Quote from: the joint on December 10, 2014, 02:00:32 PM

Quote from: BADecker on December 10, 2014, 08:00:54 AM

Quote from: the joint on December 09, 2014, 11:06:00 PM

Great post. First, let me briefly reference the emboldened passages:

1) Not only have I considered the possibility of an omnipotent entity that is "beyond logic," but I'm knowingly asserting my position in direct contrast to this possibility. Furthermore, I held onto an agnostic position for a long time until further exploration suggested to me that the position is untenable. I went from playing along with Roman Catholicism as a child, to atheism, to agnosticism, to a blend of agnosticism and East Asian religious philosophy (e.g. Buddhism, etc.), to complete open-mindedness, and now I've settled as a monistic theist.

2) I appreciate that you tried to clarify and understand my position, because it's inaccurate. I do not believe God can ever be revealed via the scientific method or any other line of inductive reasoning. Even if we do not start with any presuppositions about God (because we shouldn't, else we put the cart before the horse), we already know right off the bat that inductive reasoning lacks the scope necessary to formulate absolute statements about reality at the highest possible level of generality. Inductive reasoning fails because a presupposition about God would need to preclude any absolute statements made about such an entity. In other words, we would need to somehow know absolutely what God is before finding any evidence to support that presupposition. Obviously, this creates a huge problem, so we need a way to avoid the problem altogether.

Stemming from these two points, first we need to consider what is relevant to us, and perhaps the best way to identify what is relevant is to first identify which is irrelevant. Specifically, things that are unreal or illogical are of no relevance to us because there is absolutely no possible way to make sense out of them. If something were 'real' enough outside of reality so as to have an impact on it, then it would need to be inside reality. Similarly, reality would be completely unintelligible if it weren't logical, and the fact that we all observe and interact with a stable Universe demonstrates that reality is inherently logical.

Now, let's focus on your phrasing when you talk about the possibility of an entity that is "beyond logic." This is where things get fun. Really fun. And really, really cool.

You could say that, in a sense, logic itself is beyond logic. What I mean by this is that logic is holographic in structure. I'm not sure how familiar you are with holograms, but if you take a piece of holographic film and you cut a corner from it, e.g. 25%, the result is not a corner that reveals 25% of the original image, but rather you have 100% of the image at 1/4 size. Logic is similar. There are all kinds logical systems that vary according to scale, and although the sizes of these different systems vary, the logical properties governing all of them are the same.

When we observe something, the logic and rules of observation (i.e. at a higher level) relate to the observed conditions (i.e. at a lower level) and allow us to make rational (remember, root word = ratio), statements about that relation. Similarly, when we engage in metacognition, the logic and rules of metacognition (i.e. at a higher level) relate to various abstract objects of cognition (i.e. at a lower level) and allow us to make rational statements about that relation, too.

The point I'm making is that we already have insight into how something 'beyond logic' works. However, I would just clarify that it's not quite accurate to say 'beyond logic,' but rather it might be more accurate to say something like, "There exist logical systems of lower order that are necessitated by logical systems of higher order."

If you're having trouble understanding what I mean by all of this, I'll refer you to an illustrative analogy I've used several times on this forum to demonstrate the point: Imagine that we, as 3rd-dimensional beings, want to know what the 4th dimension is like. As 3D beings, we are limited by certain logical boundaries that define the 3rd dimension, so how can we know what the 4th dimension is like? Well, what we can do is we can draw something like a tesseract, a 4th-dimensional object, on a 2nd-dimensional plane of paper. But, similar to the problem of induction I spoke of earlier, how can we know that a tesseract is a sound model of a 4th-dimensional object? Wouldn't that require that we invoke a presupposition of what a 4th-dimensional object is like before we've evidenced it?

As it turns out, when we draw a tesseract on a piece of paper, we are actually removing ourselves from the constraints of our 3rd-dimensional perspective, and instead we assume the perspective of a 5th-dimensional entity. That is, we assume a 5d perspective and talk about the 4th dimension in the same way that we, as 3d beings, can fully explore and understand the logic of the 2nd-dimension. All spatial dimensions are the same in their logical constructs (e.g. the 3rd-dimension can be described as the infinite sum of all 2d phenomena, the 4th-dimension can be described as the infinite sum of all 3d phenomena, etc.), but they vary according to scope.

To wrap up this post, notice how spatial dimensions are all logical constructs, but each successive dimension is *infinitely* greater than the previous one. This should provide you with some insight into how we can gain insight into something (God?) that is infinitely greater than we or the logical system(s) we inhabit.

Edit: Oh, I guess I should clarify what my actual position is. My position is that God:Reality :: Man:Perceptions. I believe it is accurate to say "man was created in God's image," and I think that we are all essentially gods...mini-gods. I would venture so far as to say that, at the greatest possible scale, the interplay of consciousness and reality is God attempting to know himself and move towards self-actualization.

Seems to me that there is one simple, major point either missing from the above, or else not elevated to the position that it actually holds. This is the fact that all observation, and investigation through observation, shows a major, basic quality about everything that is observed: cause and effect, action and reaction. Nothing that we observe or have observed comes or has come about by anything other than cause and effect. At least not that we have seen.

Everything that we observe in the whole universe, appears to have come about by some kind of cause and effect. The only places that we don't see cause and effect in our observations of the universe, are where our observations are incomplete. In fact, scientifically speaking, the scientist relies on cause and effect entirely. The greater the scientist, the more he has relied on cause and effect, action and reaction.

When cause and effect is applied to *mind* we see that all of our thinking has been programmed. The ideas and points in the edit, above, have been produced by cause and effect. This suggests that the idea that God can never "be revealed via the scientific method or any other line of inductive reasoning" (number 2, above) is too extreme. God can never be revealed in His entirety by the scientific method, but He can be revealed in part by that method, that He does indeed exist, and that He is GREAT beyond understanding or nearly so. Why? Because the use of the scientific method, working through one of its basic, major methods - observation of cause and effect - eventually takes us, His children, back to Him - working back through the cause and effect method to the beginning, to God, the Great First Cause.

The only other point about this is, there may be something that operates by methods other than cause and effect - besides God, that is - that we have not observed clearly enough to determine what it is. And because of our nature, we might not be able to understand that we are looking right at it when we ARE looking at it. Yet, in the whole of the observable universe where we have an understanding of what we have observed, we haven't found it. Even the abstract math of quantum mechanics that suggests that *pure random* might exist, came about through minds that used cause and effect in some form to develop the math.

If you can't conclude that

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God can never be revealed in His entirety by the scientific method,

then you can't conclude that

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He can be revealed in part by that method.

In other words, if you can't understand God in His entirety, then it's impossible to conclude that any "part" of God you might be witnessing is actually God.

Consequently, there is no amount of empirical evidence that can lead to a conclusion that God exists.

Why? (Of course, we are speaking of God, which makes things different than any example.) A crude example might be a car. We see the car, yet we see it only from one side at a time. A mechanic may know every last thing there is to know about an engine and transmission - even the metallurgy - yet he may know little or nothing about the fabrics that make up the upholstery, or the glass that makes up the windows.