Robert wrote:Any reasoning on the nature of these Gods we're imagining will be wishful by definition, since we have no evidence (empirical or metaphysical) that they nothing more than fantasy and delusion. Housing a psychological framework on such porous foundations isn't something I'm interested in. How can certainty have holes?
But certainty is the biggest delusion of them all, Robert. Surely this must be obvious to you. People believe in electrons, for example, because the model that includes them is consistent. It is by no means certain that they, in fact, exist.
I think you were missing my very important point about the word "wishful" you have been using. I am trying to make it clear that I do not wish for a God, meaning I would rather that God exists than that he does not. I believe he exists because imagining him to exists is more consistent than imagining that he does not. This is very much like imagining that electrons exist. I have never seen electrons, either. In fact, I infer their existence from reading about experiments that I have never performed which were conducted by people I have never met nor spoken with.
The fact is that if you dig elsewhere in your Weltanschauung, other than at the place which represents what you suppose other people hold as religious beliefs, you will see that the new place you are digging is porous as well. If not, you clearly have more digging to do.
Try to apply A=A to the chair in which you sit. Before you can declare it is itself and not something else, you must be certain of what it is. Yet it is not what it was a minute ago, as that slight adjustment you made in the way you were sitting has either scraped off or added electrons to its surface. It addition, since it is porous, some molecules from the atmosphere have become part of what you are calling the chair, and it has expelled some gases back out into the air in a sort of dynamic equilibrium. It does not exists in a total vacuum; it cannot, since such a thing does not exist. Therefore, what is your nonporous concept of the chair about which you are saying A=A?
The worldview you take for granted exists within you. It was not always there. You had to build it up piece by piece over many years. Maybe it is not obvious, but it should be, that you are still building it. It was not handed to you en masse. It was parceled out, and no matter what you were told about playing with matches, you had to burn your fingers a time or two to get the message. If A, in fact, =A, there would be less disagrement in the world. Consensus is built on consistency. My contention is that your reality is by nature riddled with holes, as is mine. To switch the metaphor , you do not know where the ice is thin until you fall through or see someone else fall through. Yet this does not keep you from skating.
I disagree with what most people offer as their religious beliefs. But if I concluded that this meant God does not exist, I could be doing myself a profound disservice. I have no proof that he does not. What I have are strong suspicions that Scientologists are cynical tax-dodgers and prey on the weaknesses of others. This does not prevent me from speculating on man's origins. Why should it?
