Is there a logical fallacy here?

[Obbe]

Originally Posted by gadzooks

Sorry, I've been kinda sick with the flu for the past few days and have been pretty restricted in what I could comfortably do for a while. I haven't completely abandoned the thread. I will respond to your latest responses. But I have a fuckton of things I have to catch up on now since I've been out of commission for these past few days. I won't forget about this thread though.

Alright.

[gadzooks]

Obbe, since there is a lot here to respond to, I'm going to try to summarize what I think you're trying convey so that I can respond to it more easily. If you feel I am oversimplifying or misinterpreting you, then let me know, because I don't want to unfairly spin up any straw-men on you.

Originally Posted by Obbe

How is it problematic?

...

I don't see any reason to define God the christian way. What's the point? Just to define it as something so ridiculous it doesn't make any sense?

I prefer to define God in this way for the same reasons you prefer to define God in your way. It's just what we are used to.

...

It makes sense to me. I believe we should change the meaning of that word. And because I believe that this is the idea of God that countless mystics and philosophers throughout the ages were trying to communicate. This, or something similar to this. I believe this is the kernel. And I feel that God is an ideal word for it, but the word really doesn't matter, I agree that it could be called anything.

So what it seems like you're saying here is that the Christian definition of God, as just one example, has no more supremacy over any other definition. And so, your definition, which, to me, admittedly, was a bit out there, is just as valid?

I think you do raise a good point here. There are probably some bush tribes out there with definitions of God that are yet even stranger.

However, I don't think it changes a whole lot. We're still debating over the existence of some entity, and I don't quite find your reasons that you put forth for why you believe this entity exists to be compelling enough.

Originally Posted by Obbe

Is the world not mine to perceive as I may? And is the world not the terrorists to perceive as he may? You cannot change his perception. Again, attempting to would just be cracking open that can of worms.

We as individuals need to come to these realizations on our own. Yes, you can encourage people to think for themselves and to stop listening to others, to stop listening to their parents and to their preachers and their politicians, but you can't make them. You can't make people think for themselves. And there are some people who will never open up, and they may be dangerous, and they may want to attack you. You cannot make them all go away, or change into rational, thoughtful people who participate in thought-provoking conversations. You need to be able to defend yourself, and see the world for what it is, and not fantasize about an ideal world where everyone is rational. Maybe one day we will get to that point, but no amount of force is going to take us there, only the natural processes of the world.

I'm glad to see that you do seem to be in support of rational thinking vs irrational thinking. But for me, rational thinking also involves the rational and rigorous justification of beliefs, and in this sense, I think it's important to encourage people to be rational thinkers. This means not completely leaving other people alone. Although, it also does not mean harassing people or harming people in the process of encouraging them. And there may be a fine line between the two.

Originally Posted by Obbe

bump, with relevant infro:

Quote:
A significant debate within the pantheistic community is about the use of the word “God”. Pantheists do not believe in a God in the common and traditional sense of a personal creator being. Some modern Pantheists avoid using God-words altogether, since they regard them as misleading. Others feel that the word God is essential to express the strength of their feelings towards Nature and the Universe.

This definition helps me a bit more to understand your definition of God. I am more and more realizing that what you are talking about when you refer to the idea of God is something not just somewhat different, but completely different from what Christians and most other mainstream religions refer to.

But as I just mentioned, I still don't see your reasons for believing in this God to be adequate.

More and more I'm thinking that what you're talking about is actually more of a metaphorical conception of God. It seems almost like nature and the universe carry some kind of "spiritual" significance for you (and others with similar views). However, I think that labeling that significance or that force or that extra something that you detect in the world as God is still a misuse of the term. I can see how it would be tempting to label that as God, and as I mentioned earlier, if I were to believe in God, this is the closest conception that I could consider myself believing. But in order to make that leap and call it "God" seems a bit... unnecessary and arbitrary.

Originally Posted by mudhut_madonna

The problem is there are always wild cards.

And wild pokemon.

[Obbe]

Originally Posted by gadzooks

So what it seems like you're saying here is that the Christian definition of God, as just one example, has no more supremacy over any other definition. And so, your definition, which, to me, admittedly, was a bit out there, is just as valid?

First I asked how labeling that unity as God is problematic.

What I'm saying is that I see no reason to use the christian definition of god, unlike you. To me, defining God as a christian does is silly. For I am not a christian. To me, the way I define God makes more sense.

Originally Posted by gadzooks

I think you do raise a good point here. There are probably some bush tribes out there with definitions of God that are yet even stranger.

What might really freak you out is comparing my definition of God to definitions of Brahman and the Tao.

Originally Posted by gadzooks

However, I don't think it changes a whole lot. We're still debating over the existence of some entity, and I don't quite find your reasons that you put forth for why you believe this entity exists to be compelling enough.

Like I said, it doesn't matter what we name it. It doesn't matter if we perceive it at all. I said that it's a matter of perspective, and do you not agree that we could perceive all existence as a unity?

Originally Posted by gadzooks

I'm glad to see that you do seem to be in support of rational thinking vs irrational thinking. But for me, rational thinking also involves the rational and rigorous justification of beliefs, and in this sense, I think it's important to encourage people to be rational thinkers. This means not completely leaving other people alone. Although, it also does not mean harassing people or harming people in the process of encouraging them. And there may be a fine line between the two.

The only reason people do not come to these realizations on their own is because of other people "encouraging" them to think a certain way. It is not a matter of learning much, it is a matter of unlearning much. It is not the daily increase, it is the daily decrease.

Originally Posted by gadzooks

This definition helps me a bit more to understand your definition of God. I am more and more realizing that what you are talking about when you refer to the idea of God is something not just somewhat different, but completely different from what Christians and most other mainstream religions refer to.

But as I just mentioned, I still don't see your reasons for believing in this God to be adequate.

More and more I'm thinking that what you're talking about is actually more of a metaphorical conception of God. It seems almost like nature and the universe carry some kind of "spiritual" significance for you (and others with similar views). However, I think that labeling that significance or that force or that extra something that you detect in the world as God is still a misuse of the term. I can see how it would be tempting to label that as God, and as I mentioned earlier, if I were to believe in God, this is the closest conception that I could consider myself believing. But in order to make that leap and call it "God" seems a bit... unnecessary and arbitrary.

It appears in the above quote that your rejection of my position has nothing to do with the position I have described, but with the name that I have chosen to give it. But as I said earlier, the name doesn't matter, it can be called anything. I call it God because I feel that word expresses my feelings about this greater reality. But I agree that the word doesn't matter at all, as I have already said earlier.

[gadzooks]

First, Obbe, I apologize for taking so long again getting back to you.

Originally Posted by Obbe

First I asked how labeling that unity as God is problematic.

What I'm saying is that I see no reason to use the christian definition of god, unlike you. To me, defining God as a christian does is silly. For I am not a christian. To me, the way I define God makes more sense.

What might really freak you out is comparing my definition of God to definitions of Brahman and the Tao.

Like I said, it doesn't matter what we name it. It doesn't matter if we perceive it at all. I said that it's a matter of perspective, and do you not agree that we could perceive all existence as a unity?

The only reason people do not come to these realizations on their own is because of other people "encouraging" them to think a certain way. It is not a matter of learning much, it is a matter of unlearning much. It is not the daily increase, it is the daily decrease.

It appears in the above quote that your rejection of my position has nothing to do with the position I have described, but with the name that I have chosen to give it. But as I said earlier, the name doesn't matter, it can be called anything. I call it God because I feel that word expresses my feelings about this greater reality. But I agree that the word doesn't matter at all, as I have already said earlier.

I'm not trying to force you (or anyone else) to define God in the Christian way. I basically had a somewhat looser definition in mind that would encompass what most (if not all) monotheists would call a God.

But I will accept your unique definition, at the very least for the sake of argument.

Now, bringing up the Tao and Brahman and so forth would make for a very interesting discussion on the nature of God, but I think it would take us off on a very time-consuming, albeit perhaps very interesting, tangent. It is not that I am not interested in discussing that with you, but simply a matter of time availability. I just started the new semester and am absolutely swamped with coursework, data collection for research, and various other responsibilities.

Consider this, if you will, as a raincheck of sorts.

I also happen to have a copy of the Upanishads, the Tao te Ching, and a variety of other Eastern texts that I haven't gotten around to reading yet in their entirety. Although I do plan to read them at some point, I am really focusing heavily on my school work at the moment.

This whole discussion started as me really just wanting to know why you hold the beliefs you do, and it seems like I'm not quite understanding your reasons. Quite often, instead of getting into the reasons, we keep coming back to how you define God, and not why you believe in God. And maybe that is essential to the answer regarding why you believe. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt on this for now, and hopefully at some point we'll be able to carry on... perhaps after we have discussed your definition of God further, maybe through private communication.

Expect a PM from me after this post.

[Danger]

“[T]he theoretical objects of physics are ‘real’ not in the sense they can be shown to correspond to some aspects of the external world (this project is well-known to have definitively failed) but in the sense that once a theory’s predictions are verified, we treat its objects as real to the extent we can visualize them using ordinary language words (and associated space/time visualizations). It is easily seen that while this realism by analogy grew increasingly tenuous with the progress in physics, in quantum theory it failed completely. We cannot consistently use either particle or wave pictures (the only object pictures in everyday thinking so far available to us). We are forced to use one or the other to visualize the one and same quantum object, albeit under different and mutually exclusive experimental arrangements. We are faced with either an ontological contradiction or a limited phenomenal conception of the quantum world that changes with changing conditions of its observation. ” [FR]

Regarding quantum wave phenomena: “The more one examines the waves of quantum mechanics, the less they resemble waves in a medium. In the 1920s, Ernst (sic) Schrodinger set out a formula which could "describe" the wave-like behavior of all quantum units, be they light or objects... For a brief time, physicists sought to visualize these quantum waves as ordinary waves traveling through some kind of a medium (nobody knew what kind) which somehow carried the quantum properties of an object. Then Max Born pointed out something quite astonishing: the simple interference of these quantum waves did not describe the observed behaviors; instead, the waves had to be interfered and the mathematical results of the interference had to be further manipulated (by "squaring" them, i.e., by multiplying the results by themselves) in order to achieve the final probability characteristic of all quantum events. It is a two-step process, the end result of which requires mathematical manipulation. The process can not be duplicated by waves alone, but only by calculations based on numbers which cycled in the manner of waves” [FR]

“[W]e have to give up the idea of [naive] realism to a far greater extent than most physicists believe today." (Anton Zeilinger)... By realism, he means the idea that objects have specific features and properties — that a ball is red, that a book contains the works of Shakespeare, or that an electron has a particular spin... for objects governed by the laws of quantum mechanics, like photons and electrons, it may make no sense to think of them as having well defined characteristics. Instead, what we see may depend on how we look.” [FR]

Throughout the history of quantum physics naïve realists have generally claimed that quantum physics is only an abstract mathematical procedure that applies to the realm of fundamental particles and not at the 'everyday' scale of objects. It was then proposed that we cannot truly perceive the fundamental particles so they are possibly just abstract conceptualisations. Hence quantum physics had no relevance to the world that we experience as being 'real', i.e. the world of macroscopic objects, people, places and things. In this way the quantum weirdness could be ignored and a naïve realist world view could be maintained. However it has become increasingly the case that even macroscopic objects cannot be properly understood without quantum mechanics, therefore bringing its quantum weirdness into the realm of the everyday, and once and for all bringing an end to the supremacy of naïve realism.

“Quantum mechanics is increasingly applied to larger and larger objects. Even a one-ton bar proposed to detect gravity waves must be analysed quantum mechanically. In cosmology, a wavefunction for the whole universe is written to study the Big Bang. It gets harder today to nonchalantly accept the realm in which the quantum rules apply as somehow not being physically real... "Quantum mechanics forces us to abandon naive realism". And leave it at that.” [FR]

At the level of observations physicists conceive of objects about which observations can be made but in the reality implied by quantum physics there are no objects as such and therefore no relations between objects. There are only quantum wavefunctions, which are abstract non-physical phenomena that determine every aspect of the phenomenal universe that we experience. They determine not only the state of the observed objects but also the state of the observer. Hence from the perspective of the cosmic wavefunction the adverbial theories are the only possible way to conceive of the situation. There are no 'objects', 'subjects', 'signals' or “sense data”, but only the changing state of the cosmic wavefunction. Hence all experience is simply the changing state of the cosmic wavefunction.

[Obbe]

Originally Posted by gadzooks

This whole discussion started as me really just wanting to know why you hold the beliefs you do, and it seems like I'm not quite understanding your reasons. Quite often, instead of getting into the reasons, we keep coming back to how you define God, and not why you believe in God. And maybe that is essential to the answer regarding why you believe. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt on this for now, and hopefully at some point we'll be able to carry on... perhaps after we have discussed your definition of God further, maybe through private communication.

Why do I believe the things I do. A lifetime of experience, I suppose.

Remember how I told you that this is a matter of perspective? Well, that's all it really is. I recognize that the world/universe/reality/god can be viewed as I have described in this thread. I do not feel that things should be viewed this way, or that "this is the way things really are". Well, sometimes I feel that way, but most of the time I recognize that there is no "correct" perspective of the world, there are only different perspectives, and that this perspective is no more or less valid than the others.

So why do I prefer this perspective? It feels good, it makes sense to me. Why do some people prefer chemistry over biology, or physics over other forms of explaining the way the world works? Different people just like different ways of explaining the world, and the perspective I have explained to you is the one which I like.

And even if you prefer not to view the world in this way, do you not agree with me that we can perceive ourselves simultaneously as individuals and as greater processes going on in our reality? Is it not possible to perceive the entire activity of everything as a singular united process?