Where did God come from?

From your previous post: O.K. Because I wouldn't want it done to me. I can imagine myself in the place of the victim and know that I would not want to be there. I don't, so it's irrlevant. Oh, you mean like your scripture permits us to do in the old testament? It's wrong because I say it is.And from your last post: It's easy when you don't let your emotions get in the way of rational thinking. That you can't conceive of such a scenario does not mean one doesn't exist. It's just a limitation of your own imagination.Take this scenario:
A mad scientist is poised to release a deadly virus upon the human race that will surely kill 99.9% of the population in a fit of torturous and bloody agony unless you torture and kill your own child. In doing so, you have 100% certainty that the species would be safe from the virus, and you also have certainty that if you did not, the consequences I've described would be inevitable.How can you say that it would be a "good" thing to refuse to torture and kill your child at the expense of 99.9% of human life, which by the way would likely include your own and your child's as well? I have just presented such a scenario. It would be wrong not to do it. Doesn't matter. Unless you can demonstrate that there is something that is impossible in principle with a scenario sufficiently similar to the one I presented, then your claim is falsified. The two testaments which include contradictory moral commandments cannot be absolutely true by definition.[This message has been edited by ::, 12-18-2003]

What urge? I never felt any urge. Can you supply some evidence for its existence beyond your say-so? How am I supposed to recognize this nebulous "urge" as coming from your God if I can't believe that He exists until I recognize it?Here, let's do a little object lesson:WILLOWTREE, inside you, you have the urge to believe in and follow Bagheera, the Divine Feline Creator of the Universe Last Thursday. However, I know that you don't believe that He exists, and you won't believe He exists until you make a choice: Do what His urge is telling you to do and accept Him so you can be re-created next Thursday, or don't.So what's it gonna be? Have you felt this urge, honestly? Well, if future omniscience is included in your definition of God, then the freedom you describe here is impossible -- but that's probably a whole new thread on its own. Are you claiming to know (at least some of) the content of Rrhain's subconscious mind? I want to be clear. Y'know, it really troubles me that so many believers will advance "the Bible says so" as an argument when invovled in debates with atheists and non-Christians -- especially when they use it to claim knowledge of the atheist's own private experience. Do you not realize that I know a priori that the Bible's claim is false, and no amount of asserting its veracity will make a lick of difference to me? My private subjective experience is mine, and I know first-hand that I have not experienced the urge that the Bible claims I have. Why would you expect me to lend credence to other aspects of your religion if I know that its tenets induce its believers to make obviously false assertions?To illustrate my point a little clearer, consider that the Word of the Divine Feline tells us that everyone thinks ipecac syrup is delicious. Therefore, you think ipecac syrup is delicious because Bagheera says so. If you disagree, it is because your rebellion against His Holy Cat-ness has blinded you to the truth.How much credence would you give to those claims?Reason for edit: Durned speling misteaks...[This message has been edited by ::, 12-19-2003]

Personally I don't believe them to be separate things. I heartily dislike debates about the "origin of life," and I'll tell you why: "Life" is what humans decide to say it is. "Life" is a word of human language, and as such its definition is an invention of human minds. So the question "When did life begin?" is also adequately phrased as "When did lumps of matter begin to meet our more-or-less arbitrary definition of what life is?"The universe is made of energy in transition. The solar system, the earth, your city, your house, your chair, your computer, your body, your eyes, your brain... all of these are simply energy in transition. The quarks that compose the elementary particles in the plastic keys of your keyboard are fundamentally indistinguishable from the quarks of matter that make up the same elements in your brain. Only the proportions and configurations differ.My point is that "life" is a something we use to characterize certain arrangements of energy in transition which means that at a most basic and fundamental level, any ordinarily-considered "inanimate" lump of matter is itself no less or more "alive" than you are. It's simply configured differently such that it doesn't match the criteria we've abstracted to define our usual usage of the terms "life" and "alive." Well, evolution doesn't really work in terms of "superiority" or "inferiority." Organisms can be so classified according to some predefined and arbitrary criteria, however in a predictive sense, not every organism is evolving on its way to becoming a "super-organism."[This message has been edited by ::, 12-30-2003]

One quick point since I'm sure Rrhain will adequately address the rest of the errors in your response to him: Because "sense" is whatever we want to say it is, not what your God says it is. The concepts of logic "make sense" to us becuase they are inventions of our human minds -- the very things we use to determine what "sense" is. Futhermore, our notions of "sense" have demonstrably changed over human history. It used to seem nonsensical to discuss a particle that interferes with itself as a result of simultaneously diffracting through two slits in a screen. It used to seem nonsensical to conceive of a particle being simultaneoulsly a wave. Heck, it used to seem nonsensical to think that the earth was spherical. In all of these instances, our ideas of "sense" were shown wrong and corrected -- even spurring the invention of new logics.[This message has been edited by ::, 12-30-2003]

Yes, and as I recall I demonstrated quite clearly to you with Gdel's and Tarski's Theorems that the "laws of logic" are not universal and aboslute as you continue to claim. Assertions are meaningless without supporting evidence. Please supply some. I have done so in the Gdel and Tarski thread to which you had no adequate rebuttal. Which is certainly evidential of the fact that logic is not universal nor absolute. If previous logic systems were eventually found to be inadequate for completely describing reality, we have reason to believe that subsequently constructed logic systems are subject to the same frailty. Sorry, but this is only your assertion. In fact, Tarski's theorem proved that truth cannot logically be absolutely represented. If truth were aboslute, one would think that it could be. Not at all, and in fact quite the opposite. You continue to assert that your opponents believe in absolute truth in the face of their explicit denials. Their denials are not examples of their agreement with your assertions. To borrow Rrhain's form...BZZZT!Logical error: Argument from emotion. IOW, just that you think the world would be absurd and chaotic were there no absolute truth, doesn't not necessitate it's existence. Not at all. As I said, Tarski's theorem proved that truth cannot logically be absolutely represented. IOW, logic cannot fully contain truth. If truth were absolute like you've said, it should be fully representable in principle as an object of a logical proposition. Non-sequitur. Begging the question. Facts are man's interpretation of reality. The fact used to be that the world was flat. Then, under subsequent investigation, that fact changed, and facts continue to change all the time. If truth were absolute, this would be impossible.

If you have a response to my reponse to this that you cited (post number 13), please return to that thread and post it. I would prefer that in this thread you address the substantial majority of my last post that you seem to have ignored, especially the points involving Tarski's theorem. What other logical system is there? And, I'll remind you that assertions are meaningless without supporting evidence.EDIT: Actually, my response is better phrased like so: The point is that the several logical systems that exist and we currently use cannot be part of a single universal and absolute logical system because the axioms at the foundation of one system are inconsistent with the axioms at the foundation of another. In one system, truth values are binary, 0 or 1. In another, truth values are infinite on the continuous interval (0,1). It would quite exactly resemble the world in which we live. No, you have cited possibilities, not necessities. It is certainly possible that we can postulate any axioms we like and entertain any conceivable logical contradiction. We simply don't because communication suffers. Not according to Tarski's theorem. You have demonstrated NO SUCH THING. In order for communication to exist, all we need is agreement upon the axioms of a particular language -- no matter what they are. It is irrelevant that they aren't absolutely true. Non-sequitur. In due time. I'd prefer it if you went back and responded to the majority of my previous post which you ignored.[This message has been edited by ::, 12-30-2003]

It probably seems like I'm hounding you, and in a sense I am, but until you cease making these obviously false assertions, I will continue to do so. NO, IT DOES NOT! It only requires agreement upon tentatively acccepted truths. My friend and I can temporarily agree that "flibble" is now our word for "car" and "stunkflit" is now our word for "drive." Once that agreement is in place, we can have extensive conversations about how fast we can stunkflit our flibbles, or I could describe how I stunkflat (the past tense of "stunkflit") my flibble home from work yesterday. It doesn't matter that "flibble" = "car" isn't absolutely true. We can just agree on it tentatively and meaningful communication can commence.Lingual/verbal communication is entirely symbolic. The elements of the language symbolize intersubjective realities, or more explicitly, commonalities in each person's subjective experience. It's not really surprising that we can find so many areas of agreement since we are all the same species with the same built-in pathways for experiencing reality. You seem to think that since we have discovered so much which we can agree upon, our agreements must be therefore based on experiences of absolutely true realities. Unfortunately there is no valid form of deduction or induction that makes this conclusion tenable. In fact, the shifting experiences of time for individuals moving at radically different velocities seems to reveal that somethings which we can normally agree upon (the experienced duration of a second, for example) can easily change. Your statement has been demonstrated false. Your continued assertions of this statement are quite disingenuous in my opinion. I do not accept this statement. Please support it with some real evidence. Please provide the data you've collected from these "observed realities" so that I might better examine your claim that they require absolute truth to eminate from a long-dead, nearly mythical carpenter. I suspect that your conclusion is invalidly drawn from the evidence. Now you're moving the goalposts. You've been saying all along that your assertions are necessarily true. I've never denied -- and in fact I've explcitly stated -- that its possible to postulate any axioms we like and entertain any conceiveable contradiction. We just don't because it makes meaningful communication more difficult. But they ARE at best unstable and uncertain!! I'm sorry that this makes you uncomfortable, but that is no reason to go around postulating unevidenced entities in order to cope with facts that cause you discomfort. You CAN discount all you observe. That's precisely what Descartes did. The point is that you ALSO CAN decide to "play along," so to speak, and agree to the tentative premises so that you can meaningfully communicate. The choice is always yours, but just because you somehow can't conceive of choosing the latter does not necessitate the actuality of the former. It does not have to lead to irrational thought unless you decide you want it to, and even then it will only lead to irrational thought for you. The rest of us will continue along merrily in our rich communications. So what's it gonna be?

But all logic and math are is systematized language. Logical systems say that in order for conclusions to be valid in a given system, statements must be formed according to the set of rules X, and that conclusions follow from previous statements according to the set of rules Y.Science, similarly, is systematized observation, and proceeds analagously to the above.The rules themselves are as much inventions of human minds as the rules of Monopoly and Scrabble. You have demonstrated no such thing. All you've offered are assertions. I could just as easily assert that I've demonstrated the existence of an ice cream factory on a planet orbiting Alpha-Centauri using your own statements. That doesn't mean that I have. See? This statement of yours ASSUMES the existence of an ice cream factory on a planet orbiting Alpha-Centauri.Aren't we glad I demonstrated that? The existence of the ice cream factory on the planet orbiting alpha-centauri is clearly evidenced.The point is, grace, that you can call a dog a duck, but that don't make the dog a duck. Maybe to you, but not to me. Seems to be a problem of incredulity on your part. More incredulity. Not even close.

No it is not. It is only true where "stunkflit" = "drive" and "flibble" = "car." Where "stunkflit" = "fly" and "flibble" = "magic carpet" the statement is false.BTW - what, exactly, is the difference between "ultimate truth" and just regular old run-of-the-mill truth? Simple: we agree upon definitions and apply them as consistently as possible. Our definitions need not be absolutely true in order to be useful. The word "colon" means both "a punctuation mark" and "a part of the human anatomy." In other words, it is both true and false that the word "colon" means "a punctuation mark." It is also true and false that "colon" means "part of the human anatomy." According to your reasoning, speaking about these objects should be impossible, yet proctologists don't seem to confuse punctuation marks with parts of the human body. Gee, why would that be? They are false to anyone who supposes the common definitions and syntactical rules of the English language. You may not suppose these, but then that is your problem. First of all, that our ability to reason may be bounded by our birth and death does not imply that our reasoning is finite. It seems that reasoning is a continuous process, and as such it may still be infinite.Secondly, am I to take your statements to mean that you believe there is no reasoning after death? Is there no reason in Heaven? Paradoxes are places where our definitions simply bump into eachother. I'd say that's rather evidential of the fact that logic isn't absolute if we can express logical notions that are undecideable. Does a barber who shaves every man who doesn't shave his own face shave himself or not? Does the set that contains every set that does not contain itself contain itself or not? Well, according to our definitions of the natural numbers, "prime," "+," "*," and "=," there is no largest prime number -- and we didn't even have to try to count them all to find that out. I'd like you to address the distinction I made between the possibility of meaningless communication and your assertion that it necessarily follows when absolute truth doesn't exist. I don't deny that it's possible, however you've yet to show how it's necessary.

No, it's not. It is a descriptive observation of reality. Sorry, but this is based on a false premise. Which is precisely why the claim "absolute truth does not exist" is not purporting to be absolutely true. Why would I make the claim "absolute truth does not exist" if I didn't think it was possible? To answer your question directly, it would be more likely that absolute truth exists. However, I reject the premise of the question. I think you've set up a black/white fallacy here. Certainty isn't always an all-or-nothing issue. In reality, when we say that X is Y, we don't mean that we're absolutely sure that X is Y, we mean that X and Y are sufficiently similar that we can ignore the possibility of error and proceed. In other words, we have sufficient certainty although we never have absolute certainty. You position does not follow as I tried to illustrate in my previous post with the homograph "colon." Words do not have absolute or objective meanings, yet our communciations employ them quite well regardless. Communication, therefore, does not require that absolute truth exists. It requires only a certain agreement between the communicating parties as to the meanings of the symbols employed in the commincation. I believe in the past that you've claimed that this absolute truth is not only unknown, but also unknowable. Is this still your position? I don't see any evidence of absolute truth, and there obviously exists statements which are relatively and subjectively true (See my thread titled "An Object Lesson"). Evidence of one and no evidence of the other seems to indicate to me that the unevidenced one is non-existent. Disagree. "Truth" is a word of human language, and its meaning is therefore defined by human minds. Reality exists, obviously, but it does not say "A is true" or "B is true" or "A and ~A is false." These are statements in human language. Reality says only "A." Or reality says only "B." Then humans, upon observing "A," construct the statement "A is true." This does not bind reality at all, but instead describes our observations of it. I don't find it difficult at all, but your incredulity is irrelevant anyway. Which "basic ideas and philosophies," exactly? Not really. The truth values of scientific statements are contingent upon repeatable testability and the endurance of the statements to the repeated testation. Some (like the description of electrons orbiting a nucleus like little planets) are patently false. But that's exactly right! They're NOT binding on reality! They're DESCRIPTIVE. They say "This is what we observed reality doing." It's always possible that reality behaves contrary to that observation in some other place or at some other time. It could be that we are "in the Matrix," so to speak, and what we observe right now is not "really real." We can never truly know that. So we hypothesize that our theories are accurately descriptive of reality over as much of it as we can possibly observe, but there is no absolute certainty.

Some comments on a few misconceptions in your post. Your phrase "without good justification" disqualifies your question as legitimate. Essentially you're asking "Would it be good to do something that I'll now define as not-good?" Obviously the answer to the question is no, but it's hardly relevant to the notion of the existence of absolute morality. Sure, "good" is absolutely better than "bad" according to our definitions of them. The problem is that things can be simultaneously good in one sense and bad in another. No. Right and wrong is decided individually. Social majority decides legality. More directly, the majority can decide how the society is governed, but nobody can make you believe that the majority is right about everything.

My apologies. I thought my meaning would be clearer and I think it is in context with the rest of the post from whence the statement was extracted. The statement "Absolute truth does not exist" is a statement about our observations of reality and is no more a claim to absolute truth than any scientific statement ("Mass-energy is always conserved," for example). Neither statement is known to be absolutely true. They are instead simply consistent with every observation. They are hypothesized to be true and held tentatively until contradictory observations are made. So, your claim is false that the statement itself is purporting to be absolutely true. I suppose that reality just is. Not really but there are different levels of reality -- specifically, subjective vs. objective reality. No. Wrong. "Absolute truth" is an idealization that exists in human minds. It does not exist in objective reality. Sorry, I cannot seem to get your meaning with this phrase. Reality. Again you're being disingenuous. You've asserted the absolute truth necessarily exists, so it is your burden to prove your assertion. "The impossibility of the contrary," as you are wont to say, is insufficient without a demonstration of impossibility.That said, it should be clear by now that the concepts of truth and falsity are human creations. They are means of expressing our ideas about reality, but they are not reality themselves. Reality says "A." That's all. It's HUMANS that say "A is true," attaching the truth predicate to A. Quite frequently we have made subsequent inspections of reality only to find that where we used to say "A is true" we now say "A is false."You see, truth and falsity are only concepts or symbols. Since that is the case, "truth" is subject to redefinition or, if you prefer, reconceptualization. This is rather uncharacteristic of something supposedly absolute, don'tcha think?

Not at all, and instead these statements reveal that you are projecting your own creator-concept onto the matter. Begging a question of your own, as it were.My statements do not necessarily exclude a creator, and for that reason they do not beg the question. They may exclude YOUR ideas about YOUR creator, however as I've come to realize, my god is not your God. And then again, he might not. This statement first begs the question of a creator and then derives a non-sequitur from it.

Some comments on the excerpted portions of that article: This seems to be in conflict with what I understand to be the prime purpose for mankind here on earth according to most all evangelical ministers to which I've listened: to come to know and trust in God and be saved by His grace. It doesn't seem reasonable that He would want to bring out the evil in men by hiding from them. This again stands in conflict with the doctrines of most evangelical churches with which I'm familiar. According to them, works and deeds are irrelevant anyway -- it is faith and grace that save. (never mind that scriptural passages exist which support both positions yet also stand them in opposition to eachother) So the entire analogy is irrelevant. This sounds too much like "basically we're not sure what God's reasons are, but we're convinced that the He has them." Not too convincing to me.

If morality were absolute, then what-ifs would be irrelevant. Yet if I can find just one situation that is possible in principle in which committing a postulated "bad" action would be preferable to some other agreeably "worse" action, then you must concede that the "bad" action would be "good" to do as opposed to the "worse" one. That was the point with the mad scientist that threatened the lives of 90% of the earth's population. Disagree. It is possible that they can be seen as good, too. Rapists certainly think raping is good. Disagree. The person being raped and tortured would likely feel that the raping and torturing was "bad," yet the saved lives would predictably feel that it was "good" since it saved them.Take Jesus' crucifixion, for example. On the one had, crucifixion is a very "bad" deed, yet on the other you believe Jesus' sacrifice to have washed your sins clean, which is a "good" thing, no? You see, depending on how you look at it things can be both good and bad. Level 3 is not observed, and Level 2 is just an aggregation of Level 1 -- the only REAL level of morality. Disagree. Level 1 is always right since it is at that level that each individual determines what they believe is right. It is impossible for you to simultaneously believe at Level 1 that the pro-choice platform is right and that your opinion on that matter is wrong.[This message has been edited by ::, 01-07-2004]