Philosophical musings on Quanta & Qualia;  Materialism & Spiritualism; Science & Religion; Pragmatism & Idealism, etc.

    Interesting points! Intuition as opposed to logic and that intriguing way of defining God as existence itself. — Agent Smith

  Post 125.  April 27, 2022

  Defining God as Existence

  How

 Modern philosophers tend to distrust Intuition¹, as a hasty &

                Blog Post 125 continued . . . .

God & Existence

    X exists then X is detectable — Agent Smith

This premise presumes physical existence, hence knowable via the 5 senses.

But most modern god-concepts deny that premise. Hence knowable only via the 6th sense of Reasoning or Intuition. So, the premise is prejudicial to most modern god-definitions.

One alternative premise is that "god is existence", the Necessary Being.

But how do you detect "necessity"? By physical or intuitive or logical processes?

PS__Apparently, most god-believers trust their Intuition more than their Reason. But philosophers seem less reliant on intuition, so require some Objective evidence to supplement their Rational deductions.

God & Existence

    Interesting points! Intuition as opposed to logic and that intriguing way of defining God as existence itself. — Agent Smith

Those ancient philosophers also spoke of "Being & Becoming". With that in mind, I think of our evolving space-time universe as Becoming, and the timeless power-to-exist-physically as absolute Being. Or, as others spoke of the same ultimate source of existence : "the ground of being". Therefore, as an alternative to the conventional religious label for that enigmatic eternal unknowable omnipotent Cause-of-all-effects, I sometimes refer to it simply as "BEING".

BEING :

* In my own theorizing there is one universal principle that subsumes all others, including Consciousness : essential Existence. Among those philosophical musings, I refer to the "unit of existence" with the absolute singular term "BEING" as contrasted with the plurality of contingent "beings" and things and properties. By BEING I mean the ultimate “ground of being”, which is simply the power to exist, and the power to create beings.

Note : Real & Ideal are modes of being. BEING, the power to exist, is the source & cause of Reality and Ideality. BEING is eternal, undivided and static, but once divided into Real/Ideal, it becomes our dynamic Reality.

BothAnd Blog Glossary

God & Existence

    I like the way you make ideals another type of being. It's close to what I said once in another thread. There's no nonexistence, just different kinds of existence. I think Meinong of Meinong's jungle fame thought along the same lines. On this view it's wrong to say God, or anything else for that matter, doesn't exist. God exists but not in the same way as (say) a rock! Wordplay? — Agent Smith

Of course, it's wordplay. But it's also Idea-play. That's what humans do. Those who deny Idealism, are repudiating Humanism. What distinguishes humans from animals? Mostly, it's the ability to convert sensory impressions into the communicatable concepts we call "Words" & "Ideas". We can then play-around with those "Memes" to construct worldviews that are more-than just sensory appearances. Those imaginary models of the world are what we label "Ideals" ; mental replicas of reality with improvements. They go beyond as-is Reality into as-if Ideality. And the positive result of that reasoning from IS to IF is what we call "Creativity". Of course, some creative ideas fall short of feasibility : e.g. Elon Musk says he wants to buy CocaCola, so he can put the Cocaine back in. I hope he's pulling-the-leg of Twitter twits.

Ironically, adamant philosophical Realists dismiss the practicality of the unrealistic mental tool that makes Philosophy possible : the ability to abstract the essence of specific concrete (real) things into general & universal (ideal) principles, which exist only in the un-real realm of Ideality. World-dominating human culture is the practical product of the homo sapiens ability to Idealize mundane Reality into Utopias & Sky Castles, that seldom become real, but do give us an advantage over the animals, who just make-do with what Nature provides -- humans make-believe. Without our talent for improving upon Nature, we would still be shivering cave-dwellers without fangs & claws. The Garden of Eden does not exist in the past, but only in the future world of Ideality.

Ideality :

* In Plato’s theory of Forms, he argues that non-physical forms (or ideas) represent the most accurate or perfect reality. Those Forms are not physical things, but merely definitions or recipes of possible things. What we call "Reality" consists of a few actualized potentials drawn from a realm of infinite possibilities.

1. Materialists deny the existence of such immaterial ideals, but recent developments in Quantum theory have forced them to accept the concept of “virtual” particles in a mathematical “field”, that are not real, but only potential, until their unreal state is collapsed into reality by a measurement or observation. "To measure" is to extract meaning into a mind. [Measure, from L. Mensura, to know; from mens-, mind]

2. Some modern idealists find that scenario to be intriguingly similar to Plato’s notion that ideal Forms can be realized, i.e. meaning extracted, by knowing minds. For the purposes of this blog, “Ideality” refers to an infinite pool of potential (equivalent to a quantum field), of which physical Reality is a small part. A traditional name for that fertile field is G*D. But you can call it the Enformation Field, if you like.

BothAnd Blog Glossary

God & Existence

    Did you know, I'm sure you do, that mathematically speaking, everything reduces to points, lines, curves, each one of these translatable into an equation? In other words, if you want to know what Plato's world of forms looks like, go to bed with the Queen of the sciences (mathematics). — Agent Smith

Yes. Some ancient philosophers (Pythagoras) and modern Physicists (Mario Livio) have imagined G*D metaphorically as a Divine Mathematician. My own metaphor, based on the Enformationism thesis, is that G*D is the Cosmic Programmer. These are not the kind of deities that you would worship, as a Tyrannical Heavenly Despot. Yet you have no choice but to obey His/Her Natural Laws. Fortunately, the Math Wizard has provided enough uncertainty in Nature, for humans to take advantage of the freedom to devise workarounds that result in Culture : nature modified to suit the special needs of big-brain bi-peds without fur & claws & fangs.

PS__Plato's Forms may be imagined as logical algorithms, mathematical equations, computer programs, or as musical scores.

God is a Mathematician :

Math sounds a lot like the attributes of God—eternal, omnipresent and omnipotent. According to theoretical physicist Michio Koku, “The mind of God we believe is cosmic music, the music of strings resonating through 11-dimensional hyperspace. That is the mind of God.“

https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/article/god-is-a-mathematician

ENFORMATIONISM