Sorry, it seemed to fit. Occam the moderator would praise people for being succinct. I thought that was your reference. Occam the philosopher and theologian had the idea of using simpler explanations, I didn’t think you were doing that.
If Occam the philosopher was alive today, he might be an atheist. God appears to be absent, and the lack of evidence of God in the universe predicts that. I see what you’re attempting to do, to get down to “what is”, some basic “wholeness”, so that makes sense that you would compare that to Occam. But then you add on God, you have these concepts about “reality as it actually is”. If you could better define those, maybe I could see how they map onto my experience, but they don’t simplify the question for me.
I’m not good at describing Bayesian logic, and the word “excuses” doesn’t quite fit what you’re doing, but here’s how works logically. Start with, looking at this universe, as it is, then give a God a 50/50 chance of existing. Evidence that matter, life and conscious can exist without supernatural forces goes against the existence of God. On the “God” side of the equation, a reference to “the undivided Whole” and a “non-relative infinitude” to support the designation “God” can only be granted 50/50 probabilities, until we know what those are or can demonstrate them existing or that they have some kind of properties, or something. Those 50/50 probabilities only reduce the final probability (0.5 x 0.5 x 0.5 = 12.5%)
For example, when God, as merely defined, entails far more obvious evidence of his existence—such as a far different looking universe, a far better governed universe, far more (and far more consistent and universal) communications from God, and so on—such that the actual universe we find ourselves in is actually improbable if God exists, then even if we were to say the prior probability of such a God is 50%, the posterior probability (the final probability) that God exists will be less than 50%. Because all that evidence is then less probable than it would be if there is no God—since the absence of God perfectly predicts all the appearance of an absent God. (Which is the real reason atheism is justified.)
I make essentially the same case as you . The wholeness is Reality.
I can make a case for that. The more you disassemble the parts the less real they become until you end up with nondistinct quanta of values that may not even qualify as real.
This is demonstrably true. But it does not answer the question “Who is God”.
Which is already a misleading question. God is not a “who”. If anything, God is a “what”.
Are you saying that God’s most essential character is Reality or that Reality’s most essential character is God.?
Either way, there is no “who”. Never was , never will be.
Well, perhaps spend more time responding, and less time complaining.
If at first you can’t make yourself understood to your own satisfaction, try, try, try again.
How interesting hearing that comment come from you. Sounds like you might appreciate the “Rivet” analogy on a different level. Fascinating.
We do love talking about God don’t we, the ultimate Gordian Knot.
Who is “God,” but a creation of our unique complex human minds dealing with our day to days?
Think about it, because that really is the most fundamental answer to The Grand Questions of God.
The who, what, where, why, how of God that people have been grappling with since forever.
It’s such a profoundly simple answer, yet people avoid it with an amazing alacrity and endless dog-chasing-tail rhetorical gymnastics that never arrive at any conclusion(s).
From within the human mind, from curiosity and wonder. From puzzling over observations, contemplating questions, seeking answers. From love and hunger and fears in the night along with glorying in the warming sunrise.
From contemplating the suddenly dead carcass of a loved one From buried memories of being coddled within mom’s loving protective bosom and mourning those who are gone.
From our need for someone truly personal, who’s always there, never dying, ready to listen to our constant chatter, ideas, complaints, fears, longings, wishes, all of it in complete confidence.
Think about it, our relationship with our God is the most intimate relationship of our lives and reflects our ego in every way. All of it, happening within our mind, or more descriptively, within our Mindscape.
I see no beauty in that at all. You are just making up another name for the “Wholeness” Your problem is that God is unfalsifiable and therefore nondescript altogether , whereas the “wholeness” can be separated into sets that make up the wholeness.
In the end there is only a permittive condition that is allowing a singularity unlimited permission to expand.
God is an anthropomorphization of “everything”. IOW totally nondescript!
In 281 posts you have not given a single property of God that is essential for a description of Reality.
keep me in their coach, I’m tryin’ but, in my reality, brain signals or sensory perceptions from every cell in my body is my ever-present reality show. Eyewitnesses are often proven to have it absolutely wrong, so I am well aware.
Are you talking about actual reality before everything is said and done or the actual reality of real-time?
Who are you saying is the owner of the “actual reality?”
It’s easy to understand your appreciation for Occam’s razor.
Are you talking about the physical reality that scientists study?
… The reality that’s always been there flowing and evolving through time and will continue long after we are gone.
Or are you talking about the reality we perceive within our minds?
… The reality of our human bodies processing that physical reality and that then creates that movie that unfolds within our thoughts (mind).
Mine being a non-dual paradigm you won’t hear me saying things like “a God existing”, or “supernatural” anything.
Other than to point out that the other person is working from dualistic ideas of God as other. Which for me negates the absolute (non-relative) infinitude that I have been emphasizing.
(aren’t you ignoring the potential for existence in your calculations?)
Whatever floats your boat and gets you through the night. If I were an animistic human who lived before science, Mother Nature would be the closest thing to a deity, if there was a deity, which would make it a “what”, not a “who”. Then again, calling her “mother” is making her a “who”, I guess, but definitely not a girl raping male, who commits murder/suicide. However, since Mother Nature can be name, it is not a deity either. It is once again a human creation, which makes it a “what”.
The context of Reality is God in my approach to the subject.
In the context of Wholeness, subjective and objective are not two things. So, no “who” or “what” about it. Other than at street level, in our day-to-day.
When you were learning arithmetic, was your teacher evangelizing?
Remove the word “God” from what I’m talking about and nothing changes about the context being described. Leave it in, and all the politics around the term disappears. At least for anyone who “groks” the significance.
I was not peddling religious beliefs. If you were to convert any one of us, you’d be like, “Yes, a win for Christ”, instead of calling it a brainwashing. Math is someone one can use in life. Mythology is not something practical to be used in life. It’s just myth.
What religious beliefs am I peddling? Reality/Nature/the Universe/God all equate by my way of understanding to the a priori of non-relative infinitude that is the Whole.
potential for existence of what? I start with 50/50, which I think is generous.
I have heard you say “God”, maybe not “God existing”, but I’m not sure what the distinction is. I get it that you see the “wholeness” (whatever specific words you use for that) as a term, or a context for God. Sorry, I’m not going to try to match your vocabulary this time. Anyway, without anything else from you about why it matters that “In my day-to-day parlance the simple (always approximate) understanding is that There is Only God” or any of the other things about context, I don’t know that there is anything else to discuss. Call me “dualist” or “political” or whatever, that doesn’t help either.
On Taoism, I have a niece who calls herself a “philosophical Taoist”, which I think is pretty cool. She pulls out all the value statements, the advice about how “if you live this way X, you have a better chance of achieving a good outcome Y”. Taoism has a lot more of that. Christianity, if you strip away the “follow me” stuff, there is almost nothing left.
St. Thomas Aquinas (c1225-1274) is arguably the most important Catholic theologian in history. In his major work Summa Theologica, widely considered as the highest achievement of medieval systematic theology, Aquinas presented his five proofs of God’s existence known as the Quinque Viae (Latin for “Five Ways”). [1] We will be presenting all the arguments in more detail a little later, at present we will give a brief rundown of all five arguments. …
…
It should be noted that Aquinas’ arguments are based on some aspects of the sensible world. Aquinas’ arguments are therefore a posteriori in nature. By contrast, Anselm’s argument is based purely on an a priori definition of God. [3] Aquinas’ Five Ways are based ultimately on sense experience. Sense experience can never be infallible. Thus by themselves these arguments cannot establish the existence of God with complete certainty. However, should his arguments be valid, the existence of God would be an established fact on par with many of the discoveries of modern science. …
And in the end all of it is thoughts flitting through people’s minds, not one bit of actual physical reality (okay, beyond the physics of light and sound transmission) to be found anywhere. Except for a comment that reflects on “physical realities” perceived insignificance:
Aquinas’ arguments are therefore a posteriori in nature
What about the simple answer
Acknowledging that God is the product of the human experience, and the human mind. Period. It really does resolve most, if not all, the riddles we love to play with so much.
Nicely explained, thanks and give your niece a tip of the hat from me.
