I Know That God Does Not Exist

I hesitate to respond as this is well above my pay grade. I do confuse the "observer effect" with the "uncertainty principle" and only have the vaguest grasp of either.Can you in the layest in laymen's terms tell me how consciousness plays into all of that.Edited by GDR, : typo

Great moniker by the way, and you even seem to live up to it.
I don't see an intelligence behind curtains controlling everything. I see a world that appears to run on natural processes without any divine intervention. I'm inclined to think that intervention of the natural processes happens but I have no idea of how often. As I have said before, even with the evolutionary process I am agnostic on whether there was intelligent intervention in the process along the way or if everything needed was in place at the outset.I'd also add that science is only equipped to measure repeatble processes or to examine the effects of natural processes that have already taken place. Would that be anything like the holographic theory?

I don't think so. My basic understanding is that our universe is a holographic projection of a lower dimensional reailty. That is quite probably away off base.Here is the wiki site on it which goes into detail that is over my head.
Cheers
Holographic Principle

Thank you so much for your reply. I have read it several times to try and understand the concepts. Could you go into a little more detail of what would constitute a "reasoning agent". Also what would be left if there no "reasoning agent" in the universe? And one more: what would constitute a reasoning agent other than a conscious entity or a measurement by a conscious entity?

I found this post very interesting and I do take issue with it in one sense. I’d like to quote this part of your post again.

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For Yahweh for instance, his personality is typical of the gods of Semite cultures of the period, he literally uses stock phrases that occur among other Semite gods such as the Babylonian gods. e.g. "Was it not I who X,Y...."
His opinions and values reflect those of a Bronze age Semite culture.
He is described as taking part in events which we know did not occur historically or performed feats for which there is explicit evidence they did not occur (stopping the Sun).
Ultimately the case that he exists is no stronger than the case for Enlil.

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As a Christian I do believe in Yahweh, but I am also completely in agreement with your statements. I don’t believe in any of those things that you mentioned either. There are the even more obvious cases that I don’t believe in either, such Yahweh ordering or committing genocide, ordering public stoning etc.I also agree that much of how Yahweh is represented in the Bible is the result of other local cultures and religions in the area. Also, so much of what is in the OT is about trying to control God as opposed to serving Him in order to make this world a better place for all, as we get from Jesus in the NT.If to be a Christian meant understanding the Bible to be inerrant, then I could no longer be a Christian. The Bible is full of contradictions including small variations in time and in major ways in terms of ethics. However, even within the OT there are also threads of a loving God who would abhor much of what is written about Him in the OT.I have read the Quran, the Book of Buddha and you can find the same situation there as well. My point is that if you take religious texts and treat them as divinely written then none of the world’s religions hold up.
For myself I see the Bible as being the progressive understanding of mankind concerning the nature of God and how that should impact our lives.This isn’t about trying to convert you to anything but just to point out that it isn’t just about holy books and what they say in a literal sense. Religions are all created by humans trying to understand the nature of God. Unfortunately it is too often about how we can connect with some god so that we can get him/her/it to do whatever it is we want from him/her/it. The point should be that we worship in order to give thanks for life and offer our lives up to serving this deity. In the Christian case it is all about loving all of God’s creation. Christianity is really simple until you get into the theology of it.

Thanks so much for taking the time to explain this to me and likely a number of others. What about other cellular life forms, such as animals, insects or I suppose even plants. They all respond to their environment? In one sense at least they are all programmed. When the early universe is examined do the laws of mathematics still apply with no reasoning agent as a part of anything? Wouldn’t that throw into question all the accounts of the early universe. (Please don’t take this to be a theological question.) Or, do the mathematics exist whether there is a universe or not?At what point do science and philosophy start to overlap?

No doubt philosophy and theology overlap to a considerable degree. I suggest that all people form a philosophical belief system about the nature of the way things should be. I think that for most of us we come to the conclusion that the Golden Rule is the ideal and then we try to live up to it, or come to the conclusion that we just don't care. I think that this is evidenced as the Golden Rule can be found in all major religions, and in many secular institutions in one form or another.So IMHO, philosophically the Golden Rule is a universal truth of how this world should ideally function. As a basic theist I see this as a God meme , or the still small voice of God, that we all have, regardless of whatever we believe about the existence of a deity.I go further in my beliefs and beyond the purely philosophical view. I believe in the resurrection of Jesus. I have read and listened to numerous debates and I find no other reason for the rise of the early church than the position that the resurrection was historical. The argument against seems solely based on the idea that it can't happen,. I take the view that life itself is so improbable that I don't find the resurrection to be all that difficult to accept.My whole theological understanding of how to read the Scriptures is based on those 2 basic beliefs. (God is good and He resurrected Jesus.) Christian scholars and theologians, Paul being pretty much the first, have for 2000 years worked at making sense of all of this and what it tells us about God and our lives. There aren't absolutes and I'm sure nobody has it all correct. In the end it is a faith.

I read through this article and took this quote from the preamble.

quote:

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The outcome is not random, not chaotic: it’s just unknown. For Poythress, the Calvinist, the outcome is known by God and even determined by Him. It’s not chance to Him, it’s plan. With our limited knowledge, however, it looks like chance. If we knew enough, we’d know the outcome of the toss and we’d know it with 100% certainty.

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Personally I disagree with this. I agree with John Plokinghorne who essentially says that God doesn't know the future as such. He doesn't know for example what I will have for luch next Friday. The future isn't there to be known. That is actually consistent with the Scriptures and it is consistent with an open universe. If God has absolute knowledge of the future then it is fixed and free will goes out the window.

I have told you where to look. It is in the hearts of minds of human creatures. However, just as you can't see a thought you don't see God in the way that you describe. How about looking at how widespread is the belief in the "Golden Rule". There He is in the hearts and minds of all of us with that rule planted on our hearts whether we follow it or not.There God has been found.

So much of that is Greek philosophy. This isn't really about the chosen ones being the only one that escape hell. Jesus came to establish a kingdom and the chosen ones are the ones who have accepted that our lives should be based on living sacrificially through the love of God's creation and spreading that meme to the world by example. It is about vocation not salvation.

Thanks for your explanation.Is it correct that a particle has a number of possibilities that only become our reality when a reasoning agent becomes involved and then the probabilities become one. Prior to that it is a wave-particle, and then becomes when measured or observed it becomes a point-particle? I'm not sure that those are the correct terms.If that is correct then, wouldn't it mean that prior to the existence of any reasoning agent the universe would be made up of nothing but wave-particles? I think from what you said that conclusion is wrong but I don't understand why.

My beliefs aren't what they are because they are cute and cuddly but because, after quite a lot of study, it is what I subjectively believe to be true. I understand it as I believe it would be understood by a first century Jew being spoken to by a first century Jew.

Thanks you for all of that Son Goku. I think you have taken me about as far as I can go. This is one of the major reasons I enjoy this site.

You're right. I misconstrued what the discussion was about.

Just how did you look there? We all see the effects of our ideas all the time. I see God as being that still small voice in us that causes to have hearts that respond to the call to perform acts of self-giving love.We can't know whether or not that call on our hearts is from a deity or not. We can see the effects of it though. So what? Speaking more as a Christian than as simply a theist; it is the Christian view that we are to spread the gene of self-giving love so what you describe is what I would expect.I would add though that self-giving love as described by the Golden Rule goes well beyond just caring about those in our social grouping, or even our gene pool for that matter.