Philosophy Discussion Forums

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 17th, 2024, 11:02 pm
My sister became a Jehovah's Witness. I would say she was depressed before joining up, hence her recruitment. My impression was that the religion satisfied her social needs - to find a nice, trustworthy husband without bad habits and a crowd of nice people whom she could trust. As a result, she struck me as pretty happy with it all. She didn't mind throwing away her knowledge and replacing it with fundamentalist superstition. After, the creation of the universe and evolution are arcane stuff that make little difference to one's daily life. In Camus's words, she committed "philosophical suicide".

Howdy! Thanks for your reply.

My condolences. I hope you are past the grief and accepting the loss of your sister with wisdom.

I absolutely agree that there are net positives to belonging to a church and actually practicing and going every Sunday etc. And that's regardless of whether or not God exists. Yes religion provides you with a system of established metaphysics, ontology, epistemology and ethics that comes pre-packaged.

Is it worth "philosophical suicide?" I don't think it is. Not in today's world unless you live in a very gated community and you don't have to. I think that the moment things really go bad, it will REALLY hurt when your false beliefs clash against reality.

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 17th, 2024, 11:02 pmAt her funeral, there were about 260 or so Witnesses. I talked with dozens of them because she and I looked a bit alike, and I had the feeling that I was like I was a bridge to her for them, if that makes sense. I was amazed at how many of them not only knew her, but clearly knew her well. She must have become a mighty networker

It appears she was very personable and nice to be around

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 17th, 2024, 11:02 pmThe beauty of religion is that you can set aside all of your questions about life and just get on with it. Unlike my sister, I was always always watching, assessing, wondering and questioning. She did that before religion, but after her conversion she got on with work, family life and friends.

Theists don't even realize that they have all this philosophy tied to their religious beliefs. I would also argue that the philosophy that you lose with faith is the hardest thing about becoming agnostic/atheist. The lack of philosophy when you first "realize" can physically be felt as an empty hole where your heart is.

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 17th, 2024, 11:02 pmReligion is a great idea. It brings societies together, facilitates control, acts as a social conduit and frees people from philosophical /existential concerns. It would seem more attractive to me personally if theists conceded that the magical aspects of their religion were either metaphorical or ancient "marketing", and to realise that miracles are available, but in your head. All you need is to want God in your head, and you have it. God is a purely subjective entity.

Yes indeed. I am a Unitarian Universalist. It's a non-creedal religion where the supernatural or God and things like that are not mentioned during services. It's more focused on the social aspect. It is as "spiritual" and deep as a creedal sermon.

However, it's probably true that if there's all this philosophical backbone and belief in afterlife and a true God, it gives the church an extra dimension of compellingness.

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 17th, 2024, 11:02 pmIt's fascinating. Humans seem to function better when they put harsh reality through a softening filter. We apparently function better with BS than reality. Fair enough, too. Reality is not kind. The Earth has a history of extraordinary creation, albeit with suffering and death as major components.

I don't know if it's true that we, humans, function better with beliefs that clash against reality. We haven't run the experiment yet. In all of human history, 99% of people who have lived have been theists. We are just now starting to run the experiment of a godless society and we're not even in a place where like 80% of people are non-believers.

But I personally believe that humans in 2024 function better when our beliefs track onto objective reality.

A HUGE issue with religion is that it always favors those at the top of the social ladder (the rich and powerful, generally). Religion lends those who are at the bottom or in the middle of the hierarchy to abuse, manipulation and gaslighting.

Sy Borg wrote: ↑May 17th, 2024, 11:02 pmI see the Earth slowly moving towards several loci of control, largely based on the US, China, India and Islam. However, over time (a very long time away, probably post-biology), there will probably be one single locus of control. That could be called Gaia/God.

Imagine single amalgamated super-mind awakens. It is alone in space, surrounded by mindlessness for trillions of kms. It would need to build bases all over the solar system for company, or it would go nuts or die. In time, Earth will be too hot or even a super-mind and it's superior tech, and it will need to move away. Maybe it will be able to store basic copies of its mind in Von Neumann probes and spread across the galaxy?

It would be rather godlike ...

Yes absolutely. And not even necessarily post-biology. It could just happen with the rise of AI and chips in conscious creatures' brains which unites all as one supercharged thinking entity.

Cheers!

Most religious people believe in the god of their religion because they were indoctrinated into it. Reason or evidence will have had nothing to do with it. Religious indoctrination starts in early childhood and is hard, if not impossible, to shake off in adulthood.

Occasionally, someone who is not religious turns to one religion or another. This can happen at a time when they are finding life hard. Religion brings them comfort and connection with others. Again, evidence or reason will have little to do with it.

Occasionally, people can also lose religion if it fails to deliver. That is what happened in my case. This can happen most easily in secular societies where religion is not enforced by the state. It is difficult in societies where apostacy is punished by death.

The Gaia hypothesis in its strong form is silly. Gaia is not conscious entity. But seeing the earth as a single system composed of subsystems linked by feedback loops , all governed by the laws of nature, is sound science.

Philosophy_of_Guitar wrote: ↑May 17th, 2024, 9:50 pm However, we have to pull ourselves by the bootstrap at some point and accept what's empirically true.

We have hopefully always done this. If we deny, or even ignore, empirical evidence, then I don't think we have the right to call ourselves philosophers.

Philosophy_of_Guitar wrote: ↑May 17th, 2024, 10:14 pm It's crystal clear to me that her mental disorders are tightly linked to her belief system.

That's a very big assumption. It seems equally possible that her beliefs help to shield her from the worst of whatever mental health condition(s) she has, and that what you observe is what remains...

Philosophy_of_Guitar wrote: ↑May 17th, 2024, 10:14 pm So in this case, her faith is causing her horrible suffering and a bleak worldview. Therefore, what she believes in is bad for her.

It's difficult to see how your reasoning justifies your conclusion, here.

Philosophy_of_Guitar wrote: ↑May 17th, 2024, 10:14 pm Do you believe that Gaia truly exists as a conscious being? Or an ethereal being who is a representation of the Earth and does not necessarily have agency or consciousness?

I don't know, and it doesn't really matter to me. My beliefs work for me either way.

Philosophy_of_Guitar wrote: ↑April 27th, 2024, 4:14 pm Excluded middle: Either God exists or God doesn't exist.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑April 28th, 2024, 7:57 am Random comment: The so-called 'Law' of the Excluded Middle applies only to binary thinking. If we branch out toward systems thinking, that I prefer to call network thinking, then the 'Law' of the Included Middle applies...

Either, or, both, or neither...

Philosophy_of_Guitar wrote: ↑May 17th, 2024, 10:31 pm The law of Excluded Middle is a law of logic. As such it is a tautology; it is true in any and every circumstance.

No, it is true in any and every circumstance to which logic is applicable. And that is not *every* circumstance. In other cases, logic applies, but not always in the same way.




N.B. I use "logic" to mean logic; I do not use the common idiom (?) of using "logic" to mean logic and reason.

Philosophy_of_Guitar wrote: ↑May 17th, 2024, 10:31 pm

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑April 28th, 2024, 7:57 am

Philosophy_of_Guitar wrote: ↑April 27th, 2024, 4:14 pm Excluded middle: Either God exists or God doesn't exist.

Random comment: The so-called 'Law' of the Excluded Middle applies only to binary thinking. If we branch out toward systems thinking, that I prefer to call network thinking, then the 'Law' of the Included Middle applies...

Either, or, both, or neither...

The law of Excluded Middle is a law of logic. As such it is a tautology; it is true in any and every circumstance.

Either p or not p. P and not-p cannot both be true at the same time.

Here's the syllogism:

1. God exists
2. God doesn't exist.

Either 1 or 2 is true.
Both 1 and 2 cannot be simultaneously true.
And the statement "neither 1 nor 2 is true" is devoid of sense.

Cheers!

Oh, gods definitely exist, they just exist inter-subjectively.

LuckyR, that's about the only way in which the notion of gods makes any sense as far as I can see. And it means that if two people agree that god X exists, then god X exists, but only in the "inter-subjective" sense of "exist". It's a mind-dependent existence. Similarly, if a billion people agree that god X exists, then god X exists, but again, only in the inter-subjective sense.

I think if gods have any existence at all, it is overwhelmingly likely to be of the inter-subjective variety. However, I imagine that, for most theists, saying that their god has inter-subjective existence is only marginally better than saying that their god does not exist at all.

Lagayscienza wrote: ↑May 19th, 2024, 3:07 am LuckyR, that's about the only way in which the notion of gods makes any sense as far as I can see. And it means that if two people agree that god X exists, then god X exists, but only in the "inter-subjective" sense of "exist". It's a mind-dependent existence. Similarly, if a billion people agree that god X exists, then god X exists, but again, only in the inter-subjective sense.

I think if gods have any existence at all, it is overwhelmingly likely to be of the inter-subjective variety. However, I imagine that, for most theists, saying that their god has inter-subjective existence is only marginally better than saying that their god does not exist at all.

I think your statement raises philosophical questions that don't have any answer. I'd like to discuss this at greater length, but let me just start by asking this:

How many people would need to agree that something exists in order for it to have 'objective' existence instead of just 'inter-subjective' existence? Or put another way: what criteria could allow us to know and be able to distinguish something that actually exists from something that just exists 'in the inter-subjective sense'?

As far as I can see, it wouldn't matter how many people agreed that god X exists. God X would still only exist "inter-subjectively" such that if all the believers died, god X would be no more. So god X will never have existed in any objective sense.

The only way anything intersubjective could be made objectively real is post hoc and in symbolic form. For example, people could erect a statue and say, there, that's god X. The god X would be objectively real only in as much a that statue is objectively real. Which is the sort of thing people have done throughout history.

I guess it's similar to literary fiction in which characters are created. The book with its pages and printed words is real and its characters are meaningful in the minds of readers. Beyond that, they don't exist.

You also asked, "what criteria could allow us to know and be able to distinguish something that actually exists from something that just exists 'in the inter-subjective sense"?

I don’t know the answer to that question. I’m not well read in ontology but as I understand it, the following are usually included in the list of things that can be said to exist: substances, properties, relations, states of affairs, events... I’m not sure how god X might fit into any of these.

I find metaphysics generally to be meaningless. As SEP points out, “at least since the time of Hume, there have been philosophers who have proposed that metaphysics is “impossible”—either because its questions are meaningless or because they are impossible to answer.

Wittgenstein, too, rejected metaphysical discourse. He thought that we should say nothing except what could be said clearly. That is, we can only talk about what exists out in the world, about what can be apprehended by the natural sciences. But that includes everything that could matter. Even things like love and morality are natural phenomena. So I don't quite agree with him when he says
in the Tractatus at 6.41 he says:

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value. If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental. It must lie outside the world.

He goes on to say that:

The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science—i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy—and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person—he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy—this method would be the only strictly correct one.

And in that, am humbly content to follow Wittgenstein.

Lagayscienza wrote: ↑May 19th, 2024, 3:07 am LuckyR, that's about the only way in which the notion of gods makes any sense as far as I can see. And it means that if two people agree that god X exists, then god X exists, but only in the "inter-subjective" sense of "exist". It's a mind-dependent existence. Similarly, if a billion people agree that god X exists, then god X exists, but again, only in the inter-subjective sense.

I think if gods have any existence at all, it is overwhelmingly likely to be of the inter-subjective variety. However, I imagine that, for most theists, saying that their god has inter-subjective existence is only marginally better than saying that their god does not exist at all.

All true, of course. Some cannot grasp the reality that the gods of ancient Egypt, for example existed exactly like modern gods exist now. Yet no longer exist now that there is no one to believe in them.

Of course, this only applies to cloud fairies. If one's definition of god is "love" or "nature" or "the Earth" then those definitions can exist objectively, but only a tiny fraction believe in those gods.

Thomyum2 wrote: ↑May 19th, 2024, 3:00 pm

Lagayscienza wrote: ↑May 19th, 2024, 3:07 am LuckyR, that's about the only way in which the notion of gods makes any sense as far as I can see. And it means that if two people agree that god X exists, then god X exists, but only in the "inter-subjective" sense of "exist". It's a mind-dependent existence. Similarly, if a billion people agree that god X exists, then god X exists, but again, only in the inter-subjective sense.

I think if gods have any existence at all, it is overwhelmingly likely to be of the inter-subjective variety. However, I imagine that, for most theists, saying that their god has inter-subjective existence is only marginally better than saying that their god does not exist at all.

I think your statement raises philosophical questions that don't have any answer. I'd like to discuss this at greater length, but let me just start by asking this:

How many people would need to agree that something exists in order for it to have 'objective' existence instead of just 'inter-subjective' existence? Or put another way: what criteria could allow us to know and be able to distinguish something that actually exists from something that just exists 'in the inter-subjective sense'?

How many people? Objectivity isn't a popularity contest. If everyone in the audience of a magic show thinks a pretty woman was sawn in half, she, nonetheless was objectively not.

Pattern-chaser wrote: ↑April 28th, 2024, 7:57 am

Philosophy_of_Guitar wrote: ↑April 27th, 2024, 4:14 pm Excluded middle: Either God exists or God doesn't exist.

Random comment: The so-called 'Law' of the Excluded Middle applies only to binary thinking. If we branch out toward systems thinking, that I prefer to call network thinking, then the 'Law' of the Included Middle applies...

Either, or, both, or neither...

The Law of Excluded Middle applies to any logical propositions that are true dichotomy. "Thinking" is irrelevant to that law.

Lagayscienza wrote: ↑May 19th, 2024, 6:11 pm As far as I can see, it wouldn't matter how many people agreed that god X exists. God X would still only exist "inter-subjectively" such that if all the believers died, god X would be no more. So god X will never have existed in any objective sense.

The only way anything intersubjective could be made objectively real is post hoc and in symbolic form. For example, people could erect a statue and say, there, that's god X. The god X would be objectively real only in as much a that statue is objectively real. Which is the sort of thing people have done throughout history.

I guess it's similar to literary fiction in which characters are created. The book with its pages and printed words is real and its characters are meaningful in the minds of readers. Beyond that, they don't exist.

Lagayscienza wrote: ↑May 19th, 2024, 10:41 pm You also asked, "what criteria could allow us to know and be able to distinguish something that actually exists from something that just exists 'in the inter-subjective sense"?

I don’t know the answer to that question. I’m not well read in ontology but as I understand it, the following are usually included in the list of things that can be said to exist: substances, properties, relations, states of affairs, events... I’m not sure how god X might fit into any of these.

I find metaphysics generally to be meaningless. As SEP points out, “at least since the time of Hume, there have been philosophers who have proposed that metaphysics is “impossible”—either because its questions are meaningless or because they are impossible to answer.

Wittgenstein, too, rejected metaphysical dscourse. He thought that we should say nothing except what could be said clearly. That is, we can only talk about what exists out in the world, about what can be apprehended by the natural sciences. But that includes everything that could matter. Even things like love and morality are natural phenomena. So I don't quite agree with him when he says
in the Tractatus at 6.41 he says:

The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is, and everything happens as it does happen: in it no value exists—and if it did exist, it would have no value. If there is any value that does have value, it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case. For all that happens and is the case is accidental. What makes it non-accidental cannot lie within the world, since if it did it would itself be accidental. It must lie outside the world.

He goes on to say that:

The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can be said, i.e. propositions of natural science—i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy—and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions. Although it would not be satisfying to the other person—he would not have the feeling that we were teaching him philosophy—this method would be the only strictly correct one.

And in that, am humbly content to follow Wittgenstein.

Thank you for taking the time to post a thoughtful and considered response; I find your thoughts on the topic interesting.

I think you've hit exactly on what I was aiming at with these questions, namely the problem with making any claims to a kind 'objective existence' - existence that is independent of any subject. As your first post suggests, something could be said to exist 'objectively' if it continued to exist even
in the absence of any and all subjects that perceived or believed it to exist. The obvious problem here being that in the absence of any subject to perceive an object, any claim to that object's existence is, by that definition, unconfirmable. (This is the old and unanswerable 'if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it...' question of philosophy. There is no true or false answer - rather, any answer to the question reveals the particular way we define the terms and structure our underlying beliefs.)

This is the paradox I see about relationship between ontology and epistemology - that ontology makes claims about the nature of an existence that is independent of individual knowledge and experience. And yet, we cannot validate the truth of any claims we make about anything objective without accessing a subject's experience. I think this is what Wittgenstein is getting at in that famous quote. To try to speak of what cannot be known is to speak nonsense. (Yet later, in another essay, he suggests that he didn't mean we should stop trying to speak about the unknowable.)

Tying this back the topic of the thread, I would suggest that this is true of the question about the existence of God - that it's a fundamentally unanswerable question that necessarily leads to Wittgensteinian nonsense. I the risk of running on too long, I would just offer a couple of ideas on this for consideration.

First, in any discussion of religion in general, I think it's essential to recognize we're talking about things that are not confined to the physical realm - i.e. not limited to what is perceivable by the physical senses alone. William James, in The Varieties of Religious Experience, writes: "Were one asked to characterize the life of religion in the broadest and most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto." This in itself poses a problem to any kind of 'objective' or empirical analysis of existence, since that form of inquiry relies solely on observations of physical objects.

In his essay 'The Lost Dimension of Religion', theologian/philosopher Paul Tillich writes that a discussion about the existence or nonexistence of God is "a discussion in which both sides are equally wrong, because the discussion itself is wrong, and possible only after the loss of the dimension of depth." As I understand this, I think he's saying something similar here - that this 'dimension of depth' is the inner life beyond just the world around us that we perceive with the physical senses, and which we must take into account in any discussion of religion and God. Arguing about God based on what can be 'objectively' known is missing the point. Of course, some people - perhaps even most these days - reject the notion of a reality outside of what our physical senses can tell us, but again, that falls outside what can be 'objectively' known.

To wrap up, I'd also suggest, and have argued on this forum previously, that the question of God's existence isn't something that can't be answered because there is a fundamental premise inherent in any definition of what a god or God is, that existence cannot be derived from other premises. For the truth of God's existence to depend on something else essentially makes that something else our god. In another writing, Tillich offers that God can be understood as being 'the name for that which concerns man ultimately', which I think is a useful way to look at it. One's God is that which is 'ultimate' to that individual - i.e. that which is fundamental. It's that part of our nature which we fully commit ourselves to, we take it as a given. To argue that the 'ultimate' is subject to proof or dependent on some other source is contradictory to this notion of what a god in the first place. How and what we understand our god to be may change an evolve over time, but that our god exists does not. That which matters most to us always exists.

LuckyR wrote: ↑May 21st, 2024, 2:47 pm

Thomyum2 wrote: ↑May 19th, 2024, 3:00 pm

Lagayscienza wrote: ↑May 19th, 2024, 3:07 am LuckyR, that's about the only way in which the notion of gods makes any sense as far as I can see. And it means that if two people agree that god X exists, then god X exists, but only in the "inter-subjective" sense of "exist". It's a mind-dependent existence. Similarly, if a billion people agree that god X exists, then god X exists, but again, only in the inter-subjective sense.

I think if gods have any existence at all, it is overwhelmingly likely to be of the inter-subjective variety. However, I imagine that, for most theists, saying that their god has inter-subjective existence is only marginally better than saying that their god does not exist at all.

I think your statement raises philosophical questions that don't have any answer. I'd like to discuss this at greater length, but let me just start by asking this:

How many people would need to agree that something exists in order for it to have 'objective' existence instead of just 'inter-subjective' existence? Or put another way: what criteria could allow us to know and be able to distinguish something that actually exists from something that just exists 'in the inter-subjective sense'?

How many people? Objectivity isn't a popularity contest. If everyone in the audience of a magic show thinks a pretty woman was sawn in half, she, nonetheless was objectively not.

The truth is not a popularity contest, but objectivity means something different. I elaborated on this more in my post just above, so I won't repeat myself too much here. How would you ascertain whether or not she was actually cut in half? You'd have to rely on the testimony of some subject or group of subjects, which you're suggesting would be 'inter-subjective'. So, I'm just arguing here that there's no way to distinguish between something that exists 'inter-subjectively' from something that exists 'objectively'.