JackRussell]

As the Beatles said, Here Comes the Sun.

Shame it will fuck the planet when it goes Red Giant.

Maybe that's hell.

The universe does not give a shit about us.

[Agnosty]

That's how we learn.

Yup, that's how we learn and I'm happy to meet someone who is also interested in learning about this.  

Entropy can and does decrease on a local scale, at the expense of an overall increase in the total entropy in the closed system of the Universe.

That's the statement I'm having trouble with.  It seems to be saying that order causes more disorder than if the order had not occurred.  Can you describe a mechanism by which that happens?  Can you provide an example or analogy to help convey your understanding that enables you to believe that is true?

Our local star system is not a closed system; our sun provides more than enough energy for life to arise and flourish, as it were combatting entropy, at the cost of depleting its own energy.

Well if it's not a closed system and energy is allowed to dissipate into other systems, then I can see the solar system fizzling-out, but it's not because of the existence of life since solar systems that do not have life will also dissipate; maybe marginally faster since life isn't bottlenecking the process.

But every action lifeforms take, even thinking, dissipates into heat energy and, on a relatively microscopic level, furthers the heat death of the Universe.

Plants store energy from the sun, we eat the plants, release the energy, type some words, and send the heat back on its journey to the far-reaches of the universe.  We're just a pitstop.  I don't see how we added more heat, yet we did add the organization.  I'm still unclear on how life adds entropy.

I could concede that the entropy of the universe is increasing in spite of life's efforts to reduce it, but I don't yet see how life adds more entropy.  I'm not saying it's not true, but that the mechanism hasn't been described for a very unintuitive process.  

Remember also that I am not an astrophysicist

If you don't understand it either, then why do you believe what you said?

The Earth going around the Sun isn't very intuitive either. Intuition is a great way to be wrong and still remain blissful about it.

The heliocentric model is intuitive to me, but only because I have the benefit of knowing just how big the sun is and how gravity works.  For those reasons, it makes sense that the big thing would be in the center and therefore it's intuitive.  Maybe if I had existed 1000 yrs ago, my intuition would have been different since my knowledge would have been more limited.

So intuition is a function of knowledge and probably causes confirmation bias in that everyone seeks to validate what they suspect; sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Reductio ad absurdum doesn't get you very far, either.

It's not reductio because I didn't try to prove anything, but instead I said it's hard for me to picture the premise being true and I requested help for a better understanding so that I can indeed picture it.  It wasn't an argument, but request with elaboration on my current perspective.

Neither does grafting a non sequitur onto a red herring.

Thanks!  A kipper snack sounds good

We're not talking about autonomic control of our bodies, we were discussing gods.

Yes, but if you can't understand the natural (our bodies), how can you ask for an explanation of the supernatural (god)?  If you don't know arithmetic, how can you ask about calculus?  You're asking for something that couldn't possibly be explained until you've understood the remedial, which I think is impossible (just my opinion).

If you want to suggest that the two things are similar, be my guest. Just bear in mind that you then forfeit all option to claim a supernatural god.

I'm not sure if they are similar or even the same.  Supernatural just means a part of the natural that we can't or haven't detected or understood because if the supernatural exists, then it is a natural part of what there is.  It's similar to humans believing what they do is somehow artificial.  The distinction between artificial, natural, and supernatural is an artificial distinction

It's more than reasonable - it's required, since you are positing the existence of such an entity operating in such a way. Yours is the onus to support the assertion.

I'm not positing anything but the inability to explain how god operates is irrelevant to concluding whether or not god exists; it's fairly innocent.

Maybe. How do you suggest we set about validating that inference?

Dark matter or god?  Either way, I have no idea.  EM radiation travels right through dark matter with no interaction (except the gravitational effects between light and mass, which is exceedingly tiny and probably undetectable).  I don't know how god would interact.

I suspect you don't understand the significance of inference in a scientific context. Hint: it doesn't mean making stuff up and leaving it at that.

What I meant was we've been inferring the existence of god to explain things that were explained less mystically later on and I meant it to imply that we should always be on our guard when god is the answer to difficult questions lest we repeat history.

[Cyberman]

I'm only going to respond to part of this, because family etc.

That's how we learn.
Entropy can and does decrease on a local scale, at the expense of an overall increase in the total entropy in the closed system of the Universe.

That's the statement I'm having trouble with.  It seems to be saying that order causes more disorder than if the order had not occurred.  Can you describe a mechanism by which that happens?  Can you provide an example or analogy to help convey your understanding that enables you to believe that is true?

Yep. Think of a portable power pack, the kind that you might use to charge your phone battery when mains charging is not available. The energy of the phone battery increases, but at the expense of the energy in the power pack. The sum total of the exchange results in less energy available to the system as a whole.

Remember also that I am not an astrophysicist

If you don't understand it either, then why do you believe what you said?

Please don't put words in my mouth. I think I've asked that of you before; regardless, I won't have to ask you again, okay?

Maybe. How do you suggest we set about validating that inference?

Dark matter or god?  Either way, I have no idea.  EM radiation travels right through dark matter with no interaction (except the gravitational effects between light and mass, which is exceedingly tiny and probably undetectable).  I don't know how god would interact.

Then perhaps don't posit the idea until there's evidence sufficient to warrant it?

I suspect you don't understand the significance of inference in a scientific context. Hint: it doesn't mean making stuff up and leaving it at that.

What I meant was we've been inferring the existence of god to explain things that were explained less mystically later on and I meant it to imply that we should always be on our guard when god is the answer to difficult questions lest we repeat history.

In other words, the god concept has a zero percent track record for accuracy. Why should anyone even entertain the concept with any seriousness?

[Agnosty]

I'm only going to respond to part of this, because family etc.

That's cool and I wouldn't expect a reply to everything; just what strikes a chord.  Btw, Happy New Year!

Yep. Think of a portable power pack, the kind that you might use to charge your phone battery when mains charging is not available. The energy of the phone battery increases, but at the expense of the energy in the power pack. The sum total of the exchange results in less energy available to the system as a whole.

You're saying because the power pack was used to charge the battery that some energy was lost as heat and therefore there is less energy in total?  I can see that, but only because it's not an isolated system.  If the analogy were applied to the universe, there would be no place for the heat to go because the definition of an isolated system is that energy can't get in or out (distinct from a closed system where energy can get out and an open system where mass can leave. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolated_system )

The example isn't much different than the solar system losing energy in the form of light.  But we have to consider that all the energy in the coal and oil in the ground is captured sunlight and that's sunlight that's not on it's way out of the solar system, so it would seem life has slowed the dissipation of energy rather than increase it.

The nuts and bolts of the matter is that thermal energy is the kinetic energy of the vibrating molecules that happen to contain charge, and when charges accelerate (as in vibration/oscillation), they create light (EM radiation) or what we commonly call heat.  The radiated light, in turn, creates kinetic energy when it interacts with the charge on other molecules and the transference of energy between the molecules defines heat (energy in storage is not heat).  So all that's really happening is a soup of charged particles are moving each other at various distances.

Now, we have decide if light can exit the universe because if there is no line of sight out of the universe without hitting charged particles, then it means anything radiated out is re-radiated back, eventually.  The light can't escape the universe because there is no place to go; the universe is all there is.

Next we could consider, for instance, the regenerative effect of black holes.  All galaxies have black holes and, contrary to popular belief, they do not operate like vacuum cleaners, but more like tornadoes flinging particles across the cosmos.  It's as if the universe is renewing itself.  If an iron atom goes in, it's ripped apart and recycled back into fundamental particles ready to form new stars.  Really, why does it all have to end?

Incidentally, on a physics forum I used the conservation of mass/energy to show that the universe can't be infinite (because how can the infinite be conserved), to which they replied that the law is not really a law.  I was like "wut?"  I suppose what is true depends on what you believe.

I believe laws are observed regularities and we inherited our science terminology from theology where a creator issued laws that nature obeyed; now we have the laws of thermodynamics as if nature must obey them rather than merely that we have observed some regularities in nature.  I believe the "law" terminology promotes an erroneous way of thinking: rather than dismiss an idea because it broke a law, we'd dismiss it because it's inconsistent with what we've regularly observed to be true; that way we can first decide if the regularities are local to us or universal and weigh the competing evidence without feeling monarchical.

If you don't understand it either, then why do you believe what you said?

Please don't put words in my mouth. I think I've asked that of you before; regardless, I won't have to ask you again, okay?

I'm sorry, I thought you were stating that you didn't have a full understanding.  I certainly don't; hence all the questions.

Dark matter or god?  Either way, I have no idea.  EM radiation travels right through dark matter with no interaction (except the gravitational effects between light and mass, which is exceedingly tiny and probably undetectable).  I don't know how god would interact.

Then perhaps don't posit the idea until there's evidence sufficient to warrant it?

The reason I introduced the dark matter was to show that sometimes things can be inferred to exist without too much objection from the community.  Even though I'd prefer to exhaust other baryonic possibilities before resorting to conjuring up new forms of matter, I have to admit that the incoming evidence is not supporting my preference.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matte...nic_matter

I suppose dark matter isn't so bad and it's actually intriguing to ponder (regardless if it actually exists), but what bugs me is the cognitive dissonance with a twist of hypocrisy that certainly must have been employed to get the theory on the table:

- There is not enough matter in galaxies to explain what we see; therefore, there must be a new form of matter that can't be seen.
- There is not enough intelligence in rocks to explain life; therefore, there must be an intelligence that can't be seen.

I'm assuming that much of the astronomical community objects to one statement while supporting the other.  Just to be clear, some of the same people who reject god on the grounds of insufficient evidence are accepting dark matter without sufficient evidence.

In other words, the god concept has a zero percent track record for accuracy.

That seems accurate.

Why should anyone even entertain the concept with any seriousness?

Probably 1000 answers to that question.  People are products of their cultures and are indoctrinated from an early age.  When you challenge them, they dig in more because it wasn't a conclusion arrived at cognitively, but accepted by faith.  Kids should be taught to think rather than indoctrinated.

I have a bit of a theist lean mainly because I have trouble believing that a bunch of junk could assimilate by means of a dumb, mechanical process into the writer of this post, but I've rejected the idea of a monarchical deity barking orders because it doesn't make any sense.  I'm currently considering the eastern line of thinking and find it's well-aligned with the goals of the atheist community (in fact, most buddhists could be considered atheists. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta  But I'm not buddhist.).  I'm also a fan of Christopher Hitchens and I'm pretty sure I've placed some wear n tear on youtube's servers with some bouts of obsessive listening (what a wordsmith he was).  Anyway, I say that because I hope you won't view me as an enemy, even though we may disagree on trivial points.

[Whateverist]

If we can't even know how we do things, is it reasonable to ask how a god-like thing operates?

Maybe, at best, the existence of a god can be inferred... like dark matter.

Although dark matter has not been directly observed, its existence and properties are inferred from its gravitational effects  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

Then again, we've been inferring for millennia in lieu of better explanations at the time.

I am very dubious regarding any inference from the empirical to the supernatural. Filling gaps in our understanding with speculation that it may be the result of a consciousness for which everything in our universe is but an arbitrary notion seems silly on the face of it.

[Agnosty]

If we can't even know how we do things, is it reasonable to ask how a god-like thing operates?

Maybe, at best, the existence of a god can be inferred... like dark matter.

Although dark matter has not been directly observed, its existence and properties are inferred from its gravitational effects  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_matter

Then again, we've been inferring for millennia in lieu of better explanations at the time.

I am very dubious regarding any inference from the empirical to the supernatural.  Filling gaps in our understanding with speculation that it may be the result of a consciousness for which everything in our universe is but an arbitrary notion seems silly on the face of it.

I suspect that is by design

How to handle your comment actually gave me a lot of pause.  I suppose what arises most prominently is my curiosity concerning how you define supernatural.  I think, before we can have a meaningful exchange of ideas, we first must have consistent and agreeable definitions.

I mentioned somewhere in this sea of words that I was of the opinion that the supernatural is merely a more complicated and yet-unknown aspect of the natural.  If you prefer to put some other spin on it, then that's ok, but let me know if, say, you desire to define it as synonymous with or having added connotations of "magical" or "logically ridiculous" or similar so that we can be consistent in our conveyance.

There are many definitions to choose from:

adjective
1. of, relating to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal.
2. of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or attributed to God or a deity.
3. of a superlative degree; preternatural: a missile of supernatural speed.
4. of, relating to, or attributed to ghosts, goblins, or other unearthly beings; eerie; occult.

noun
5. a being, place, object, occurrence, etc., considered as supernatural or of supernatural origin; that which is supernatural, or outside the natural order.
6. behavior supposedly caused by the intervention of supernatural beings.
7. direct influence or action of a deity on earthly affairs.

I find that many internet disagreements can be traced to semantics.

Just to reiterate, I believe the distinction between "natural", "artificial" and "supernatural" is an artificial distinction.  Everything that exists, whether known or unknown, is natural.  In order to have a true artificial or supernatural thing, it would have to visit from some other universe and that's taking lots of liberty with fanciful assumption.  Further, if something could visit from another universe, then it would simply mean we defined our universe incorrectly since, obviously, the two universes are one.

As an example, dark matter could be considered supernatural because it fits the dictionary definition of being "abnormal".  Additionally, it's unobservable and unexplainable by what we previously considered "natural phenomenon."  So it would seem what is supernatural is that which exists and what has not yet been properly observed, but it ultimately depends how we choose to define the word.

Next on my mind is: consciousness.  When you say it seems silly that everything is a notion of a consciousness, then what do you mean by consciousness?  If consciousness is just chemistry, then what's silly about it?  When we investigate the mind thoroughly, we invariably turn up with matter; when we investigate matter, we discover the mind because the outside world exists inside our heads, but our heads also exist in the outside world.  In other words, they're one.  Philosophers have quipped "What is mind?  Doesn't matter.  What is matter?  Nevermind." (or something like that.)

Finally, what do you mean by "everything"?  We can't make logically valid statements about everything because there is no reference point outside of everything by which to view everything.  For instance, if we say everything in the universe is moving, then our reference point has been defined to move as well and therefore there is no way to verify that everything is moving.  In order to say something is moving, we need a still reference point.  So to say that everything is a notion of consciousness would mean that we've included the consciousness in the everything and therefore the consciousness came from itself, which is ridiculous.  We could try putting the consciousness outside of the everything, but then that wouldn't be everything.  The best way to escape the bind is to conclude that the universe and consciousness are one and one didn't engender the other because the conscious and unconscious are two sides of the same coin.  We can't have a consciousness unless there is something to be conscious of.

Likewise to say that god created everything is invalid because god would have to create himself.  It's akin to saying the heads side of the coin created the tails when it's really codependent origination.  "On" doesn't create "off", but they arise together.  Mind/Matter, Conscious/Unconscious, Self/Other.  To have one before the other would be like having the north pole before the south.

A problem I suspect many folks may be having when contemplating the origins of the universe is the error in assuming that anything tangible actually exists.  The evidence so far strongly suggests that there are no such things as things and all matter is energy which is an oscillation.

I found 5 mins on this to be enlightening:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztc6QPNUqls

Consider how a buckyball (a ball of 60 carbon atoms covalently linked) could travel through 2 slits at the same time and then interfere with itself like a wave would do.  https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blo...2c39db8e7b

Do atoms touch? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0TNJrTlbBQ )  What do we mean by "touch?"  We have to define it because there is no such thing as touch.

And quantum mechanics implies that nothing becomes what we call real until it is actually observed.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9KnrVlpqoM  Also have a look at 50:00 to 55:00 here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k6BuYK_PwQ

If we can't say for sure where things are until we actually observe them and if things do not exist except as an oscillation of energy, an illusion as it were, then is it less difficult to imagine this world as a notion?

Leonard Susskind (professor of theoretical physics at Stanford and atheist), "I'm inclined to think, yes, that the 3 dimensional world is a kind of illusion and that the ultimate precise reality is the 2 dimensional reality of the surface of the universe."  At 48:25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHEPnQdlmRs

Time is a consequence of space because it takes time to move about and if travel were instantaneous, there could be no concept of space, but only an infinitesimally small point void of dimension.  Space must be a consequence of mass because near-massless things see no time or space and, for instance, even though it seemingly takes 13 billion years for light to reach us from the farthest galaxy, it was instant from the point of view of light.  Mass is a consequence of energy because m=E/c^2 and energy is a function of frequency (E=hf) and frequency is just +/- or one thing relative to another thing where neither of the two things can exist without the other because plus is defined as lack-of-minus and vice versa.

Time and space do not exist in what I'll call the ultimate reality because they're just a product of the relative interactions between the seemingly ubiquitous higgs field and localized energy that produces mass and the slowing of the movement through the medium which creates the illusion of time and space.

It's probably no coincidence that when we desire space, we shut off our phones.  The slowing of information creates space.

According to Alan Watts, there are 4 models of the universe:

1) The ceramic model where god is the potter who resides outside the universe, controlling everything.  This universe is built, constructed, assembled. (The Christian, Islamic, Judaic view)

2) The automatic model where the universe is an automatic machine.  The consequence of this model is that we are also machines following the same unguided process that governs the universe. (The scientific, atheistic view)

3) The organic model where the universe is an organism and we are simply aspects of that organism and any notion of our self as a self is just an illusion. (Buddhist view)

4) The dramatic model where the universe is a play and every person, animal, plant, rock, etc exist as roles acted-out by god, the self, Brahman, whatever.  (Hindu view)

I find the latter most fascinating because the Hindu would applaud the Christian for being entirely convinced he is not himself.. for being so utterly absorbed in the role he is playing that he is oblivious to who he really is... and that is the point.  In the beginning, god said "let's get lost".

(The etymology of the word "person" is very interesting: 1175-1225; Middle English persone < Latin persōna role (in life, a play, or a tale) ( Late Latin: member of the Trinity), orig. actor's mask.  http://www.dictionary.com/browse/person  and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person#Dev...he_concept  The Latin word "persona" is per+sona which means "through sound".  The persona in Greco-Roman drama was the mask the actors wore and the mouth was shaped like a small megaphone (the phony).  The person is the mask.  A real person is a genuine fake... a phony.)

That view is seemingly consistent with what Christopher Hitchens said regarding the "playing with toys".  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n56u6omxeOs  "I hope I have made it clear that I am perfectly happy for people to have these toys and to play with them at home and hug them and share them with other people who come around and play with the toys, so that's absolutely fine; they are not to make me play with the toys.  I will not play with the toys.  Don't bring the toys to my house.  Don't say my children must play with these toys."  

It would seem that Christopher came to the conclusion that the religious are simply playing games that have no inherent importance other than being something to do and the Hindu would be in perfect agreement.  The Buddhist would add that the Christian never had a choice in the first place because he never existed and I suppose that the atheist would have to ultimately come to a similar conclusion that the Christian didn't have a choice because we're all part of a deterministic and automatic process.

When Christopher said we have freewill because we have no choice, I'm sure he was being silly, but I'm unable to discern what his true feelings were.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG_TGNJfg0s

My take is: if we are determined, then we are seamlessly connected to the process of the determined universe that determines us and any notion of a "you" vanishes (central tenet of buddhism).  If there is no you, then obviously you can't have free will.  If there is a you, then likewise you can't be determined or there would be no you.  However, what if the universe is not determined as quantum mechanics implies?  Then we can't be determined, regardless if we exist, and must have an inherently unpredictable nature since we are ultimately part of the universe.

Another consequence of determinism is causality and that implies the existence of things and events because one event causes the next and so on.  That demands an infinite timeline or else there is a first event that had no cause.  In an infinite line of causality, anything that happens once never happens because anything with any probability of happening will happen infinite times; and if it doesn't happen infinite times, then it never happens.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_...nal_return

Therefore there are no things or events because causality can't be true, unless you're willing to conceded that you've read this infinitely many times before and are destined to read it infinitely many more.  Seems silly, but I'm guessing Nietzsche bought it (for those 'valuing' the appeal to authority argument).

(The objection to Nietzsche's line of thinking was clever, but obviously flawed because PI is infinitely long and undefinable meaning that such a contraption could never be made with the precision necessary to make it work.  Use any rational number and the wheels align infinite times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_re...g_argument )

Werner Heisenberg said "The first gulp of the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass god is waiting for you."  Of course, that brings us back to the 0% track record for accuracy in using god to explain things.  Then again, Einstein said, "It is a different question whether belief in a personal god should be contested. I myself would never engage in such a task. For such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook of life.”

So, the takeaway, I suppose, is to keep an open mind but be wary of too much rubbish being thrown in.  For that reason, I remain agnostic with a theist lean and by that I mean: I don't know, but I suspect not knowing is the point.

Sorry about the length, but I didn't have a choice   Besides, any proof of god would have to be ungodly long 

[The Grand Nudger]

I believe laws are observed regularities and we inherited our science terminology from theology where a creator issued laws that nature obeyed; now we have the laws of thermodynamics as if nature must obey them rather than merely that we have observed some regularities in nature.  

Who's this "we" business?

I believe the "law" terminology promotes an erroneous way of thinking: rather than dismiss an idea because it broke a law, we'd dismiss it because it's inconsistent with what we've regularly observed to be true; that way we can first decide if the regularities are local to us or universal and weigh the competing evidence without feeling monarchical.

It's a valid concern (but mostly because of what I would call user error or ignorance), a common failure or feature of language is that we use one word to convey more than just one singular concept.  Not for nothing, but dismissing something because it runs afoul of natural law and dismissing something because it's inconsistent with what we regularly observe are two ways of saying the same thing.  That -is- what "we" are doing.  There's no "rather" there, only semantics.

We understand that when a person says "car" - they aren't referring to a chariot, even though that's what we assume the word to be derived from.  

I have a bit of a theist lean mainly because I have trouble believing that a bunch of junk could assimilate by means of a dumb, mechanical process into the writer of this post, but I've rejected the idea of a monarchical deity barking orders because it doesn't make any sense.

Is there some reason that you think an "atheist lean" would imply what you have trouble believing?  I can provide some comfort there - no one thinks that a dumb, mechanical process assimilated a bunch of junk into you.  

That's not how babies are born.

I'm currently considering the eastern line of thinking and find it's well-aligned with the goals of the atheist community (in fact, most buddhists could be considered atheists. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta  But I'm not buddhist.).  I'm also a fan of Christopher Hitchens and I'm pretty sure I've placed some wear n tear on youtube's servers with some bouts of obsessive listening (what a wordsmith he was).  Anyway, I say that because I hope you won't view me as an enemy, even though we may disagree on trivial points.

Beware the ad copy of eastern spiritualism.

[Whateverist]

I find much of what you've written encouraging. I suspect we'll have plenty of common ground semantically from the look of it. But it is late and I've got to get to sleep now. I'm babysitting my niece and nephew through tomorrow night so I don't know when I will be back to this but I hope not to forget to do so. If I do, please don't hesitate to give this post a bump or PM me then.

From a quick skim it looks like you agree that if a god there be it will need to work within natural law, that it doesn't decide natural law in any arbitrary way and if indeed 'god' has created anything it was as a clever craftsperson, not a magic man. Supernatural as not yet understood natural - good. Also, great that you are able to cop to agnosticism as someone with a theistic bent, it will be your salvation.

---

I am very dubious regarding any inference from the empirical to the supernatural.  Filling gaps in our understanding with speculation that it may be the result of a consciousness for which everything in our universe is but an arbitrary notion seems silly on the face of it.

I suspect that is by design

How to handle your comment actually gave me a lot of pause.  I suppose what arises most prominently is my curiosity concerning how you define supernatural.  I think, before we can have a meaningful exchange of ideas, we first must have consistent and agreeable definitions.

I mentioned somewhere in this sea of words that I was of the opinion that the supernatural is merely a more complicated and yet-unknown aspect of the natural.  If you prefer to put some other spin on it, then that's ok, but let me know if, say, you desire to define it as synonymous with or having added connotations of "magical" or "logically ridiculous" or similar so that we can be consistent in our conveyance.

There are many definitions to choose from:

adjective
1. of, relating to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by natural law or phenomena; abnormal.
2. of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or attributed to God or a deity.
3. of a superlative degree; preternatural: a missile of supernatural speed.
4. of, relating to, or attributed to ghosts, goblins, or other unearthly beings; eerie; occult.

noun
5. a being, place, object, occurrence, etc., considered as supernatural or of supernatural origin; that which is supernatural, or outside the natural order.
6. behavior supposedly caused by the intervention of supernatural beings.
7. direct influence or action of a deity on earthly affairs.

I find that many internet disagreements can be traced to semantics.

Just to reiterate, I believe the distinction between "natural", "artificial" and "supernatural" is an artificial distinction.  Everything that exists, whether known or unknown, is natural.  In order to have a true artificial or supernatural thing, it would have to visit from some other universe and that's taking lots of liberty with fanciful assumption.  Further, if something could visit from another universe, then it would simply mean we defined our universe incorrectly since, obviously, the two universes are one.

As an example, dark matter could be considered supernatural because it fits the dictionary definition of being "abnormal".  Additionally, it's unobservable and unexplainable by what we previously considered "natural phenomenon."  So it would seem what is supernatural is that which exists and what has not yet been properly observed, but it ultimately depends how we choose to define the word.

Next on my mind is: consciousness.  When you say it seems silly that everything is a notion of a consciousness, then what do you mean by consciousness?  If consciousness is just chemistry, then what's silly about it?  When we investigate the mind thoroughly, we invariably turn up with matter; when we investigate matter, we discover the mind because the outside world exists inside our heads, but our heads also exist in the outside world.  In other words, they're one.  Philosophers have quipped "What is mind?  Doesn't matter.  What is matter?  Nevermind." (or something like that.)

Finally, what do you mean by "everything"?  We can't make logically valid statements about everything because there is no reference point outside of everything by which to view everything.  For instance, if we say everything in the universe is moving, then our reference point has been defined to move as well and therefore there is no way to verify that everything is moving.  In order to say something is moving, we need a still reference point.  So to say that everything is a notion of consciousness would mean that we've included the consciousness in the everything and therefore the consciousness came from itself, which is ridiculous.  We could try putting the consciousness outside of the everything, but then that wouldn't be everything.  The best way to escape the bind is to conclude that the universe and consciousness are one and one didn't engender the other because the conscious and unconscious are two sides of the same coin.  We can't have a consciousness unless there is something to be conscious of.

Likewise to say that god created everything is invalid because god would have to create himself.  It's akin to saying the heads side of the coin created the tails when it's really codependent origination.  "On" doesn't create "off", but they arise together.  Mind/Matter, Conscious/Unconscious, Self/Other.  To have one before the other would be like having the north pole before the south.

A problem I suspect many folks may be having when contemplating the origins of the universe is the error in assuming that anything tangible actually exists.  The evidence so far strongly suggests that there are no such things as things and all matter is energy which is an oscillation.

I found 5 mins on this to be enlightening:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ztc6QPNUqls

Consider how a buckyball (a ball of 60 carbon atoms covalently linked) could travel through 2 slits at the same time and then interfere with itself like a wave would do.  https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blo...2c39db8e7b

Do atoms touch? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0TNJrTlbBQ )  What do we mean by "touch?"  We have to define it because there is no such thing as touch.

And quantum mechanics implies that nothing becomes what we call real until it is actually observed.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V9KnrVlpqoM  Also have a look at 50:00 to 55:00 here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6k6BuYK_PwQ

If we can't say for sure where things are until we actually observe them and if things do not exist except as an oscillation of energy, an illusion as it were, then is it less difficult to imagine this world as a notion?

Leonard Susskind (professor of theoretical physics at Stanford and atheist), "I'm inclined to think, yes, that the 3 dimensional world is a kind of illusion and that the ultimate precise reality is the 2 dimensional reality of the surface of the universe."  At 48:25 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHEPnQdlmRs

Time is a consequence of space because it takes time to move about and if travel were instantaneous, there could be no concept of space, but only an infinitesimally small point void of dimension.  Space must be a consequence of mass because near-massless things see no time or space and, for instance, even though it seemingly takes 13 billion years for light to reach us from the farthest galaxy, it was instant from the point of view of light.  Mass is a consequence of energy because m=E/c^2 and energy is a function of frequency (E=hf) and frequency is just +/- or one thing relative to another thing where neither of the two things can exist without the other because plus is defined as lack-of-minus and vice versa.

Time and space do not exist in what I'll call the ultimate reality because they're just a product of the relative interactions between the seemingly ubiquitous higgs field and localized energy that produces mass and the slowing of the movement through the medium which creates the illusion of time and space.

It's probably no coincidence that when we desire space, we shut off our phones.  The slowing of information creates space.

According to Alan Watts, there are 4 models of the universe:

1) The ceramic model where god is the potter who resides outside the universe, controlling everything.  This universe is built, constructed, assembled. (The Christian, Islamic, Judaic view)

2) The automatic model where the universe is an automatic machine.  The consequence of this model is that we are also machines following the same unguided process that governs the universe. (The scientific, atheistic view)

3) The organic model where the universe is an organism and we are simply aspects of that organism and any notion of our self as a self is just an illusion. (Buddhist view)

4) The dramatic model where the universe is a play and every person, animal, plant, rock, etc exist as roles acted-out by god, the self, Brahman, whatever.  (Hindu view)

I find the latter most fascinating because the Hindu would applaud the Christian for being entirely convinced he is not himself.. for being so utterly absorbed in the role he is playing that he is oblivious to who he really is... and that is the point.  In the beginning, god said "let's get lost".

(The etymology of the word "person" is very interesting: 1175-1225; Middle English persone < Latin persōna role (in life, a play, or a tale) ( Late Latin: member of the Trinity), orig. actor's mask.  http://www.dictionary.com/browse/person  and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Person#Dev...he_concept  The Latin word "persona" is per+sona which means "through sound".  The persona in Greco-Roman drama was the mask the actors wore and the mouth was shaped like a small megaphone (the phony).  The person is the mask.  A real person is a genuine fake... a phony.)

That view is seemingly consistent with what Christopher Hitchens said regarding the "playing with toys".  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n56u6omxeOs  "I hope I have made it clear that I am perfectly happy for people to have these toys and to play with them at home and hug them and share them with other people who come around and play with the toys, so that's absolutely fine; they are not to make me play with the toys.  I will not play with the toys.  Don't bring the toys to my house.  Don't say my children must play with these toys."  

It would seem that Christopher came to the conclusion that the religious are simply playing games that have no inherent importance other than being something to do and the Hindu would be in perfect agreement.  The Buddhist would add that the Christian never had a choice in the first place because he never existed and I suppose that the atheist would have to ultimately come to a similar conclusion that the Christian didn't have a choice because we're all part of a deterministic and automatic process.

When Christopher said we have freewill because we have no choice, I'm sure he was being silly, but I'm unable to discern what his true feelings were.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IG_TGNJfg0s

My take is: if we are determined, then we are seamlessly connected to the process of the determined universe that determines us and any notion of a "you" vanishes (central tenet of buddhism).  If there is no you, then obviously you can't have free will.  If there is a you, then likewise you can't be determined or there would be no you.  However, what if the universe is not determined as quantum mechanics implies?  Then we can't be determined, regardless if we exist, and must have an inherently unpredictable nature since we are ultimately part of the universe.

Another consequence of determinism is causality and that implies the existence of things and events because one event causes the next and so on.  That demands an infinite timeline or else there is a first event that had no cause.  In an infinite line of causality, anything that happens once never happens because anything with any probability of happening will happen infinite times; and if it doesn't happen infinite times, then it never happens.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_...nal_return

Therefore there are no things or events because causality can't be true, unless you're willing to conceded that you've read this infinitely many times before and are destined to read it infinitely many more.  Seems silly, but I'm guessing Nietzsche bought it (for those 'valuing' the appeal to authority argument).

(The objection to Nietzsche's line of thinking was clever, but obviously flawed because PI is infinitely long and undefinable meaning that such a contraption could never be made with the precision necessary to make it work.  Use any rational number and the wheels align infinite times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_re...g_argument )

Werner Heisenberg said "The first gulp of the glass of natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass god is waiting for you."  Of course, that brings us back to the 0% track record for accuracy in using god to explain things.  Then again, Einstein said, "It is a different question whether belief in a personal god should be contested. I myself would never engage in such a task. For such a belief seems to me preferable to the lack of any transcendental outlook of life.”

So, the takeaway, I suppose, is to keep an open mind but be wary of too much rubbish being thrown in.  For that reason, I remain agnostic with a theist lean and by that I mean: I don't know, but I suspect not knowing is the point.

Sorry about the length, but I didn't have a choice   Besides, any proof of god would have to be ungodly long 

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[Agnosty]

I believe laws are observed regularities and we inherited our science terminology from theology where a creator issued laws that nature obeyed; now we have the laws of thermodynamics as if nature must obey them rather than merely that we have observed some regularities in nature.  

Who's this "we" business?

LOL good catch!  I may have conflated two we's.  When I said "we inherited our science terminology from theology", I meant the scientific and academic community.  When I said "now we have the laws of thermodynamics as if nature must obey them", I meant the community of people trying to learn while depending on the academic community to display information without surreptitiously conveying a meaning that wasn't intended (or shouldn't be intended.)  The physicist may know that laws aren't really laws, but the plain ole autodidact won't know until someone tells him.... like what happened to me when I tried to use the law of conservation of energy to show the universe can't be infinite and was informed the law isn't really a law.  I was thinking, "Well I knew that, but didn't know YOU knew that    "  

I believe the "law" terminology promotes an erroneous way of thinking: rather than dismiss an idea because it broke a law, we'd dismiss it because it's inconsistent with what we've regularly observed to be true; that way we can first decide if the regularities are local to us or universal and weigh the competing evidence without feeling monarchical.

It's a valid concern (but mostly because of what I would call user error or ignorance), a common failure or feature of language is that we use one word to convey more than just one singular concept.  Not for nothing, but dismissing something because it runs afoul of natural law and dismissing something because it's inconsistent with what we regularly observe are two ways of saying the same thing.  That -is- what "we" are doing.  There's no "rather" there, only semantics. 

I think there is a difference:

We can't say entropy reverses because a law says so.
We can't say entropy reverses because it's inconsistent with what we've always seen.

One is appeal to authority and the other is appeal to evidence.  If there is evidence saying what we've always seen will always be what we see, then what is that evidence?  Until that evidence arises, it seems to be an error to assume.

We understand that when a person says "car" - they aren't referring to a chariot, even though that's what we assume the word to be derived from.

Good point about etymology, but the meaning of "law" hasn't changed in the way "car" has, which was kinda my point... that we inherited "law" from theology and the original meaning persists to this day.  A law implies some authority to enforce it.

I have a bit of a theist lean mainly because I have trouble believing that a bunch of junk could assimilate by means of a dumb, mechanical process into the writer of this post, but I've rejected the idea of a monarchical deity barking orders because it doesn't make any sense.

Is there some reason that you think an "atheist lean" would imply what you have trouble believing?  I can provide some comfort there - no one thinks that a dumb, mechanical process assimilated a bunch of junk into you.  

That's not how babies are born.  

You know what I mean, silly.  A funny quip from a creationist goes, "Hydrogen - a colorless, odorless gas that, given enough time, turns into people.  "  Isn't that what the atheist believes?  Apparently that's what the creationists think the atheists believes, but I'm not atheist, so I can only guess at what they believe.  I don't want to step on any toes and I know that atheist are sensitive to misconceptions about what it means to be atheist, but I have to generalize the group in some way.

My assumptions of atheist beliefs are:

The universe is not teleological, meaning processes do not aim for a goal, but just happen.  What exists, exist by a natural selection from a realm of possibilities which requires no conscious guidance.  So it would seem that life exists as a consequence of complexity that just happened within enormous quantities of matter and time.  The shear quantity of stuff, time, and complexity is mindboggling enough to make it seem plausible even though the exact mechanism isn't readily apparent.  To me, it doesn't seem much different from substituting the stuff, time, complexity with god... only one is a peeping tom and the other isn't lol.

Some folks like to employ infinity as an explanation of the universe and since no one can properly get their head around infinity, no one can present much refute and therefore the concept of infinity replaces the placeholder of "the creator".  The flip side is the theist who uses quantum mechanics to show god, "god exists because quantum stuff!"  Anytime something is too complicated to imagine, people flock to it as an explanation for things.

I'm currently considering the eastern line of thinking and find it's well-aligned with the goals of the atheist community (in fact, most buddhists could be considered atheists. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta  But I'm not buddhist.).  I'm also a fan of Christopher Hitchens and I'm pretty sure I've placed some wear n tear on youtube's servers with some bouts of obsessive listening (what a wordsmith he was).  Anyway, I say that because I hope you won't view me as an enemy, even though we may disagree on trivial points.

Beware the ad copy of eastern spiritualism.

What's that?

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I find much of what you've written encouraging.  I suspect we'll have plenty of common ground semantically from the look of it.  But it is late and I've got to get to sleep now.  I'm babysitting my niece and nephew through tomorrow night so I don't know when I will be back to this but I hope not to forget to do so.  If I do, please don't hesitate to give this post a bump or PM me then.

Enjoy time with your family and please don't feel obligated to this.  It's just conversation

From a quick skim it looks like you agree that if a god there be it will need to work within natural law, that it doesn't decide natural law in any arbitrary way and if indeed 'god' has created anything it was as a clever craftsperson, not a magic man.

 

I'm not sure I would say craftsperson nor magician, but more like someone who did something without knowing how... like how we beat our hearts.  We do it, but have no idea how to explain it.  It's not something that is thought about... like how a centipede walks without tangling all those legs.  That's the idea that is meant to be conveyed by the hindu pictures of gods with many arms.  Bruce Lee said we learn to forget, which means we train until the movement is reflexive and isn't thought about.  That way when we approach an opponent, we flow like water rather than thinking about how to counter.

Maybe I should stop trying to explain something I don't even understand, but that's kinda how I think about it.  It isn't magical like a magician poofing something from nothing, but it grows mindlessly like a plant.  Isn't it amazing to put a seed in the ground and have a plant start growing?  How does it know what to do?

Supernatural as not yet understood natural - good.

 

Yup

Also, great that you are able to cop to agnosticism as someone with a theistic bent, it will be your salvation.  

Lao Tzu said, "Those who know, do not speak. Those who speak, do not know."  Yet he said that  I don't know, so I talk a lot :p

“The act of writing is the act of discovering what you believe.” - David Hare