Can you *know* there is no God?

[Brant Gaede]

E=MC².

I'm in awe.

--Brant

[moralist]

Brant writes:

E=MC2.

I'm in awe.

You should be... for Einstein didn't create it.

He could only use his own rational logic to discover a pre-existing rational logical law that had already been created by Something Else's rational logic.

Greg

[Selene]

Brant writes:

E=MC2.

I'm in awe.

You should be... for Einstein didn't create it.

He could only use his own rational logic to discover a pre-existing rational logical law that had already been created by Something Else's rational logic.

Greg

Einstein is alleged to have compared this process of "faith" by a scientist like himself to a young child who enters a library with rows and rows of stacked books and "senses" that the books are separate, or, organized.

However, has no idea how.

Moreover, as the child learns the code, or, rules, or laws that give the organization of the books their depth, the child gets a better glimpse of the organizing principles of reality.

A...

[Wolf DeVoon]

I like Spinoza as well as anyone can, did, or should. Wonderful guy, excommunicated from the tribe:

In 1656 the community's governing council issued a cherem (a ban) concerning Spinoza. Though such bans were fairly common in the community, Spinoza's was far more severe than most, expelling him from the Jewish people and cursing him at length. The cherem gives little detail on the offenses, simply citing "abominable heresies" and "monstrous deeds." [New World Encyclopedia]

By decree of the angels and by the command of the holy men, we excommunicate, expel, curse and damn Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of God, Blessed be He, and with the consent of the entire holy congregation, and in front of these holy scrolls with the 613 precepts which are written therein; cursing him with the excommunication with which Joshua banned Jericho and with the curse which Elisha cursed the boys and with all the castigations which are written in the Book of the Law. Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up. Cursed be he when he goes out and cursed be he when he comes in. The Lord will not spare him, but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousy shall smoke against that man, and all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him, and the Lord shall blot out his name from under heaven... no one should communicate with him neither in writing nor accord him any favor nor stay with him under the same roof nor within four cubits in his vicinity; nor read any treatise written by him.

Now then, however, Spinoza's God of "infinite attributes" amounts to nothing, another prevarication. It was simply too dangerous to be an atheist in 17th century Europe -- like being an Islamic apostate in 21st century Arabia or Persia.

[moralist]

Adam writes:

Einstein is alleged to have compared this process of "faith" by a scientist like himself to a young child who enters a library with rows and rows of stacked books and "senses" that the books are separate, or, organized.

However, has no idea how.

Moreover, as the child learns the code, or, rules, or laws that give the organization of the books their depth, the child gets a better glimpse of the organizing principles of reality.

...as well as growing to appreciate the Mind that created those logically ordered principles which govern reality.

Greg

[Selene]

Adam writes:

Einstein is alleged to have compared this process of "faith" by a scientist like himself to a young child who enters a library with rows and rows of stacked books and "senses" that the books are separate, or, organized.

However, has no idea how.

Moreover, as the child learns the code, or, rules, or laws that give the organization of the books their depth, the child gets a better glimpse of the organizing principles of reality.

...as well as growing to appreciate the Mind that created those logically ordered principles which govern reality.

Greg

Correct.

[Wolf DeVoon]

Einstein is alleged to have compared this process of "faith" by a scientist like himself to a young child who enters a library with rows and rows of stacked books and "senses" that the books are separate, or, organized. However, has no idea how. Moreover, as the child learns the code, or, rules, or laws that give the organization of the books their depth, the child gets a better glimpse of the organizing principles of reality.

 

The age of reason is generally agreed to be age 9 or 10. I was a bit retarded, but by age 11 had assembled several Knight Kits successfully and visited the public library. It took all of two seconds to grasp the Dewey Decimal system and the card catalog. No leap of faith required. I had been riding a bicycle for several years, read our 15-volume Book of Knowledge set front to back, and saw a tornado rip my hometown up, long before I attacked our public library with the intention of exploring everything it contained -- or at least those sections my 11-year-old curiosity found tempting.

 

The organizing principles of reality are evident to toddlers. Up is up, down is down, water is liquid.

 

We've drifted light-years from the thread topic: Can you *know* there is no God? Until and unless someone defines what God supposedly is, it remains a floating abstraction and no comment is possible. I find it preposterous to explain science with the bizarre metaphor of a library organized by Dewey.

 

[Selene]

Einstein is alleged to have compared this process of "faith" by a scientist like himself to a young child who enters a library with rows and rows of stacked books and "senses" that the books are separate, or, organized. However, has no idea how. Moreover, as the child learns the code, or, rules, or laws that give the organization of the books their depth, the child gets a better glimpse of the organizing principles of reality.

The age of reason is generally agreed to be age 9 or 10. I was a bit retarded, but by age 11 had assembled several Knight Kits successfully and visited the public library. It took all of two seconds to grasp the Dewey Decimal system and the card catalog. No leap of faith required. I had been riding a bicycle for several years, read our 15-volume Book of Knowledge set front to back, and saw a tornado rip my hometown up, long before I attacked the public library with the intention of exploring everything it contained -- or at least those sections my 11-year-old curiosity found tempting.

The organizing principles of reality are evident to toddlers. Up is up, down is down, water is a liquid.

Apparently you slept through metaphors and analogies...

Come on Wolf, you are better than that...you know what Einstein was getting at, you have to work not to understand his "story line."

[Wolf DeVoon]

Nope. I might be a blockhead, just won't go in. Let's talk about God. That's the thread topic.

I aced the IQ test analogies, scared my parents and teachers. God is not like a library.

I think it's time to put aside the mincing of words and start calling a spade a spade. Terrorists are not terrorists but mercenaries. If stopping them is the goal, follow the money. Who pays them? Who supports them with arms and all the necessities of life? [Hal Duell, MoA]

[Selene]

Nope. I might be a blockhead, just won't go in. Let's talk about God. That's the thread topic.

....

God is not like a library.

Fair enough.

In your opinion, what is God like?

A...

[Wolf DeVoon]

God

ɡäd/

noun

noun: God; noun: god; plural noun: gods; plural noun: the gods

1. 
   
   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions) the creator and ruler of the universe and source of all moral authority; the supreme being.

   
   

   synonyms: the Lord, the Almighty, the Creator, the Maker, the Godhead;
   

   
   

   
   

   Allah, Jehovah, Yahweh;

   
   

   (God) the Father, (God) the Son, the Holy Ghost/Spirit, the Holy Trinity;

   
   

   the Great Spirit, Gitchi Manitou;

   
   

   humorous the Man Upstairs

   
   

   
   

   "a gift from God"

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   
   
   
   
2. 
   
   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   (in certain other religions) a superhuman being or spirit worshiped as having power over nature or human fortunes; a deity.

   
   

   "a moon god"

   
   

   synonyms: deity, goddess, divine being, celestial being, divinity, immortal, avatar
   

   
   

   
   

   "sacrifices to appease the gods"

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   
   
   

[Brant Gaede]

We've drifted light-years from the thread topic: Can you *know* there is no God? Until and unless someone defines what God supposedly is, it remains a floating abstraction and no comment is possible.

Except yours? Getting a little monopolistic, aren't you?

--Brant

[Wolf DeVoon]

Aw, c'mon. It's not like God is a twerky neologism, coined yesterday by a Kardashian.

Let's proceed in historical sequence. Anybody believe in Thor? Poseidon? Mithra? Shiva the Destroyer?

[Brant Gaede]

Brant writes:

E=MC2.

I'm in awe.

You should be... for Einstein didn't create it.

He could only use his own rational logic to discover a pre-existing rational logical law that had already been created by Something Else's rational logic.

Greg

Ad hominem all the way down?

--Ad Brant

[Selene]

....“By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence.” The definitions of Part One are, in effect, simply clear concepts that ground the rest of his system. They are followed by a number of axioms that, he assumes, will be regarded as obvious and unproblematic by the philosophically informed (“Whatever is, is either in itself or in another”; “From a given determinate cause the effect follows necessarily”). From these, the first proposition necessarily follows, and every subsequent proposition can be demonstrated using only what precedes it. (References to the Ethics will be by part (I-V), proposition (p), definition (d), scholium (s) and corollary ©.)

In propositions one through fifteen of Part One, Spinoza presents the basic elements of his picture of God. God is the infinite, necessarily existing (that is, uncaused), unique substance of the universe. There is only one substance in the universe; it is God; and everything else that is, is in God.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/#GodNat

[Selene]

Further down in the above article,

By contrast, Spinoza's God is the cause of all things because all things follow causally and necessarily from the divine nature. Or, as he puts it, from God's infinite power or nature “all things have necessarily flowed, or always followed, by the same necessity and in the same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity and to eternity, that its three angles are equal to two right angles” (Ip17s1). The existence of the world is, thus, mathematically necessary. It is impossible that God should exist but not the world. This does not mean that God does not cause the world to come into being freely, since nothing outside of God constrains him to bring it into existence. But Spinoza does deny that God creates the world by some arbitrary and undetermined act of free will. God could not have done otherwise. There are no possible alternatives to the actual world, and absolutely no contingency or spontaneity within that world. Everything is absolutely and necessarily determined.

Same link...

[Wolf DeVoon]

....“By God I understand a being absolutely infinite, i.e., a substance consisting of an infinity of attributes, of which each one expresses an eternal and infinite essence.” ... There is only one substance in the universe; it is God; and everything else that is, is in God.

Fine, we'll skip the ancients, the Jews, the Catholics, and jump ahead to Spinoza. Wait, there's another post.

The existence of the world is, thus, mathematically necessary. It is impossible that God should exist but not the world.

Short answer: delete God. The world exists. You don't need God to explain that existence exists.

There is only one Universe and everything else that is, is in the Universe.

It is impossible that the world should exist but not the world.

There are two aspects of Spinoza's cosmology that are kind of sad. He thinks triangles are metaphysically significant (Platonic forms) and he leans on the (mistaken) Aristotelean distinction of essence and accident. I admire Spinoza's ethics. Chock full of sage advice. But like I said previously, his pantheistic animism based on Thomist "divine infinity" was a cover story to keep himself from being burned at the stake.

Throughout the 17th century most of the Dutch continued to believe in the efficacy of witchcraft and the ubiquitous activity of the devil ... certain opinions, such as antitrinitarianism, were deemed outright atheism and consequently forbidden. Several authors were convicted to prison sentences on grounds of blasphemy. Spinoza’s most offensive works were famously published only after his death, and then duly banned. [Dutch Culture in The Golden Age]

Whatsoever person or persons within this Province and the Islands thereunto belonging shall from henceforth blaspheme God, that is Curse him, or deny our Saviour Jesus Christ to bee the sonne of God, or shall deny the holy Trinity the father sonne and holy Ghost, or the Godhead of any of the said Three persons of the Trinity or the Unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachfull Speeches, words or language concerning the said Holy Trinity, or any of the said three persons thereof, shal be punished with death and confiscation or forfeiture of all his or her lands and goods. [Maryland Toleration Act, 1649]

[Selene]

The existence of the world is, thus, mathematically necessary. It is impossible that God should exist but not the world.

Short answer: delete God. The world exists. You don't need God to explain that existence exists.

There is only one Universe and everything else that is, is in the Universe.

It is impossible that the world should exist but not the world.

Wasn't that precisely PDS' premise?

A...

[Wolf DeVoon]

The existence of the world is, thus, mathematically necessary. It is impossible that God should exist but not the world.

Short answer: delete God. The world exists. You don't need God to explain that existence exists.

There is only one Universe and everything else that is, is in the Universe.

It is impossible that the world should exist but not the world.

Wasn't that precisely PDS' premise?

A...

There you've got me stumped. Searched entire thread twice, all 5 pages, nothing by PDS.

[PDS]

From a letter to Murray W. Gross, Apr. 26, 1947, Einstein Archive, reel 33-324, Jammer, p. 138 - 139:

When question about God and religion on behalf of an aged Talmudic scholar, Einstein replied:

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near to those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order and harmony which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem — the most important of all human problems.

This is a site that is devoted to just Spinoza and Einstein and I was led to it from two comments on one of the prior links...

Eisenstein came to this conclusion after discussion in regard the observer effect in quantum physics. There is, in fact, a spirit, but it is not outside of men, it is within men. It is the consciousness; that which separates all people, giving them each a sense of “I am”. It has begun to make more logical sense to conclude that the very fundamental essence of nature (this formless thing we call energy) IS consciousness. Lending credence to the idea that most religious works may not have been so “naive” in and of themselves, but rather completely misinterpreted simply by thinking GOD is outside yourself.

And the above one which is in harmony with PDS' comment on oneness...

@Hanoch: My commentary on Einstein’s view has nothing to do with my own biases, be they what they are. In matters of “faith,” Einstein hewed closely to the views of Baruch Spinoza, who defined God as Nature or the laws of nature, and whom

Einstein read as a determinist with no belief in supernatural beings. That’s the allusion he’s making in his letter. This site explains his views more thoroughly: http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/spinoza2.html

http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/spinoza2.html

Adam: can you send a link to the middle quote in red? I couldn't find it. Interesting. So Einstein was a mystic too, eh?

[Brant Gaede]

Wolf called upon the demon. (Yes he did.)

What if next he comes unbidden?

--Ignore, Ignore, Ignore (Quote, Quote, Quote)

[moralist]

Brant writes:

Ad hominem all the way down?

What's ad hominem about the awe of discovering something you didn't create?

Greg

[anthony]

From a letter to Murray W. Gross, Apr. 26, 1947, Einstein Archive, reel 33-324, Jammer, p. 138 - 139:

When question about God and religion on behalf of an aged Talmudic scholar, Einstein replied:

It seems to me that the idea of a personal God is an anthropomorphic concept which I cannot take seriously. I feel also not able to imagine some will or goal outside the human sphere. My views are near to those of Spinoza: admiration for the beauty of and belief in the logical simplicity of the order and harmony which we can grasp humbly and only imperfectly. I believe that we have to content ourselves with our imperfect knowledge and understanding and treat values and moral obligations as a purely human problem — the most important of all human problems.

This is a site that is devoted to just Spinoza and Einstein and I was led to it from two comments on one of the prior links...

Eisenstein came to this conclusion after discussion in regard the observer effect in quantum physics. There is, in fact, a spirit, but it is not outside of men, it is within men. It is the consciousness; that which separates all people, giving them each a sense of “I am”. It has begun to make more logical sense to conclude that the very fundamental essence of nature (this formless thing we call energy) IS consciousness. Lending credence to the idea that most religious works may not have been so “naive” in and of themselves, but rather completely misinterpreted simply by thinking GOD is outside yourself.

And the above one which is in harmony with PDS' comment on oneness...

@Hanoch: My commentary on Einstein’s view has nothing to do with my own biases, be they what they are. In matters of “faith,” Einstein hewed closely to the views of Baruch Spinoza, who defined God as Nature or the laws of nature, and whom

Einstein read as a determinist with no belief in supernatural beings. That’s the allusion he’s making in his letter. This site explains his views more thoroughly: http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/spinoza2.html

http://www.einsteinandreligion.com/spinoza2.html

Adam: can you send a link to the middle quote in red? I couldn't find it. Interesting. So Einstein was a mystic too, eh?

"It is the consciousness; that which separates all people, giving them each a sense of "I am"".

That's a mystic?

In that case, so was Rand.

"Man is a being of self-made soul".

[Brant Gaede]

I doubt we're really having a mystic/not-mystic discussion.

It seems more like an Aspie/non-Aspie jejune contretemps.

--Brant

I'm neither, BTW (not non and not non non)

(More drama, please! Ramp it up!)

[Wolf DeVoon]

Now I remember. PDS said we were all waves in the ocean. Completely unrelated to the proposition that 'everything in the Universe is in the Universe' which was straightening out Spinoza by deleting unnecessary God.

I'm not a wave. Share no defining characteristics with a crocodile, a vixen, a rock, a triangle, or a supernova.