"Disposition" was moving around in the back of my mind this evening, and it took some time to remember why. It was this post and where my mind went with it.
The loudest elephant trumpeting in this room is disposition.
I had meant to ask you about it, but I got side tracked. @Martin54, what did you mean by "disposition" and how does it relate to "faith and coincidences?"
For once I think I understand @Martin54 better than you.
I would hazard he's saying that if you're naturally disposed to see meaning in coincidences, then you will do so. If you're not, you're not.
I find myself disposed towards seeing patterns, but I'm not disposed towards seeing meaning or believing those patterns exist objectively because experience has shown there generally isn't any meaning and they don't have objective existence.
Humans are good at seeing patterns - playing "that cloud looks like..." games with events. It served us well in our evolution - learning that stripy creepers shouldn't be climbed because they have tigers on the other ends has immense survival value even if in reality only a tiny proportion of stripy creepers actually do.
I've heard some talk of a 'religious gene' or some people being more 'wired' for the 'affective' or 'experiential' aspects of religion than others.
I don't know enough about the science of that.
I do think, from my experience of the charismatic scene that some people are certainly more 'susceptible' or 'suggestible' than others - even some fairly cerebral types. I know. I'm one of them.
Ultimately, we accept by faith that God is somehow involved in the operations of the world. @Martin54 may well have a lot to say about that ...
The tricky part, of course is trying to determine or discern the whys and wherefores and the why nots?
Our responses to these things, both individually and collectively depend one a huge range of interlocking factors. We are effectively 'socialised' into whatever position we adopt. That's the way these things work, which doesn't obviate the individual or personal element but it is to place it in context.
Excellent. Thank you, @KarlLB. Now the thought that was developing is becoming clearer to me. And it is this:
Are there other aspects of our individual dispositions that might encourage or discourage us to accept God as involved in the operations of the world?
Yes. I've talked at length about how important objective evidence is to me but apparently not so much for other people.
For me, I'm not even sure I have a grasp on what "accept by faith" means. There are things I have evidence for, of varying confidence levels, and things I don't. There's no "accept by faith" category. It doesn't really mean anything to me.
It's often said that faith isn't 'blind faith' - but I'm not quite sure what constitutes 'objective evidence' when considering ancient stories and texts.
I'm often struck when watching archaeology programmes on totally by how speculative it all sounds. Why did the diplodocus have such a long tail? Hey, look at my mechanical scale model replica. If we move it fast enough it cracks like a whip and makes a loud noise. Perhaps they used it to signal to potential mates. Listen to the sound my tail makes ...'
All we really know is that there was a creature we call a diplodocus which, like its fellow saurapod the brontosaurus was, to filch from Python, 'thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle and then thin again at the far end.'
We can't 'prove' the Resurrection or the Virgin Birth or the Trinity or the deity of Christ or that God exists. So why don't we jack it all in and become agnostics or atheists?
It's often said that faith isn't 'blind faith' - but I'm not quite sure what constitutes 'objective evidence' when considering ancient stories and texts.
I'm often struck when watching archaeology programmes on totally by how speculative it all sounds. Why did the diplodocus have such a long tail? Hey, look at my mechanical scale model replica. If we move it fast enough it cracks like a whip and makes a loud noise. Perhaps they used it to signal to potential mates. Listen to the sound my tail makes ...'
All we really know is that there was a creature we call a diplodocus which, like its fellow saurapod the brontosaurus was, to filch from Python, 'thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle and then thin again at the far end.'
We can't 'prove' the Resurrection or the Virgin Birth or the Trinity or the deity of Christ or that God exists. So why don't we jack it all in and become agnostics or atheists?
Archaeologists do not dig up dinosaurs. At least not intentionally.
Thing about palaeontology, which I presume you're referring to, is that it, like all science, is about making models that come with a level of uncertainty and are inherently provisional. I'm quite happy with that. And no-one's suggesting that I direct my worship to Captain Dinosaur on the basis that he absolutely definitely did use his tail to signal to potential mates.
As regards Christianity - well, I'm not entirely (i.e. not at all) convinced that it actually depends on the Resurrection or the Virgin Birth or the Trinity being objectively true, even if you decide what exactly their being true would entail. And indeed, I do consider myself to be an Agnostic. I identify as a Christian agnostic, inasmuch as I try to act on the provisional basis that Christianity is essentially true, whilst being very aware that I do not and probably cannot actually know that that is the case.
I have no idea what would qualify as objective evidence for some of these things. That doesn't alter my basic approach that unless you have objective evidence, you don't have a basis for claiming you know something. That's why I'm Agnostic - I hold it is impossible to know, barring impairment of my thought process or some kind of divine intervention which as thus far been entirely absent.
I do 'get' that @KarlLB and am scratching my head to think of any response other than, 'Lord I believe, help Thou mine unbelief.'
I fully recognise of course that the existence of the diplodocus doesn't depend on male ones whip-cracking their tails to say, 'Take a chance on me, babe.'
I dunno, perhaps they had long tails coz a crocodile got hold of it like the one that gripped the elephant's trunk in the 'Just So' story. Perhaps they used them to spin tops to amuse their pals.
Perhaps those spinning tops served a ritual purpose ...
Whatever the case, I do sign-up - and hopefully more than that - to certain 'dogmatic' positions relating to the Christian faith but would like to think I don't diss those who don't.
That isn't to say I don't struggle with them or sail blithely on without doubts or uncertainty.
This discussion reminds me of an Adlerian Psychologist who I once knew. He kept saying everyone develops a fiction which helps them make sense of the chaos in the world. The deal of it is, there were healthy fictions that function well, and there are unhealthy fixtions that are dysfunctional.
Or alternatively, everyone is always already interpreting. What we think we know is shaped by the language and tradition that shaped us, and we know things through them. There is no objective route to understanding complex possibilities.
We are subjectivity all the way down: thinking with the ideas of our language and tradition, even unconsciously. As Bourdieu put it “I know that I am caught up and comprehended in the world I take as my object”.
So, something profound that overwhelms the limits of language and the lessons we learn (with their traditional underpinnings) is clearly never going to be caught within either. Use all of yourself to aim at what might be: conscious ideas, intuition from your adaptive unconscious, your emotions. Be fully present and lean towards what feels right: how else do we approach the immense possibility of God?
I'm less interested in what might be than what is, when it comes to objective realities I seek to discover rather than possibilities I might bring about.
I do not know in what way I can have any confidence in internal emotions or intuition for discovering external truths. It feels like deciding something is so because it'd be cool if it were.
Whenever I watch Star Trek I experience a powerful and enduring wish that Warp Drive were a thing. That doesn't get us any closer to it being a reality.
You make are driven by emotions and unconscious intuitions whether you have confidence in them or not.
Your consciousness doesn’t tell you what emotions to feel and when, or how you should react. You just do, and the consequences follow.
We all go through life largely piloting our course through heuristics and associated intuition (Gigerenzer’s work is revelatory here), not logic.
Both emotions and the adaptive unconscious (the system that uses heuristics and drives intuition) are faster than conscious thought. Conscious thought is just the story you tell yourself about your reasons, after the fact.
It would be nice if Vulcan logic existed. That doesn’t get us any closer to it being a reality.
You make are driven by emotions and unconscious intuitions whether you have confidence in them or not.
Your consciousness doesn’t tell you what emotions to feel and when, or how you should react. You just do, and the consequences follow.
We all go through life largely piloting our course through heuristics and associated intuition (Gigerenzer’s work is revelatory here), not logic.
Both emotions and the adaptive unconscious (the system that uses heuristics and drives intuition) are faster than conscious thought. Conscious thought is just the story you tell yourself about your reasons, after the fact.
It would be nice if Vulcan logic existed. That doesn’t get us any closer to it being a reality.
That may or may not all be so, but it doesn't mean that we can actually discover anything about the objective realities entirely external to us which would be so whether we imagine them or not, or indeed whether we even exist or not.
It won't tell us whether God is real, nor what he is like, if he is in fact an external reality. And I have no need of a God who is internal - ie made up by me and existing only in my imagination and hopes. Because when I die, that God dies too.
You make are driven by emotions and unconscious intuitions whether you have confidence in them or not.
Your consciousness doesn’t tell you what emotions to feel and when, or how you should react. You just do, and the consequences follow.
We all go through life largely piloting our course through heuristics and associated intuition (Gigerenzer’s work is revelatory here), not logic.
Both emotions and the adaptive unconscious (the system that uses heuristics and drives intuition) are faster than conscious thought. Conscious thought is just the story you tell yourself about your reasons, after the fact.
It would be nice if Vulcan logic existed. That doesn’t get us any closer to it being a reality.
That may or may not all be so, but it doesn't mean that we can actually discover anything about the objective realities entirely external to us which would be so whether we imagine them or not, or indeed whether we even exist or not.
It won't tell us whether God is real, nor what he is like, if he is in fact an external reality. And I have no need of a God who is internal - ie made up by me and existing only in my imagination and hopes. Because when I die, that God dies too.
I said nothing about internal vs external realities. I don’t know what you are focussing on there, since I argued that we approach everything through interpretation - including ourselves. And some things only exist for us if we interpret them as possible (like community, relationships, love).
The point I am making is that everything you know about the world, and how we move about it and understand it, involves emotions, intuition and some conscious self-storying. There is no way of separating it out, but we can try to bring it together (in passing, Gigerenzer’s research suggested that when people work to align their conscious self-stories with their unconscious, they were generally happier).
We cannot be objective about even ourselves and how we think. Those internal thoughts don’t come out of nothing and from nowhere - did you invent the language? Did you define the categories you use to understand and explain yourself to yourself? Did you craft for yourself the concepts of what ‘proof’ and ‘God’ mean? Of course not, they come to you through formal and socialised learning, in a tradition built through the ages.
Maybe your emotions and heuristics, being closer to personal experience, are more your own. Maybe they are more you.
If we can’t reach an objective decision, what we can do is be fully present, acknowledge that we are not isolated sovereign intellects, try living ‘as if X’ and see how it works for us. I think we are both doing that, but in different ways, with a different kind or value of X.
It’s a leap of faith in either direction, not just one.
You may not have mentioned internal and external realities, but I did, and that's because they matter to me and are indeed to me entirely different in kind.
Internal realities are what we feel and hope and intuit and dream. They are quite separate from external realities which we need to investigate as objectively as possible, even granting that complete objectivity isn't possible.
The problem with God is that if he exists he is an external reality but not one amenable to the regular tools for objective investigation. What that doesn't automatically mean is that he's amenable to internal subjective tools either. The multitude of hypotheses about God (or religions as we might call them) all of which have their adherents and the absence of any means of deciding between them that yields consistent results speaks to that, inasmuch as where you have mutually exclusive claims about God either only one, or none, of them can actually be correct.
Given the thousands of gods or Gods that people have 'found' intuitively (or their cultures have 'found' and told them to believe in) why on earth would I presume that the one that I formulate by intuition is somehow the real one?
No. Internal and external interpretations (no-one has direct access to realities) are of the same kind, because they are both grasped in the same way. One aspect of my argument as elaborated upthread is that there is no separation of the subjective and objective (whatever the latter is).
How anyone understands God (or no-God) will be based on the traditions and language that shaped them, and their intuition and emotions, whether they will or not. So I am not advocating that you (or any one) should or even could form a robust definition of (a) true God.
It’s not an intellectual problem that can be solved, but a hard-to-grasp possible reality (as you indicate) that can only be lived towards. The fact that there isn’t ‘objective’ proof is intrinsic to how we know and understand. But that means it cuts both ways - you can’t objectively say yes or no.
You could ask yourself, if you wanted, what many traditions about God have in common and hold them in comparison. But that is just trying to intellectualise it again and misses the point that our different patterns of knowing can be genuine but all subjective interpretations - how we understand. Once you realise it is not an intellectual problem, all you can do is live with your whole self in the/a direction that feels right. Maybe that journey takes you to some shared or overlapping places anyway (as with, for example, Merton).
<snip>
We all go through life largely piloting our course through heuristics and associated intuition (Gigerenzer’s work is revelatory here), not logic.
How far is Gigerenzer’s work based on the experience and functioning of the neurotypical? What account does it take of the rather different functioning and experience of the atypical?
No. Internal and external interpretations (no-one has direct access to realities) are of the same kind, because they are both grasped in the same way. One aspect of my argument as elaborated upthread is that there is no separation of the subjective and objective (whatever the latter is).
How anyone understands God (or no-God) will be based on the traditions and language that shaped them, and their intuition and emotions, whether they will or not. So I am not advocating that you (or any one) should or even could form a robust definition of (a) true God.
It’s not an intellectual problem that can be solved, but a hard-to-grasp possible reality (as you indicate) that can only be lived towards. The fact that there isn’t ‘objective’ proof is intrinsic to how we know and understand. But that means it cuts both ways - you can’t objectively say yes or no.
You could ask yourself, if you wanted, what many traditions about God have in common and hold them in comparison. But that is just trying to intellectualise it again and misses the point that our different patterns of knowing can be genuine but all subjective interpretations - how we understand. Once you realise it is not an intellectual problem, all you can do is live with your whole self in the/a direction that feels right. Maybe that journey takes you to some shared or overlapping places anyway (as with, for example, Merton).
Thing about this "everything is subjective" line is it isn't how we actually live day to say.
Take something as simple as the Wordle. There's a single, objective solution to any given day's puzzle, which you can only find by discovery - by solving the puzzle. There's nothing subjective about it. No amount of intuition or following my desires will make it other than it is. And regardless of the degree of interpretation of the answer, it's the same regardless of who solves it, so my supposedly subjective experience of the solution is such a solid analogue of the objective reality that it's hard to see any utility in dividing the two apart - to all intents and purposes I do have access to the objective internal reality.
This is fundamentally different to my decision whether I want to do sweetcorn or peas with the sausages tonight - unless my decision there is actually constrained by physical objective realities about chemical and electrical states in my brain - in which case it would be more accurate to say everything is in fact objective. If we're willing to have an entirely mechanistic universe with no free will at all.
Given that God, if he exists, is not a creation of my decision, then it seems to me he's a reality of the Wordle solution kind rather than the frozen vegetable choice kind. Whether he's a reality of an intellectually resolvable type, as the Wordle solution is, strikes me as an entirely different and orthogonal question.
I am well aware that the insolubility of God's existence cuts both ways - have I not already stated that I'm agnostic on the question?
No. Internal and external interpretations(no-one has direct access to realities) are of the same kind, because they are both grasped in the same way. One aspect of my argument as elaborated upthread is that there is no separation of the subjective and objective (whatever the latter is).
How anyone understands God (or no-God) will be based on the traditions and language that shaped them, and their intuition and emotions, whether they will or not. So I am not advocating that you (or any one) should or even could form a robust definition of (a) true God.
It’s not an intellectual problem that can be solved, but a hard-to-grasp possible reality (as you indicate) that can only be lived towards. The fact that there isn’t ‘objective’ proof is intrinsic to how we know and understand. But that means it cuts both ways - you can’t objectively say yes or no.
You could ask yourself, if you wanted, what many traditions about God have in common and hold them in comparison. But that is just trying to intellectualise it again and misses the point that our different patterns of knowing can be genuine but all subjective interpretations - how we understand. Once you realise it is not an intellectual problem, all you can do is live with your whole self in the/a direction that feels right. Maybe that journey takes you to some shared or overlapping places anyway (as with, for example, Merton).
No. Internal and external interpretations(no-one has direct access to realities) are of the same kind, because they are both grasped in the same way. One aspect of my argument as elaborated upthread is that there is no separation of the subjective and objective (whatever the latter is).
How anyone understands God (or no-God) will be based on the traditions and language that shaped them, and their intuition and emotions, whether they will or not. So I am not advocating that you (or any one) should or even could form a robust definition of (a) true God.
It’s not an intellectual problem that can be solved, but a hard-to-grasp possible reality (as you indicate) that can only be lived towards. The fact that there isn’t ‘objective’ proof is intrinsic to how we know and understand. But that means it cuts both ways - you can’t objectively say yes or no.
You could ask yourself, if you wanted, what many traditions about God have in common and hold them in comparison. But that is just trying to intellectualise it again and misses the point that our different patterns of knowing can be genuine but all subjective interpretations - how we understand. Once you realise it is not an intellectual problem, all you can do is live with your whole self in the/a direction that feels right. Maybe that journey takes you to some shared or overlapping places anyway (as with, for example, Merton).
We have senses.
Which you know about and explain to yourself through language, as a post rationalisation.
<snip>
We all go through life largely piloting our course through heuristics and associated intuition (Gigerenzer’s work is revelatory here), not logic.
How far is Gigerenzer’s work based on the experience and functioning of the neurotypical? What account does it take of the rather different functioning and experience of the atypical?
It’s based on the neurotypical.
I am not atypical, but based on my reading of direct accounts from those who are not (e.g. Higashida) the main differences will be in the handling of emotions and the difficulty of bringing the different ‘systems’ into integration. It’s one of those areas, I think, where more work is needed.
No. Internal and external interpretations (no-one has direct access to realities) are of the same kind, because they are both grasped in the same way. One aspect of my argument as elaborated upthread is that there is no separation of the subjective and objective (whatever the latter is).
How anyone understands God (or no-God) will be based on the traditions and language that shaped them, and their intuition and emotions, whether they will or not. So I am not advocating that you (or any one) should or even could form a robust definition of (a) true God.
It’s not an intellectual problem that can be solved, but a hard-to-grasp possible reality (as you indicate) that can only be lived towards. The fact that there isn’t ‘objective’ proof is intrinsic to how we know and understand. But that means it cuts both ways - you can’t objectively say yes or no.
You could ask yourself, if you wanted, what many traditions about God have in common and hold them in comparison. But that is just trying to intellectualise it again and misses the point that our different patterns of knowing can be genuine but all subjective interpretations - how we understand. Once you realise it is not an intellectual problem, all you can do is live with your whole self in the/a direction that feels right. Maybe that journey takes you to some shared or overlapping places anyway (as with, for example, Merton).
Thing about this "everything is subjective" line is it isn't how we actually live day to say.
Take something as simple as the Wordle. There's a single, objective solution to any given day's puzzle, which you can only find by discovery - by solving the puzzle. There's nothing subjective about it. No amount of intuition or following my desires will make it other than it is. And regardless of the degree of interpretation of the answer, it's the same regardless of who solves it, so my supposedly subjective experience of the solution is such a solid analogue of the objective reality that it's hard to see any utility in dividing the two apart - to all intents and purposes I do have access to the objective internal reality.
This is fundamentally different to my decision whether I want to do sweetcorn or peas with the sausages tonight - unless my decision there is actually constrained by physical objective realities about chemical and electrical states in my brain - in which case it would be more accurate to say everything is in fact objective. If we're willing to have an entirely mechanistic universe with no free will at all.
Given that God, if he exists, is not a creation of my decision, then it seems to me he's a reality of the Wordle solution kind rather than the frozen vegetable choice kind. Whether he's a reality of an intellectually resolvable type, as the Wordle solution is, strikes me as an entirely different and orthogonal question.
I am well aware that the insolubility of God's existence cuts both ways - have I not already stated that I'm agnostic on the question?
Words mean different things to different people. Why do some people engage and find pleasure and meaning in puzzles, and some not?
The point is not about the physical state of your brain, but how your different experience-informed systems of knowing (existing on parts of the physical substrate) interact in your interpretations and choices. Everyone’s sausages are a subjective choice, of course.
Thanks for the clarification on agnosticism. From my interpretation of your writing, it looked like a firmer negative than that.
Given that God, if he exists, is not a creation of my decision...
Both those assertions are quite subjective. You are presuming the answer in the way you pose the question. But even if you disagree with that, the basic assertion is, as you say, not very amenable to scientific investigation. A more objective question, one that is more amenable to scientific investigation, would be to ask "Why does religious belief exist?".
There is a wide range of scientific investigation into religious acquisition and behaviour, across multiple disciplines. There's a short overview of the scientific study of religion as part of Stanford's entry on science and religion, and which references the more recent Cognitive Science of Religion:
This is a multidisciplinary field, with authors from, among others, developmental psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and cognitive psychology. It differs from other scientific approaches to religion in its presupposition that religion is not a purely cultural phenomenon. Rather, authors in CSR hold that religion is the result of ordinary, early developed, and universal human cognitive processes.
KarlLB wrote: »
The problem with God is that if he exists he is an external reality but not one amenable to the regular tools for objective investigation.
KarlLB wrote: »
Given that God, if he exists, is not a creation of my decision...
Both those assertions are quite subjective. You are presuming the answer in the way you pose the question.
No, I'm not. I'm setting out a definition of what I mean by "God" in the sense of the entity I am considering the existence of. I'm not interested in and therefore not considering "gods" that only exist in my own head.
No. Internal and external interpretations (no-one has direct access to realities) are of the same kind, because they are both grasped in the same way. One aspect of my argument as elaborated upthread is that there is no separation of the subjective and objective (whatever the latter is).
How anyone understands God (or no-God) will be based on the traditions and language that shaped them, and their intuition and emotions, whether they will or not. So I am not advocating that you (or any one) should or even could form a robust definition of (a) true God.
It’s not an intellectual problem that can be solved, but a hard-to-grasp possible reality (as you indicate) that can only be lived towards. The fact that there isn’t ‘objective’ proof is intrinsic to how we know and understand. But that means it cuts both ways - you can’t objectively say yes or no.
You could ask yourself, if you wanted, what many traditions about God have in common and hold them in comparison. But that is just trying to intellectualise it again and misses the point that our different patterns of knowing can be genuine but all subjective interpretations - how we understand. Once you realise it is not an intellectual problem, all you can do is live with your whole self in the/a direction that feels right. Maybe that journey takes you to some shared or overlapping places anyway (as with, for example, Merton).
Thing about this "everything is subjective" line is it isn't how we actually live day to say.
Take something as simple as the Wordle. There's a single, objective solution to any given day's puzzle, which you can only find by discovery - by solving the puzzle. There's nothing subjective about it. No amount of intuition or following my desires will make it other than it is. And regardless of the degree of interpretation of the answer, it's the same regardless of who solves it, so my supposedly subjective experience of the solution is such a solid analogue of the objective reality that it's hard to see any utility in dividing the two apart - to all intents and purposes I do have access to the objective internal reality.
This is fundamentally different to my decision whether I want to do sweetcorn or peas with the sausages tonight - unless my decision there is actually constrained by physical objective realities about chemical and electrical states in my brain - in which case it would be more accurate to say everything is in fact objective. If we're willing to have an entirely mechanistic universe with no free will at all.
Given that God, if he exists, is not a creation of my decision, then it seems to me he's a reality of the Wordle solution kind rather than the frozen vegetable choice kind. Whether he's a reality of an intellectually resolvable type, as the Wordle solution is, strikes me as an entirely different and orthogonal question.
I am well aware that the insolubility of God's existence cuts both ways - have I not already stated that I'm agnostic on the question?
Words mean different things to different people. Why do some people engage and find pleasure and meaning in puzzles, and some not?
That is a completely different question to "what was the solution to the Wordle on <insert date here>?" though.
What seems to happen in these conversations (and @pease has also just done it) is to sidestep the actual question I'm talking about and substitute another one more amenable to the counter-argument.
No. Internal and external interpretations(no-one has direct access to realities) are of the same kind, because they are both grasped in the same way. One aspect of my argument as elaborated upthread is that there is no separation of the subjective and objective (whatever the latter is).
How anyone understands God (or no-God) will be based on the traditions and language that shaped them, and their intuition and emotions, whether they will or not. So I am not advocating that you (or any one) should or even could form a robust definition of (a) true God.
It’s not an intellectual problem that can be solved, but a hard-to-grasp possible reality (as you indicate) that can only be lived towards. The fact that there isn’t ‘objective’ proof is intrinsic to how we know and understand. But that means it cuts both ways - you can’t objectively say yes or no.
You could ask yourself, if you wanted, what many traditions about God have in common and hold them in comparison. But that is just trying to intellectualise it again and misses the point that our different patterns of knowing can be genuine but all subjective interpretations - how we understand. Once you realise it is not an intellectual problem, all you can do is live with your whole self in the/a direction that feels right. Maybe that journey takes you to some shared or overlapping places anyway (as with, for example, Merton).
We have senses.
Which you know about and explain to yourself through language, as a post rationalisation.
No. Internal and external interpretations (no-one has direct access to realities) are of the same kind, because they are both grasped in the same way. One aspect of my argument as elaborated upthread is that there is no separation of the subjective and objective (whatever the latter is).
How anyone understands God (or no-God) will be based on the traditions and language that shaped them, and their intuition and emotions, whether they will or not. So I am not advocating that you (or any one) should or even could form a robust definition of (a) true God.
It’s not an intellectual problem that can be solved, but a hard-to-grasp possible reality (as you indicate) that can only be lived towards. The fact that there isn’t ‘objective’ proof is intrinsic to how we know and understand. But that means it cuts both ways - you can’t objectively say yes or no.
You could ask yourself, if you wanted, what many traditions about God have in common and hold them in comparison. But that is just trying to intellectualise it again and misses the point that our different patterns of knowing can be genuine but all subjective interpretations - how we understand. Once you realise it is not an intellectual problem, all you can do is live with your whole self in the/a direction that feels right. Maybe that journey takes you to some shared or overlapping places anyway (as with, for example, Merton).
Thing about this "everything is subjective" line is it isn't how we actually live day to say.
Take something as simple as the Wordle. There's a single, objective solution to any given day's puzzle, which you can only find by discovery - by solving the puzzle. There's nothing subjective about it. No amount of intuition or following my desires will make it other than it is. And regardless of the degree of interpretation of the answer, it's the same regardless of who solves it, so my supposedly subjective experience of the solution is such a solid analogue of the objective reality that it's hard to see any utility in dividing the two apart - to all intents and purposes I do have access to the objective internal reality.
This is fundamentally different to my decision whether I want to do sweetcorn or peas with the sausages tonight - unless my decision there is actually constrained by physical objective realities about chemical and electrical states in my brain - in which case it would be more accurate to say everything is in fact objective. If we're willing to have an entirely mechanistic universe with no free will at all.
Given that God, if he exists, is not a creation of my decision, then it seems to me he's a reality of the Wordle solution kind rather than the frozen vegetable choice kind. Whether he's a reality of an intellectually resolvable type, as the Wordle solution is, strikes me as an entirely different and orthogonal question.
I am well aware that the insolubility of God's existence cuts both ways - have I not already stated that I'm agnostic on the question?
Words mean different things to different people. Why do some people engage and find pleasure and meaning in puzzles, and some not?
That is a completely different question to "what was the solution to the Wordle on <insert date here>?" though.
What seems to happen in these conversations (and @pease has also just done it) is to sidestep the actual question I'm talking about and substitute another one more amenable to the counter-argument.
I would describe your manoeuvres similarly - a shift in the grounds of debate offered, from an epistemological to an ontological focus, from how we know to what there is to be known, from a way of knowing that applies to all experience to an argument about internal vs external matters.
Conversations wander and we are both walking here, and trying to get someone to join us on the same path.
KarlLB wrote: »
The problem with God is that if he exists he is an external reality but not one amenable to the regular tools for objective investigation.
KarlLB wrote: »
Given that God, if he exists, is not a creation of my decision...
Both those assertions are quite subjective. You are presuming the answer in the way you pose the question.
No, I'm not. I'm setting out a definition of what I mean by "God" in the sense of the entity I am considering the existence of. I'm not interested in and therefore not considering "gods" that only exist in my own head.
You are subjectively choosing to ignore the objective possibility that gods only exist in your own head.
What seems to happen in these conversations (and @pease has also just done it) is to sidestep the actual question I'm talking about and substitute another one more amenable to the counter-argument.
Are you able to give an objective explanation for why you want to continue a line of inquiry that you admit isn't subject to objective investigation?
I think palaentology (and archeology) do what we all do to some extent - take the evidence, see what can be learned from it, see how it maps to what we know, and drap predictions from it.
The t-rex story always fascinates me. We used to think of it as standing like a kangaroo. But more evidence was found - footsteps, but without tail marks - that showed this was wrong. So not it is usually pictured horizontal.
In faith, we do something similar. We see evidence, we work it into our worldview, and (sometimes) change our views as more evidence comes to light. Coincidences can help to strengthen or weaken our faith, depending on how we deal with them. Like the t-rex, the accepted story had to be modified, because of new evidence.
But the innate belief that these bones and marks indicate massive creatures remains intact. Except for those whose worldview reject this entirely.
My argument is that internal subjective and external objective realities are different in kind and an attempt to find a "way of knowing that applies to all experience" is a fools' errand - no such single "way of knowing" can or should be expected to exist. I cannot possibly use the same toolkit to discover exoplanets as I can for deciding whether I like the colour of the lounge walls. That is entirely within the realm of epistemology to my mind.
When I bring up examples that demonstrate why I believe that to be the case, and the response is "oh, let's talk about this instead" - well, that seems evasive to me.
KarlLB wrote: »
The problem with God is that if he exists he is an external reality but not one amenable to the regular tools for objective investigation.
KarlLB wrote: »
Given that God, if he exists, is not a creation of my decision...
Both those assertions are quite subjective. You are presuming the answer in the way you pose the question.
No, I'm not. I'm setting out a definition of what I mean by "God" in the sense of the entity I am considering the existence of. I'm not interested in and therefore not considering "gods" that only exist in my own head.
You are subjectively choosing to ignore the objective possibility that gods only exist in your own head.
I've never said that subjectivity is bad. Simply that it's different to objectivity.
But that's scarcely the point. That gods exist in people's heads I already know. The question is whether they also exist outside of people's heads as objective realities.
So the possibility that "gods only exist in your own head" is not excluded at all - it's the rational conclusion from discovering (if it were possible) that gods don't also exist outside of people's heads.
What seems to happen in these conversations (and @pease has also just done it) is to sidestep the actual question I'm talking about and substitute another one more amenable to the counter-argument.
Are you able to give an objective explanation for why you want to continue a line of inquiry that you admit isn't subject to objective investigation?
Again, reasons for doing things don't need to be objective. It's evidence for things that are claimed to be objective that needs to be itself objective. It's almost like you've misinterpreted my position to "objective good subjective bad"
My reason, regardless of -jectiveness, is forlorn hope, I think, that someone can give me a good reason for a stronger confidence that God actually exists.
...
My reason, regardless of -jectiveness, is forlorn hope, I think, that someone can give me a good reason for a stronger confidence that God actually exists.
Aye. Do you want to examine where that hope comes from?
...
My reason, regardless of -jectiveness, is forlorn hope, I think, that someone can give me a good reason for a stronger confidence that God actually exists.
Aye. Do you want to examine where that hope comes from?
Not especially, no. I've already figured that out.
It’s a leap of faith in either direction, not just one.
Which I take to mean that we have internal/subjective inclinations that determine how we evaluate what is real or believable.
Doesn't matter. It's closer to what I mean.
The questions that I am currently thinking about are:
What disposes us to find the Gospels, for example, adequate for faith or not? How does each of us establish our individual "standards of evidence"?
It’s a leap of faith in either direction, not just one.
Which I take to mean that we have internal/subjective inclinations that determine how we evaluate what is real or believable.
Doesn't matter. It's closer to what I mean.
The questions that I am currently thinking about are:
What disposes us to find the Gospels, for example, adequate for faith or not? How does each of us establish our individual "standards of evidence"?
It's not binary. A source is not either adequate or not. There are sources which are completely unreliable and ones that we can place a great deal of confidence in and everything in between.
Reality is we are disposed to give more weight to sources that reinforce what we already are committed to...
KarlLB wrote: »
The problem with God is that if he exists he is an external reality but not one amenable to the regular tools for objective investigation.
KarlLB wrote: »
Given that God, if he exists, is not a creation of my decision...
Both those assertions are quite subjective. You are presuming the answer in the way you pose the question.
No, I'm not. I'm setting out a definition of what I mean by "God" in the sense of the entity I am considering the existence of. I'm not interested in and therefore not considering "gods" that only exist in my own head.
You are subjectively choosing to ignore the objective possibility that gods only exist in your own head.
I've never said that subjectivity is bad. Simply that it's different to objectivity.
But that's scarcely the point. That gods exist in people's heads I already know. The question is whether they also exist outside of people's heads as objective realities.
So the possibility that "gods only exist in your own head" is not excluded at all - it's the rational conclusion from discovering (if it were possible) that gods don't also exist outside of people's heads.
What seems to happen in these conversations (and @pease has also just done it) is to sidestep the actual question I'm talking about and substitute another one more amenable to the counter-argument.
Are you able to give an objective explanation for why you want to continue a line of inquiry that you admit isn't subject to objective investigation?
Again, reasons for doing things don't need to be objective. It's evidence for things that are claimed to be objective that needs to be itself objective. It's almost like you've misinterpreted my position to "objective good subjective bad"
My reason, regardless of -jectiveness, is forlorn hope, I think, that someone can give me a good reason for a stronger confidence that God actually exists.
No they can't. And look at me. Still looking. Still sniffing round the birth and infancy of the Church for unnatural scent.
KarlLB wrote: »
The problem with God is that if he exists he is an external reality but not one amenable to the regular tools for objective investigation.
KarlLB wrote: »
Given that God, if he exists, is not a creation of my decision...
Both those assertions are quite subjective. You are presuming the answer in the way you pose the question.
No, I'm not. I'm setting out a definition of what I mean by "God" in the sense of the entity I am considering the existence of. I'm not interested in and therefore not considering "gods" that only exist in my own head.
You are subjectively choosing to ignore the objective possibility that gods only exist in your own head.
I've never said that subjectivity is bad. Simply that it's different to objectivity.
But that's scarcely the point. That gods exist in people's heads I already know. The question is whether they also exist outside of people's heads as objective realities.
So the possibility that "gods only exist in your own head" is not excluded at all - it's the rational conclusion from discovering (if it were possible) that gods don't also exist outside of people's heads.
What seems to happen in these conversations (and @pease has also just done it) is to sidestep the actual question I'm talking about and substitute another one more amenable to the counter-argument.
Are you able to give an objective explanation for why you want to continue a line of inquiry that you admit isn't subject to objective investigation?
Again, reasons for doing things don't need to be objective. It's evidence for things that are claimed to be objective that needs to be itself objective. It's almost like you've misinterpreted my position to "objective good subjective bad"
My reason, regardless of -jectiveness, is forlorn hope, I think, that someone can give me a good reason for a stronger confidence that God actually exists.
No they can't. And look at me. Still looking. Still sniffing round the birth and infancy of the Church for unnatural scent.
I buried my father three years ago. Well, strictly speaking the staff at the crem did their thing, but it's the phrase isn't it?
He spent his whole adult life looking for it, poor sod. Unlike thee and me he never went through a phase of thinking he'd found it.
It's difficult - and believe me I'm trying - separating the personal from the clinical discussion when you've got people telling you you're asking the wrong questions and thinking the wrong way. Sod it; this is the way my brain works. The way his worked.
God, if he exists, made those brains. He, if he exists, knows how they work. He knows what they need to discern him, if he exists. He knows how much they want to discern him. And yet, where is he?
It's not binary. A source is not either adequate or not. There are sources which are completely unreliable and ones that we can place a great deal of confidence in and everything in between.
Reality is we are disposed to give more weight to sources that reinforce what we already are committed to...
Yes. I agree. I wonder what is the founation for those commitments, though.
I'm not tasking you with answering these questions for me, @KarlLB . I appreciate, though, that you're willing to talk about them from your experience.
My reason, regardless of -jectiveness, is forlorn hope, I think, that someone can give me a good reason for a stronger confidence that God actually exists.
No they can't. And look at me. Still looking. Still sniffing round the birth and infancy of the Church for unnatural scent.
How will you decide where to sniff, and how will you evaluate what you find?
Whenever I watch Star Trek I experience a powerful and enduring wish that Warp Drive were a thing. That doesn't get us any closer to it being a reality.
Alcubierre stated in an email to William Shatner that his theory was directly inspired by the term used in the show and cites the "'warp drive' of science fiction" in his 1994 article.
Whenever I watch Star Trek I experience a powerful and enduring wish that Warp Drive were a thing. That doesn't get us any closer to it being a reality.
Alcubierre stated in an email to William Shatner that his theory was directly inspired by the term used in the show and cites the "'warp drive' of science fiction" in his 1994 article.
The decision to put research into that area might be inspired by people who wish as I do, but actually creating a Warp Drive would require an awful lot of research, experimentation and hard science. And if it's fundamentally impossible, no amount of wishing will change that. The fundamental point is that the physics underlying such a thing, if it is possible, is the same regardless of whether we want to build a Warp Drive or not.
Once again I feel like two fundamentally different things - in this case the desire to do something, and the means of making it happen, are being conflated.
Which you know about and explain to yourself through language, as a post rationalisation.
Language would be impossible to learn if it were not based in non-linguistic expertise.
One can't use language to explain how to use language. Even when one uses language to define a word that requires a knowledge of how to use a definition that cannot itself be defined.
(Yes, I have just been reading Wittgenstein on rules and private language.)
My argument is that internal subjective and external objective realities are different in kind and an attempt to find a "way of knowing that applies to all experience" is a fools' errand - no such single "way of knowing" can or should be expected to exist. I cannot possibly use the same toolkit to discover exoplanets as I can for deciding whether I like the colour of the lounge walls. That is entirely within the realm of epistemology to my mind.
When I bring up examples that demonstrate why I believe that to be the case, and the response is "oh, let's talk about this instead" - well, that seems evasive to me.
But if you state something is an objective reality that is an ontological claim. And you have done so many times.
But a key point - and this will be my last attempt at putting it, in deference to your frustration and other folks likely boredom - is that it is difficult to apprehend in an unproblematic way that something is external and objective vs internal and subjective, because of how we know things. The epistemological problem prevents the kind of ontological claims you are casually making.
My argument is that the same subjective systems are used to apprehend what is ‘in here’ and ‘out there’ - normally we interpret certain characteristics of experience to infer it’s likely in or out, but we still interpret it nonetheless. You don’t get unmediated access, from soem special objective standpoint, to what is ‘out there’. So it becomes problematic to say something is an objective reality.
But let me come at it another couple of ways, one of which includes your example.
(i) Let’s agree for a moment, for the sake of argument, that there are things out there and things internal to us. But you’ve only got the same personal and subjective emotional, intuitive and cognitive toolbox to deal with it all. So let’s apply that to your example. When people ‘discover exoplanets’ they look at certain signals, apply rules from a tradition they are socialised into (the current state of science) and interpret on that basis. Maybe exoplanets stimulate your emotions less than the colour of the lounge walls, or you are used to intuitive selection of colours (how else do you justify those puce walls?) but your subjective interest in exoplanets still involves your whole self - why do you notice things about exoplanets, why do you care - and that influences how you use the only interpretive systems that you have to engage with the (particular or general) idea of them. Think about how distinguished astronomers of the past were enthusiastic in interpreting images of Mars to show (non-existent) canals.
(ii) Think about what happens when you dream. It seems totally ‘real’ to you even though it is weird / frightening /peculiar. It seems like ‘outside’ but it can only be ‘inside’. Does that show what I mean about one set of subjective systems?
When you speak of the non-existent Martian canals, you are referencing an objective reality, about which some astronomers were misled by their subjectivity.
Consequently I really don't know what your argument actually is.
Which you know about and explain to yourself through language, as a post rationalisation.
Language would be impossible to learn if it were not based in non-linguistic expertise.
One can't use language to explain how to use language. Even when one uses language to define a word that requires a knowledge of how to use a definition that cannot itself be defined.
(Yes, I have just been reading Wittgenstein on rules and private language.)
I think development psychologists say that children pick up the rules in playing with and practicing language, their brains adapt. They don’t first build the idea of grammar or other sets of skills in order to ‘play’ at language, but have a complex and plastic brain that can be shaped by experience - if you like, the plane is built in flight.
But I am not a developmental psychologist and if one drives by with a better description I would not be surprised
When you speak of the non-existent Martian canals, you are referencing an objective reality, about which some astronomers were misled by their subjectivity.
Consequently I really don't know what your argument actually is.
Oh for goodness sake. I am sorry for the shorthand and not writing ‘apparently non-existent’ to couch it in properly subjective epistemological terms for you, so you wouldn’t strain at a gnat.
What if the astronomers observing Mars had been right, would that not have been their subjectivity at work then? Are people objective when their ideas are ‘right’, and subjective when supplanted by new interpretations?
Are people exploring the edge of scientific understanding now objective, unless they are found to be wrong later and then they are misled by their subjectivity retrospectively?
I think you have actually acknowledged my argument about intrinsic subjectivity here. Thanks.
When you speak of the non-existent Martian canals, you are referencing an objective reality, about which some astronomers were misled by their subjectivity.
Consequently I really don't know what your argument actually is.
Oh for goodness sake. I am sorry for the shorthand and not writing ‘apparently non-existent’ to couch it in properly subjective epistemological terms for you, so you wouldn’t strain at a gnat.
What if the astronomers observing Mars had been right, would that not have been their subjectivity at work then? Are people objective when their ideas are ‘right’, and subjective when supplanted by new interpretations?
Are people exploring the edge of scientific understanding now objective, unless they are found to be wrong later and then they are misled by their subjectivity retrospectively?
I think you have actually acknowledged my argument about intrinsic subjectivity here. Thanks.
My argument has never been that scientific researchers are always objective.
My argument is that the things they are trying to learn about are objective realities, and that that makes a difference to the tools best used to learn about those. Tools which attempt to reduce the subjectivity - e.g. double-blinding in drugs trials. Subjectivity in science tends to lead to getting it wrong - although there is such a thing as being right for the wrong reasons. There is a whole area within the philosophy of science dedicated to reducing as far as possible researcher subjectivity, for this very reason.
People who thought they saw canals on Mars were wrong at the time. They - and everyone else at the time - simply didn’t know it, in the same way that prior to Copernicus virtually everyone was wrong about what orbits what wrt sun and earth.
Comments
For once I think I understand @Martin54 better than you.
I would hazard he's saying that if you're naturally disposed to see meaning in coincidences, then you will do so. If you're not, you're not.
I find myself disposed towards seeing patterns, but I'm not disposed towards seeing meaning or believing those patterns exist objectively because experience has shown there generally isn't any meaning and they don't have objective existence.
Humans are good at seeing patterns - playing "that cloud looks like..." games with events. It served us well in our evolution - learning that stripy creepers shouldn't be climbed because they have tigers on the other ends has immense survival value even if in reality only a tiny proportion of stripy creepers actually do.
Are there other aspects of our individual dispositions that might encourage or discourage us to accept God as involved in the operations of the world?
I don't know enough about the science of that.
I do think, from my experience of the charismatic scene that some people are certainly more 'susceptible' or 'suggestible' than others - even some fairly cerebral types. I know. I'm one of them.
Ultimately, we accept by faith that God is somehow involved in the operations of the world. @Martin54 may well have a lot to say about that ...
The tricky part, of course is trying to determine or discern the whys and wherefores and the why nots?
Our responses to these things, both individually and collectively depend one a huge range of interlocking factors. We are effectively 'socialised' into whatever position we adopt. That's the way these things work, which doesn't obviate the individual or personal element but it is to place it in context.
Yes. I've talked at length about how important objective evidence is to me but apparently not so much for other people.
For me, I'm not even sure I have a grasp on what "accept by faith" means. There are things I have evidence for, of varying confidence levels, and things I don't. There's no "accept by faith" category. It doesn't really mean anything to me.
I'm often struck when watching archaeology programmes on totally by how speculative it all sounds. Why did the diplodocus have such a long tail? Hey, look at my mechanical scale model replica. If we move it fast enough it cracks like a whip and makes a loud noise. Perhaps they used it to signal to potential mates. Listen to the sound my tail makes ...'
All we really know is that there was a creature we call a diplodocus which, like its fellow saurapod the brontosaurus was, to filch from Python, 'thin at one end, much, much thicker in the middle and then thin again at the far end.'
We can't 'prove' the Resurrection or the Virgin Birth or the Trinity or the deity of Christ or that God exists. So why don't we jack it all in and become agnostics or atheists?
Archaeologists do not dig up dinosaurs. At least not intentionally.
Thing about palaeontology, which I presume you're referring to, is that it, like all science, is about making models that come with a level of uncertainty and are inherently provisional. I'm quite happy with that. And no-one's suggesting that I direct my worship to Captain Dinosaur on the basis that he absolutely definitely did use his tail to signal to potential mates.
As regards Christianity - well, I'm not entirely (i.e. not at all) convinced that it actually depends on the Resurrection or the Virgin Birth or the Trinity being objectively true, even if you decide what exactly their being true would entail. And indeed, I do consider myself to be an Agnostic. I identify as a Christian agnostic, inasmuch as I try to act on the provisional basis that Christianity is essentially true, whilst being very aware that I do not and probably cannot actually know that that is the case.
I have no idea what would qualify as objective evidence for some of these things. That doesn't alter my basic approach that unless you have objective evidence, you don't have a basis for claiming you know something. That's why I'm Agnostic - I hold it is impossible to know, barring impairment of my thought process or some kind of divine intervention which as thus far been entirely absent.
I fully recognise of course that the existence of the diplodocus doesn't depend on male ones whip-cracking their tails to say, 'Take a chance on me, babe.'
I dunno, perhaps they had long tails coz a crocodile got hold of it like the one that gripped the elephant's trunk in the 'Just So' story. Perhaps they used them to spin tops to amuse their pals.
Perhaps those spinning tops served a ritual purpose ...
Whatever the case, I do sign-up - and hopefully more than that - to certain 'dogmatic' positions relating to the Christian faith but would like to think I don't diss those who don't.
That isn't to say I don't struggle with them or sail blithely on without doubts or uncertainty.
We are subjectivity all the way down: thinking with the ideas of our language and tradition, even unconsciously. As Bourdieu put it “I know that I am caught up and comprehended in the world I take as my object”.
So, something profound that overwhelms the limits of language and the lessons we learn (with their traditional underpinnings) is clearly never going to be caught within either. Use all of yourself to aim at what might be: conscious ideas, intuition from your adaptive unconscious, your emotions. Be fully present and lean towards what feels right: how else do we approach the immense possibility of God?
I do not know in what way I can have any confidence in internal emotions or intuition for discovering external truths. It feels like deciding something is so because it'd be cool if it were.
Whenever I watch Star Trek I experience a powerful and enduring wish that Warp Drive were a thing. That doesn't get us any closer to it being a reality.
Your consciousness doesn’t tell you what emotions to feel and when, or how you should react. You just do, and the consequences follow.
We all go through life largely piloting our course through heuristics and associated intuition (Gigerenzer’s work is revelatory here), not logic.
Both emotions and the adaptive unconscious (the system that uses heuristics and drives intuition) are faster than conscious thought. Conscious thought is just the story you tell yourself about your reasons, after the fact.
It would be nice if Vulcan logic existed. That doesn’t get us any closer to it being a reality.
That may or may not all be so, but it doesn't mean that we can actually discover anything about the objective realities entirely external to us which would be so whether we imagine them or not, or indeed whether we even exist or not.
It won't tell us whether God is real, nor what he is like, if he is in fact an external reality. And I have no need of a God who is internal - ie made up by me and existing only in my imagination and hopes. Because when I die, that God dies too.
I said nothing about internal vs external realities. I don’t know what you are focussing on there, since I argued that we approach everything through interpretation - including ourselves. And some things only exist for us if we interpret them as possible (like community, relationships, love).
The point I am making is that everything you know about the world, and how we move about it and understand it, involves emotions, intuition and some conscious self-storying. There is no way of separating it out, but we can try to bring it together (in passing, Gigerenzer’s research suggested that when people work to align their conscious self-stories with their unconscious, they were generally happier).
We cannot be objective about even ourselves and how we think. Those internal thoughts don’t come out of nothing and from nowhere - did you invent the language? Did you define the categories you use to understand and explain yourself to yourself? Did you craft for yourself the concepts of what ‘proof’ and ‘God’ mean? Of course not, they come to you through formal and socialised learning, in a tradition built through the ages.
Maybe your emotions and heuristics, being closer to personal experience, are more your own. Maybe they are more you.
If we can’t reach an objective decision, what we can do is be fully present, acknowledge that we are not isolated sovereign intellects, try living ‘as if X’ and see how it works for us. I think we are both doing that, but in different ways, with a different kind or value of X.
It’s a leap of faith in either direction, not just one.
You have your instance of the fingerpost. The gospels. The full Monte Incarnation stories. Of Jesus. The Unnatural One.
We agree He's the greatest.
As writ He just isn't mine.
Disposition.
The last mystery is the Church.
I can see that being the case till the day I die, even after a trip to Launde or wherever.
Internal realities are what we feel and hope and intuit and dream. They are quite separate from external realities which we need to investigate as objectively as possible, even granting that complete objectivity isn't possible.
The problem with God is that if he exists he is an external reality but not one amenable to the regular tools for objective investigation. What that doesn't automatically mean is that he's amenable to internal subjective tools either. The multitude of hypotheses about God (or religions as we might call them) all of which have their adherents and the absence of any means of deciding between them that yields consistent results speaks to that, inasmuch as where you have mutually exclusive claims about God either only one, or none, of them can actually be correct.
Given the thousands of gods or Gods that people have 'found' intuitively (or their cultures have 'found' and told them to believe in) why on earth would I presume that the one that I formulate by intuition is somehow the real one?
How anyone understands God (or no-God) will be based on the traditions and language that shaped them, and their intuition and emotions, whether they will or not. So I am not advocating that you (or any one) should or even could form a robust definition of (a) true God.
It’s not an intellectual problem that can be solved, but a hard-to-grasp possible reality (as you indicate) that can only be lived towards. The fact that there isn’t ‘objective’ proof is intrinsic to how we know and understand. But that means it cuts both ways - you can’t objectively say yes or no.
You could ask yourself, if you wanted, what many traditions about God have in common and hold them in comparison. But that is just trying to intellectualise it again and misses the point that our different patterns of knowing can be genuine but all subjective interpretations - how we understand. Once you realise it is not an intellectual problem, all you can do is live with your whole self in the/a direction that feels right. Maybe that journey takes you to some shared or overlapping places anyway (as with, for example, Merton).
What am I missing?
All religion, all faith, all belief, all ritual, all superstition can have overwhelming external manifestation.
Signifying nothing.
Thing about this "everything is subjective" line is it isn't how we actually live day to say.
Take something as simple as the Wordle. There's a single, objective solution to any given day's puzzle, which you can only find by discovery - by solving the puzzle. There's nothing subjective about it. No amount of intuition or following my desires will make it other than it is. And regardless of the degree of interpretation of the answer, it's the same regardless of who solves it, so my supposedly subjective experience of the solution is such a solid analogue of the objective reality that it's hard to see any utility in dividing the two apart - to all intents and purposes I do have access to the objective internal reality.
This is fundamentally different to my decision whether I want to do sweetcorn or peas with the sausages tonight - unless my decision there is actually constrained by physical objective realities about chemical and electrical states in my brain - in which case it would be more accurate to say everything is in fact objective. If we're willing to have an entirely mechanistic universe with no free will at all.
Given that God, if he exists, is not a creation of my decision, then it seems to me he's a reality of the Wordle solution kind rather than the frozen vegetable choice kind. Whether he's a reality of an intellectually resolvable type, as the Wordle solution is, strikes me as an entirely different and orthogonal question.
I am well aware that the insolubility of God's existence cuts both ways - have I not already stated that I'm agnostic on the question?
We have senses.
Which you know about and explain to yourself through language, as a post rationalisation.
It’s based on the neurotypical.
I am not atypical, but based on my reading of direct accounts from those who are not (e.g. Higashida) the main differences will be in the handling of emotions and the difficulty of bringing the different ‘systems’ into integration. It’s one of those areas, I think, where more work is needed.
Words mean different things to different people. Why do some people engage and find pleasure and meaning in puzzles, and some not?
The point is not about the physical state of your brain, but how your different experience-informed systems of knowing (existing on parts of the physical substrate) interact in your interpretations and choices. Everyone’s sausages are a subjective choice, of course.
Thanks for the clarification on agnosticism. From my interpretation of your writing, it looked like a firmer negative than that.
There is a wide range of scientific investigation into religious acquisition and behaviour, across multiple disciplines. There's a short overview of the scientific study of religion as part of Stanford's entry on science and religion, and which references the more recent Cognitive Science of Religion: Also wikipedia and the British Psychological Society (outlining some of the research).
No, I'm not. I'm setting out a definition of what I mean by "God" in the sense of the entity I am considering the existence of. I'm not interested in and therefore not considering "gods" that only exist in my own head.
That is a completely different question to "what was the solution to the Wordle on <insert date here>?" though.
What seems to happen in these conversations (and @pease has also just done it) is to sidestep the actual question I'm talking about and substitute another one more amenable to the counter-argument.
When I'm booted up, aye.
I would describe your manoeuvres similarly - a shift in the grounds of debate offered, from an epistemological to an ontological focus, from how we know to what there is to be known, from a way of knowing that applies to all experience to an argument about internal vs external matters.
Conversations wander and we are both walking here, and trying to get someone to join us on the same path.
Are you able to give an objective explanation for why you want to continue a line of inquiry that you admit isn't subject to objective investigation?
The t-rex story always fascinates me. We used to think of it as standing like a kangaroo. But more evidence was found - footsteps, but without tail marks - that showed this was wrong. So not it is usually pictured horizontal.
In faith, we do something similar. We see evidence, we work it into our worldview, and (sometimes) change our views as more evidence comes to light. Coincidences can help to strengthen or weaken our faith, depending on how we deal with them. Like the t-rex, the accepted story had to be modified, because of new evidence.
But the innate belief that these bones and marks indicate massive creatures remains intact. Except for those whose worldview reject this entirely.
When I bring up examples that demonstrate why I believe that to be the case, and the response is "oh, let's talk about this instead" - well, that seems evasive to me.
I've never said that subjectivity is bad. Simply that it's different to objectivity.
But that's scarcely the point. That gods exist in people's heads I already know. The question is whether they also exist outside of people's heads as objective realities.
So the possibility that "gods only exist in your own head" is not excluded at all - it's the rational conclusion from discovering (if it were possible) that gods don't also exist outside of people's heads.
Again, reasons for doing things don't need to be objective. It's evidence for things that are claimed to be objective that needs to be itself objective. It's almost like you've misinterpreted my position to "objective good subjective bad"
My reason, regardless of -jectiveness, is forlorn hope, I think, that someone can give me a good reason for a stronger confidence that God actually exists.
Not especially, no. I've already figured that out.
The other day @Cameron said: Which I take to mean that we have internal/subjective inclinations that determine how we evaluate what is real or believable.
Doesn't matter. It's closer to what I mean.
The questions that I am currently thinking about are:
What disposes us to find the Gospels, for example, adequate for faith or not? How does each of us establish our individual "standards of evidence"?
It's not binary. A source is not either adequate or not. There are sources which are completely unreliable and ones that we can place a great deal of confidence in and everything in between.
Reality is we are disposed to give more weight to sources that reinforce what we already are committed to...
No they can't. And look at me. Still looking. Still sniffing round the birth and infancy of the Church for unnatural scent.
I buried my father three years ago. Well, strictly speaking the staff at the crem did their thing, but it's the phrase isn't it?
He spent his whole adult life looking for it, poor sod. Unlike thee and me he never went through a phase of thinking he'd found it.
It's difficult - and believe me I'm trying - separating the personal from the clinical discussion when you've got people telling you you're asking the wrong questions and thinking the wrong way. Sod it; this is the way my brain works. The way his worked.
God, if he exists, made those brains. He, if he exists, knows how they work. He knows what they need to discern him, if he exists. He knows how much they want to discern him. And yet, where is he?
Yes. I agree. I wonder what is the founation for those commitments, though.
I'm not tasking you with answering these questions for me, @KarlLB . I appreciate, though, that you're willing to talk about them from your experience. How will you decide where to sniff, and how will you evaluate what you find?
How much evidence is there to support the hypothesis that we post-rationalise to ourselves using natural language?
The decision to put research into that area might be inspired by people who wish as I do, but actually creating a Warp Drive would require an awful lot of research, experimentation and hard science. And if it's fundamentally impossible, no amount of wishing will change that. The fundamental point is that the physics underlying such a thing, if it is possible, is the same regardless of whether we want to build a Warp Drive or not.
Once again I feel like two fundamentally different things - in this case the desire to do something, and the means of making it happen, are being conflated.
One can't use language to explain how to use language. Even when one uses language to define a word that requires a knowledge of how to use a definition that cannot itself be defined.
(Yes, I have just been reading Wittgenstein on rules and private language.)
But if you state something is an objective reality that is an ontological claim. And you have done so many times.
But a key point - and this will be my last attempt at putting it, in deference to your frustration and other folks likely boredom - is that it is difficult to apprehend in an unproblematic way that something is external and objective vs internal and subjective, because of how we know things. The epistemological problem prevents the kind of ontological claims you are casually making.
My argument is that the same subjective systems are used to apprehend what is ‘in here’ and ‘out there’ - normally we interpret certain characteristics of experience to infer it’s likely in or out, but we still interpret it nonetheless. You don’t get unmediated access, from soem special objective standpoint, to what is ‘out there’. So it becomes problematic to say something is an objective reality.
But let me come at it another couple of ways, one of which includes your example.
(i) Let’s agree for a moment, for the sake of argument, that there are things out there and things internal to us. But you’ve only got the same personal and subjective emotional, intuitive and cognitive toolbox to deal with it all. So let’s apply that to your example. When people ‘discover exoplanets’ they look at certain signals, apply rules from a tradition they are socialised into (the current state of science) and interpret on that basis. Maybe exoplanets stimulate your emotions less than the colour of the lounge walls, or you are used to intuitive selection of colours (how else do you justify those puce walls?) but your subjective interest in exoplanets still involves your whole self - why do you notice things about exoplanets, why do you care - and that influences how you use the only interpretive systems that you have to engage with the (particular or general) idea of them. Think about how distinguished astronomers of the past were enthusiastic in interpreting images of Mars to show (non-existent) canals.
(ii) Think about what happens when you dream. It seems totally ‘real’ to you even though it is weird / frightening /peculiar. It seems like ‘outside’ but it can only be ‘inside’. Does that show what I mean about one set of subjective systems?
And I am spent!
Consequently I really don't know what your argument actually is.
I think development psychologists say that children pick up the rules in playing with and practicing language, their brains adapt. They don’t first build the idea of grammar or other sets of skills in order to ‘play’ at language, but have a complex and plastic brain that can be shaped by experience - if you like, the plane is built in flight.
But I am not a developmental psychologist and if one drives by with a better description I would not be surprised
Oh for goodness sake. I am sorry for the shorthand and not writing ‘apparently non-existent’ to couch it in properly subjective epistemological terms for you, so you wouldn’t strain at a gnat.
What if the astronomers observing Mars had been right, would that not have been their subjectivity at work then? Are people objective when their ideas are ‘right’, and subjective when supplanted by new interpretations?
Are people exploring the edge of scientific understanding now objective, unless they are found to be wrong later and then they are misled by their subjectivity retrospectively?
I think you have actually acknowledged my argument about intrinsic subjectivity here. Thanks.
My argument has never been that scientific researchers are always objective.
My argument is that the things they are trying to learn about are objective realities, and that that makes a difference to the tools best used to learn about those. Tools which attempt to reduce the subjectivity - e.g. double-blinding in drugs trials. Subjectivity in science tends to lead to getting it wrong - although there is such a thing as being right for the wrong reasons. There is a whole area within the philosophy of science dedicated to reducing as far as possible researcher subjectivity, for this very reason.
People who thought they saw canals on Mars were wrong at the time. They - and everyone else at the time - simply didn’t know it, in the same way that prior to Copernicus virtually everyone was wrong about what orbits what wrt sun and earth.
Well that’s fine, because it is not the point we’ve been discussing.