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Author | Topic: What are the odds of God existing? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
robinrohan Inactive Member |
According to the OP's logic, wouldn't that lower the odds of god existing to 33.33%? I'm not so sure. It might be set at 25%.
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lfen Member (Idle past 4699 days) Posts: 2189 From: Oregon Joined: |
So...does God sleep? Well, Genesis stated that God rested. Would that count? In some schools of Hinduism God is thought to sleep. This entire Universe is his dream and then he wakes up! Then when he sleeps again he dreams another universe. lfen
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PaulK Member Posts: 17825 Joined: Member Rating: 2.2 |
Given that you could frame the problem in terms of a choice between two options that are exhaustive and mutually exclusice, why would that make the probability 0.5 ?
Any proposition could be phrased in such a way, yet we know that many do not haver a probability of 0.5. So, if we have no addiitonal information that would let us better estimate the probabilities, would it not be better to say that we have insufficient infomation to assign a probability with any degree of reliability ? And if you really do believe that you can reliably assign probabilites based purely on the way that the problem is framed, how do you deal with the fact that it is possible to produce contradictory results just by framing the problem in a different way ?
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lfen Member (Idle past 4699 days) Posts: 2189 From: Oregon Joined: |
So Robin are you limiting yourself to a dualistic philosophy?
You are assuming there are two fundamental properties of the universe: insentient stuff and sentience? Are you then a priori excluding monism or non duality from even being considered? lfen
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
well that was a disappointing reply
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
whatever
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
would it not be better to say that we have insufficient infomation to assign a probability with any degree of reliability ? OK, I'll go for that. I just meant there was nothing--no available evidence if we don't consider other factors such as the nature of that creation--to lead us to choose either option.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
whatever 1. eternal god created the universe2. non-eternal God, arising from nothing, created the universe. 3. the universe has always existed. 4. the universe came from nothing. So if we allow the idea that something can come from nothing, we seem to have 4 choices. Maybe there's more.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
So Robin are you limiting yourself to a dualistic philosophy? You are assuming there are two fundamental properties of the universe: insentient stuff and sentience? I wasn't thinking in terms of two types of realities. But if we wish to say that consciousness includes incorporeality of mind, then we have two types. (no God and evolution would exclude this possibility, I think. I don't see how the non-physical can come from the physical).
Are you then a priori excluding monism or non duality from even being considered? There's two possible monisms: everything's mental or everything's physical. Which did you have in mind?
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New Cat's Eye Inactive Member |
1. eternal god created the universe 2. non-eternal God, arising from nothing, created the universe. 3. the universe has always existed. 4. the universe came from nothing. So if we allow the idea that something can come from nothing, we seem to have 4 choices. Maybe there's more.
I think you could compound 2 and 4 and expand 1, or just leave it like that. Expand 1? An eternal god could create either an eternal or non-eternal universe. I think an eternal god could create an eternal universe. Time is a dimension of our universe, that would be created when the universe is created, so we could say that the universe existed for all time, or is eternal, although it was created by a god. Or, you could have a god chillin out in some time and then he creates the universe while time already exists. This universe would not be eternal and it would be created by a god.
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
Surely we are part of Nature? Via our conciousness, Nature is one total being. If not, what do you define as the delimiter of our individual conciousnesses? Our physical bodies? One speaks of discreet entities even though something can be seen as part of something else. My stomach is a discreet entity, but it also a part of me. But the point is to find a distinguishing characteristic of God that would distinguish God from nature. So the question is whether the characteristic of consciousness is arbitrary or not. Might we pick some other quality such as twitchiness or redness? I don't think so, but I'm not sure how to express the idea yet. As for as those ideas about God being "outside of our particular time"--this makes no sense to me.
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cavediver Member (Idle past 3665 days) Posts: 4129 From: UK Joined: |
As for as those ideas about God being "outside of our particular time"--this makes no sense to me. Accoring to conventional 20th/21st century physics (GR) time is just as much a contained (created) part of the universe as anything else. If God is not outside our time, then he is part of our universe and hence not God at all...
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robinrohan Inactive Member |
Accoring to conventional 20th/21st century physics (GR) time is just as much a contained (created) part of the universe as anything else. If God is not outside our time, then he is part of our universe and hence not God at all... It seems to me a contradiction to say that something can be both finite in time and also eternal. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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lfen Member (Idle past 4699 days) Posts: 2189 From: Oregon Joined: |
There's two possible monisms: everything's mental or everything's physical. Which did you have in mind? hmmmm, oddly enough in a way it doesn't matter does it?
I don't see how the non-physical can come from the physical). Neither do I. But there is another possiblity and that is that what we call "mental" or "awareness" is a property of what we call "matter/energy" that we so far haven't found a way to measure. Something like for a long time lightening seemed divine because no one knew that matter/energy included electromagnetic properties. Or it could be that what we call mental includes the phenomena that we experience and describe as matter/energy. lfen
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lfen Member (Idle past 4699 days) Posts: 2189 From: Oregon Joined: |
My stomach is a discreet entity, but it also a part of me. How do you determine discreet? It's possible to determine boundaries and yet they are regions not totally discreet. A concept can be discreet such as the concept of the number 1, or the concept of a prime number, or the pi. But when we look at phenomena do we ever find something discreet? Examples please. I'll use stomach if you like but I don't know how you'll define and determine it's discreetness. I just don't see it.
Some 25 years ago, Arthur Koestler proposed the word "holon" [Koestler]. It is a combination from the Greek holos = whole, with the suffix on which, as in proton or neutron, suggests a particle or part. Two observations impelled Koestler to propose the word holon. The first comes from Herbert Simon, a Nobel prize winner, and is based on his 'parable of the two watchmakers' , [Simon] . From this parable, Simon concludes that complex systems will evolve from simple systems much more rapidly if there are stable intermediate forms than if there are not; the resulting complex systems in the former case will be hierarchic. The second observation, made by Koestler while analysing hierarchies and stable intermediate forms in living organisms and social organisation, is thatalthough it is easy to identify sub-wholes or parts'wholes' and 'parts' in an absolute sense do not exist anywhere. This made Koestler propose the word holon to describe the hybrid nature of sub- wholes/parts in real-life systems; holons simultaneously are self-contained wholes to their subordinated parts, and dependent parts when seen from the inverse direction. Koestler also establishes the link between holons and the watchmakers' parable from professor Simon. He points out that the sub-wholes/holons are autonomous self-reliant units, which have a degree of independence and handle contingencies without asking higher authorities for instructions. Simultaneously, holons are subject to control from (multiple) higher authorities. The first property ensures that holons are stable forms, which survive disturbances. The latter property signifies that they are intermediate forms, which provide the proper functionality for the bigger whole. Finally, Koestler defines a holarchy as a hierarchy of self-regulating holons which function (a) as autonomous wholes in supra-ordination to their parts, (b) as dependent parts in sub- ordination to controls on higher levels, (c) in co-ordination with their local environment Departement Werktuigkunde - KU Leuven — Departement Werktuigkunde (WTK)
Koestler and later Wilber developed the notion of nested hierachies to model the way the universe is a whole of interdependent parts that can function as wholes which in turn have parts which ... well, and so on and so forth. lfen
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