I think there's a whole other layer to these questions. Can the limited sensory organs of human animals understand this reality in any meaningful way? I not sure we can.
But we aren't limited to our sensory organs. We're scientists, not philosophers. My position is that our ability to conceptualize this reality is nil, because it is beyond the constraints a thing must fulfill for us to conceive of it: the law of non-contradiction in particular. We either need a new metaphysics that allows us to conceive of the inconceivable, which seems to me unlikely, or to accept that this is beyond us. Alternative, there may be some formal, mathematical description of reality that gets around all this, but if so it is extremely strange. It would have to be at its foundation non-Cartesian--not grounded in geometry as we understand it--and yet Cartesian geometric dimensions would have to arise from it. No one knows how to even start to think about such things, to the best of my knowledge, and even with such a mathematics in hand it would still be beyond us in a very fundamental way.
What an excellent article. I certainly found myself in agreement with most of what you said, subject to seeing where this fascinating topic leads. I suppose I'm still stuck in the atheist camp while you are comfortable putting the label "God" on the universe (including the unknowable beyond) and reality that we human experience as existence.
However I spent a life time trying to transliterate other people's religious views into a more metaphorical context to make them palatable. But I finally gave up, leading me to my personal perspective that there is one "God" (at least in the traditional sense that 99% of humanity think of that word in having coopted that word) even as there may exist some unknowable aspects to our universe.
(I of course apologize for any misunderstanding of your views I may have as a first reading. Definitely worthy of a discussion some day.)
Thanks! And given my views are literally not understandable there's no need to apologize! :-D
Although to clarify, I think I'm putting the label "god" ONLY on the unknowable beyond. I don't think it makes sense to put it on knowable nature, which we have a term for: nature.
I'm going to address the question you're asking about atheism in a week or two. It's one that bothers me as well--"What is the justification for using the 'g-word'?"--and I agree that 99% of humanity does not think of god like this: the reality that is beyond us does not function the way the god of any organized religion or scriptural tradition does. Maimonides said something to the tune of "God is praised by silence", and I agree with this, although he went on to say prayer was still right and good, which is wrong. Prayer is wrong: it rests on a profoundly mistaken view of god.
The really fun thing is that if I take this idea that "the unknowable beyond is god" seriously, that means that insofar as I'm explaining it, I'm a prophet :-D
I'm somewhat surprised the number is still over 80% believing in what for most is likely a traditional personified God (though maybe many are hedging their bets so they don't get sent to hell)
Sounds like well over half of those believe "god hears prayers" and about half believe "god intervenes in response to prayers" and I've got bad news for those people.
Thank you Tom! Another interesting and thought provoking article. A few years ago a friend turned me on to Physicist, David Bohm and his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order. His definition of Wholeness as one whole and unbroken movement I take to mean god (although I don't tend to use that language) and I wonder if an aspect of the god question might come down to whether we think of god as a noun or a verb. Curious to get your take on this.
I'm familiar with Bohm's work and consider him a bit of a nut. He was right in the problems he points out--and he was a brilliant physicist in his own right--but he brings a huge amount of purely human conceptual baggage to a problem that is as non-human as one can possibly get. He arbitrarily puts together things that we have no particular warrant to put together, like the notion of consciousness being somehow relevant to any of this. Sure, it's a traditional, purely human, idea that a lot of people who didn't know that the Earth moves around the sun or bacteria cause a lot of disease believe, but that's not a basis for taking it seriously! I'm not sure consciousness has anything to do with any of this (I'm not sure it doesn't, either: I sometimes call myself a "dogmatic agnostic" on such questions. I don't know the answer and neither does anyone else!)
God is neither noun nor verb. God is beyond what we conventionally think of as "being", which means our notions of "things" and "actions" no longer apply. It's a very difficult domain to think about, and very easy to project ourselves into, which is almost certainly a mistake (not that I'm above making it!)
The idea that "the unknowable beyond is god" and all the ramifications of this idea, has created a place where my curiosity can reside after a lifetime of unexplained discrepancies and confusion growing up as a Catholic in an all Catholic small community. It helps answer my main question over the years which was why after all the church going and prayer did I never experience God’s presence like everyone said I should? With no reasonable answer the to this question I dropped Catholism and yet always remained open and curious about the possibility of God. Maybe you are a prophet Tom :-D
Thanks! That's very much the response I'm aiming for from this stuff, I think. And I have in fact thought, "Y'know, what I'm doing is interpreting god's word and trying to teach it to people... isn't there a name for folks who do that?" I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea!
I think there's a whole other layer to these questions. Can the limited sensory organs of human animals understand this reality in any meaningful way? I not sure we can.
But we aren't limited to our sensory organs. We're scientists, not philosophers. My position is that our ability to conceptualize this reality is nil, because it is beyond the constraints a thing must fulfill for us to conceive of it: the law of non-contradiction in particular. We either need a new metaphysics that allows us to conceive of the inconceivable, which seems to me unlikely, or to accept that this is beyond us. Alternative, there may be some formal, mathematical description of reality that gets around all this, but if so it is extremely strange. It would have to be at its foundation non-Cartesian--not grounded in geometry as we understand it--and yet Cartesian geometric dimensions would have to arise from it. No one knows how to even start to think about such things, to the best of my knowledge, and even with such a mathematics in hand it would still be beyond us in a very fundamental way.
What an excellent article. I certainly found myself in agreement with most of what you said, subject to seeing where this fascinating topic leads. I suppose I'm still stuck in the atheist camp while you are comfortable putting the label "God" on the universe (including the unknowable beyond) and reality that we human experience as existence.
However I spent a life time trying to transliterate other people's religious views into a more metaphorical context to make them palatable. But I finally gave up, leading me to my personal perspective that there is one "God" (at least in the traditional sense that 99% of humanity think of that word in having coopted that word) even as there may exist some unknowable aspects to our universe.
(I of course apologize for any misunderstanding of your views I may have as a first reading. Definitely worthy of a discussion some day.)
So looking forward to where this goes!
Thanks! And given my views are literally not understandable there's no need to apologize! :-D
Although to clarify, I think I'm putting the label "god" ONLY on the unknowable beyond. I don't think it makes sense to put it on knowable nature, which we have a term for: nature.
I'm going to address the question you're asking about atheism in a week or two. It's one that bothers me as well--"What is the justification for using the 'g-word'?"--and I agree that 99% of humanity does not think of god like this: the reality that is beyond us does not function the way the god of any organized religion or scriptural tradition does. Maimonides said something to the tune of "God is praised by silence", and I agree with this, although he went on to say prayer was still right and good, which is wrong. Prayer is wrong: it rests on a profoundly mistaken view of god.
The really fun thing is that if I take this idea that "the unknowable beyond is god" seriously, that means that insofar as I'm explaining it, I'm a prophet :-D
I'm somewhat surprised the number is still over 80% believing in what for most is likely a traditional personified God (though maybe many are hedging their bets so they don't get sent to hell)
https://news.gallup.com/poll/393737/belief-god-dips-new-low.aspx
Sounds like well over half of those believe "god hears prayers" and about half believe "god intervenes in response to prayers" and I've got bad news for those people.
Oops meant to write there is NO “God” (rather than there is ONE “God”)
Yes, I read it that way! :-D I think you can edit it!
Yes, just found EDIT in the "..."
Thank you Tom! Another interesting and thought provoking article. A few years ago a friend turned me on to Physicist, David Bohm and his book Wholeness and the Implicate Order. His definition of Wholeness as one whole and unbroken movement I take to mean god (although I don't tend to use that language) and I wonder if an aspect of the god question might come down to whether we think of god as a noun or a verb. Curious to get your take on this.
I'm familiar with Bohm's work and consider him a bit of a nut. He was right in the problems he points out--and he was a brilliant physicist in his own right--but he brings a huge amount of purely human conceptual baggage to a problem that is as non-human as one can possibly get. He arbitrarily puts together things that we have no particular warrant to put together, like the notion of consciousness being somehow relevant to any of this. Sure, it's a traditional, purely human, idea that a lot of people who didn't know that the Earth moves around the sun or bacteria cause a lot of disease believe, but that's not a basis for taking it seriously! I'm not sure consciousness has anything to do with any of this (I'm not sure it doesn't, either: I sometimes call myself a "dogmatic agnostic" on such questions. I don't know the answer and neither does anyone else!)
God is neither noun nor verb. God is beyond what we conventionally think of as "being", which means our notions of "things" and "actions" no longer apply. It's a very difficult domain to think about, and very easy to project ourselves into, which is almost certainly a mistake (not that I'm above making it!)
The idea that "the unknowable beyond is god" and all the ramifications of this idea, has created a place where my curiosity can reside after a lifetime of unexplained discrepancies and confusion growing up as a Catholic in an all Catholic small community. It helps answer my main question over the years which was why after all the church going and prayer did I never experience God’s presence like everyone said I should? With no reasonable answer the to this question I dropped Catholism and yet always remained open and curious about the possibility of God. Maybe you are a prophet Tom :-D
Thanks! That's very much the response I'm aiming for from this stuff, I think. And I have in fact thought, "Y'know, what I'm doing is interpreting god's word and trying to teach it to people... isn't there a name for folks who do that?" I'm not entirely comfortable with the idea!