Wouldn't 'Noumenal World' be a better fit? If it is not conscious, doesn't speak to us, is non-moral, and not all-loving, then using 'God' is confusing. Is your "almost" saying those things as well?
Fair question. One big thing is that the noumenal world is supposed to be absolutely unknowable except via our intuitions and the kind of argument Kant makes for it, which is clearly not the case for the beyond, which we have experimental evidence of which is precisely what Kant said we couldn't have.
Also, the noumenal world has no settled character, and there is a huge diversity of opinions about it. Kant argues at one point that it is defined purely in the negative, which is not the case here: there is a list of positive attributes of god that goes back thousands of years, and those attributes match the attributes of the beyond more than adequately to justify using the term "god" for it.
There are traditionally two conceptions of god: transcendent and immanent, and the beyond is clearly a realization of the transcendent concept of god. So I see no basis for not using the term god, then, even though god is not and cannot be manifest in the usual sense.
The contradiction between the transcendent and immanent god has been a problem for theology since at least Augustine (I swear there's a quote from him listing the attributes of the two visions of god that simply accepts the contradiction, although I'm damned if I can find it) so I don't see that excluding the possibility of manifestation excludes using the concept "god" in its transcendent meaning. It's what the deists believed, after all, so it has a long and respectable pedigree.
And it's a way to address the purported beliefs of scripturalists who want to claim the transcendent god as the basis for their scriptures: god is not, and cannot be, the source of scriptural authority, *and there is no possibility of a transcendent god that is not the beyond that experimental violations of Bell's inequalities tells us of*. So I'm playing prophet here: god has revealed the divine presence to anyone who wants to understand the physics and do the math, and I have done that, and now I'm stuck with the problem of what do I say to people who think their scriptures are god's word when I know they are not. I've elected not to weasel around this, even though it makes me sound like a lunatic.
So I'm stuck with god. The "noumenal world" is just not nearly as good a fit for the reality we know, and would leave the scripturalists speaking falsely in god's name.
The "almost" is the fact that we can know of god's presence by virtue of the structure of the universe, even though god cannot act. This is not given: so far as we know it isn't necessary to the existence of the universe (and therefore the possibility of life and intelligence within it) that it be structured in such a way that sufficiently clever beings can find direct experimental evidence for the presence of the beyond. This to me is quite remarkable. Awe-inspiring, even. Which again argues for identifying the beyond with god, as inspiring existential awe of precisely this kind is what god--and nothing else--is supposed to do.
If I simply use "the beyond" I start to sound like a taoist. But Taoism, for all its virtues, is a self-contradictory muddle that makes people like Aquinas look consistent (mostly because up to a certain point Aquinas IS consistent). Maybe I should use that more neutral term, but again: it irritates me that scripturalists are speaking falsely in god's name, and it looks like a cop-out to back away from a term that puts me in direct conflict with them.
I'm pretty sure race, nation, and dialectical materialism would rush in to fill the gap. I debate this with myself (more about it next week) but I'm left with the thought that if I can shift people's notion of god toward something more accurate it might reduce the killing in the name of. Because small ambitions are apparently not my thing.
Wouldn't 'Noumenal World' be a better fit? If it is not conscious, doesn't speak to us, is non-moral, and not all-loving, then using 'God' is confusing. Is your "almost" saying those things as well?
Fair question. One big thing is that the noumenal world is supposed to be absolutely unknowable except via our intuitions and the kind of argument Kant makes for it, which is clearly not the case for the beyond, which we have experimental evidence of which is precisely what Kant said we couldn't have.
Also, the noumenal world has no settled character, and there is a huge diversity of opinions about it. Kant argues at one point that it is defined purely in the negative, which is not the case here: there is a list of positive attributes of god that goes back thousands of years, and those attributes match the attributes of the beyond more than adequately to justify using the term "god" for it.
There are traditionally two conceptions of god: transcendent and immanent, and the beyond is clearly a realization of the transcendent concept of god. So I see no basis for not using the term god, then, even though god is not and cannot be manifest in the usual sense.
The contradiction between the transcendent and immanent god has been a problem for theology since at least Augustine (I swear there's a quote from him listing the attributes of the two visions of god that simply accepts the contradiction, although I'm damned if I can find it) so I don't see that excluding the possibility of manifestation excludes using the concept "god" in its transcendent meaning. It's what the deists believed, after all, so it has a long and respectable pedigree.
And it's a way to address the purported beliefs of scripturalists who want to claim the transcendent god as the basis for their scriptures: god is not, and cannot be, the source of scriptural authority, *and there is no possibility of a transcendent god that is not the beyond that experimental violations of Bell's inequalities tells us of*. So I'm playing prophet here: god has revealed the divine presence to anyone who wants to understand the physics and do the math, and I have done that, and now I'm stuck with the problem of what do I say to people who think their scriptures are god's word when I know they are not. I've elected not to weasel around this, even though it makes me sound like a lunatic.
So I'm stuck with god. The "noumenal world" is just not nearly as good a fit for the reality we know, and would leave the scripturalists speaking falsely in god's name.
The "almost" is the fact that we can know of god's presence by virtue of the structure of the universe, even though god cannot act. This is not given: so far as we know it isn't necessary to the existence of the universe (and therefore the possibility of life and intelligence within it) that it be structured in such a way that sufficiently clever beings can find direct experimental evidence for the presence of the beyond. This to me is quite remarkable. Awe-inspiring, even. Which again argues for identifying the beyond with god, as inspiring existential awe of precisely this kind is what god--and nothing else--is supposed to do.
If I simply use "the beyond" I start to sound like a taoist. But Taoism, for all its virtues, is a self-contradictory muddle that makes people like Aquinas look consistent (mostly because up to a certain point Aquinas IS consistent). Maybe I should use that more neutral term, but again: it irritates me that scripturalists are speaking falsely in god's name, and it looks like a cop-out to back away from a term that puts me in direct conflict with them.
But maybe if we stopped calling it “god”, people would stop killing one another over it.
I'm pretty sure race, nation, and dialectical materialism would rush in to fill the gap. I debate this with myself (more about it next week) but I'm left with the thought that if I can shift people's notion of god toward something more accurate it might reduce the killing in the name of. Because small ambitions are apparently not my thing.
Can't wait for more on this subject!
This is fascinating and persuasive!