Proof of the Existence of God

I had a quick browse around your site and read your "Proof of the Existence of God" with curiosity. To be sure I'm on the you-in-college side. I do not quite intend to start a God/no God discussion here, out of the blue. Still I'd like to say this:

you-now says: "I'm going to leave you right where it leaves you. You said earlier that you don't know if there is a God, and you at least half-admitted that you feel intellectually superior to people who choose to believe in one simply because it gives their life direction. Well, you have to choose some direction for your life—every minute, you choose—and you're going to base it on whatever you believe is true. But you've just concluded that neither logic, nor any sensory experience whatsoever, can help you decide what is actually worth doing with your life. So you're stuck, right?"

Indeed I do not know in what sense me wondering about dx and your website helping me with it are 'real' rather than some sort of 'dream'. But I wonder in what sense the help and satisfaction you give me (and others) with your pages could be so 'not actually real' that they would not be 'worth doing'—irrespective of what unknown entities and aspects of reality may or may not exist. Granted, perhaps you making the pages or me reading them actually contributes to something horrible in the real reality out there. But we can say nothing about that beyond the expanding reaches of science, and can only keep tabs for the world which we currently know. Positing an outside 'god' does not really change that—other than to perhaps hush us into assuming that the unknown real reality won't be so bad. The latter may be reassuring but I can't see how it can be really reassuring to an inquisitive mind.

Just to clarify: I am certainly not attempting to prove that God exists. What I am trying to show is that the kind of "proof" that many people demand—proof based on some sensory experience of a violation of the laws of nature, for instance—is useless. If there is a God, and if it lies in our power to find Him, it does not lie in that direction.

But it does tie in (for me) with the question of purpose. You assume that "the tally here takes human (and perhaps animal) satisfaction as its measure" but I find that very unsatisfying. Is the goal to have as many happy people as possible? If so, we have a moral obligation to procreate as much as possible. Or perhaps the goal is to increase the "average happiness," in which case we should go around killing sad people?

And anyway, if happiness is nothing more than a particular chemical state in the brain that we pursue for reasons of blind evolution, then how can it have any moral force?

Hi again!

Just to clarify: I am certainly not attempting to prove that God exists. What I am trying to show is that the kind of "proof" that many people demand—proof based on some sensory experience of a violation of the laws of nature, for instance—is useless. If there is a God, and if it lies in our power to find Him, it does not lie in that direction.

Well, the concept of a 'violation of the laws of nature' makes no sense to me, nor do words like 'supernatural'. If it's there, it's part of nature. I am quite happy to think that we might one day find out about some currently unnoticed part of nature that goes some way towards putting some purpose in the universe. Then again, maybe not. To be honest, I don't feel that the whole of the universe, with its multitude of forming and collapsing stars and so on, seems very purposeful. But as stated, we may not have looked at the right things.

This hypothethical purpose-giving Thing certainly isn't making its purpose very clear if you ask me, but then again, maybe it's more of a deistic Thing.

As for your using 'Him', do you envision a Bible sort of god (male etc.) - why?

But it does tie in (for me) with the question of purpose. You assume that "the tally here takes human (and perhaps animal) satisfaction as its measure" but I find that very unsatisfying. Is the goal to have as many happy people as possible? If so, we have a moral obligation to procreate as much as possible. Or perhaps the goal is to increase the "average happiness," in which case we should go around killing sad people?

Good questions for sure, and difficult and paradoxical ones. If you're a vegetarian, then should there even be cows? But I think they're actually questions that humanity (and each of us) is going to have to face one way or another, sometime. Or I hope we will. Maybe. I'm not sure how nice a world would be where the question "What are we really doing it all for?" figures more prominently in daily politics. But to me it seems almost like an unavoidable step in the story of mankind's enquiring mind. Unless it proves too scary or expensive a question to face, collectively.

And anyway, if happiness is nothing more than a particular chemical state in the brain that we pursue for reasons of blind evolution, then how can it have any moral force?

I object to the "nothing more" argument. You might as well (or more correctly even!) rephrase it: a chemical state in the brain equates to nothing less than happiness! That's much more optimistic. A wall is not "nothing more" than some bricks and mortar. Bricks and mortar, put in a particular way, are nothing less than a wall, which can protect you from the elements and hold up the Mona Lisa. That's the 'magic plus' of organisation of matter.

(I think a lot of Cartesian/Christian/Platonic talk about 'nonmaterial stuff' comes from confusion about how organisation of matter alters things even though there 'is' only matter.)

But to answer your question on moral force (and I wished I had a neat scheme of thought about morality, but it eludes me)... No, a man or a frog being happy (or whatever state corresponds for a frog) doesn't really carry any intrinsic moral value, except to the creature itself perhaps, and maybe only to the extent that the creature is self-reflexive. And if you have self-reflexive dude A and self-reflexive dude B, both hungry, and only one apple, their moralities may well be in conflict. But if their reflexivity extends beyond the self, there can be a debate and some sort of agreement (democratic, technocratic, inebriated...) on the morality of the situation. This agreement will be artificial but not therefore bad ('bad' again seen from the perspective of those who have any interest in the matter).

I can make other arguments to this effect, but for me, the bottom line is this: I cannot meaningfully choose any direction in my life or even my day-to-day decisions without believing that there is some purpose higher than a happy person. Does that make sense?

I sympathise with that to the extent that anyone would get bewildered once they start questioning what stuff is actually like. But I find your solution, in my turn, "very unsatisfying". You ask the right questions about morality, find no answers in facts (for facts say little about morality), and rather than to say "now we have to do it ourselves" you make this leap of faith and go with (a variant of) something someone once invented because they didn't know better or to be at ease or whatever the causes were.

I also fail to understand what purpose (higher than happy persons) religious people suppose God (or gods, or...) could have that is so satisfying. Why create the universe we live in? What can be the purpose of that? Even if we were to discover some very esoteric purpose beyond our ken (maybe the gods are competing in universe-building), then (a) is that really so cool necessarily? and (b) what does it imply—if anything—for our morals? But I don't see signs of purpose beyond those fueled by material self-organisation. And I think we have to work with what we have there.

There's also this train of thought in christianity about how we have to 'be good' or else pay for our sins and all that, which I find circular and illogical to the extent that I can't really phrase it properly; as well as aggravating—why create us if it's only so we can suffer + feel the joy of non-suffering? If something indicated that really was the situation (nothing does, if you ask me), I'd be pretty miffed/outraged.

Pray tell what sort of purpose you're suspecting and/or hoping for (these shouldn't coincide necessarily). If you say 'dunno, but hoping for the best', ok, back to the leap of faith issue.

I think my responses to the issues you raise here are actually in my humility essay. The core point of that essay is that any mental model we build of God is wholly inadequate. I don't have a problem with people who get specific ("God created the universe, loves mankind, sent His only Son, etc") although I don't personally share their capacity for faith. But I do have a big problem if they believe that God is so small that He fits entirely within their conceptions. Whatever you think the universe is, it is actually bigger than that— much, much, much bigger, and quite possibly infinitely bigger— and that's where the humility comes in.

So in terms of purpose, I find Christian answers...not satisfying, but at least inspiring or interesting...when they are vague and serve as pointers to something we can't understand ("our purpose is to glorify God" or "to allow the holy spirit to act through you"). I find them very unsatisfying when they get specific and easy to understand ("when you die, if you had faith then you go to an eternity of heaven, and otherwise an eternity of torture"). The same is true for most religions. I think they are useful as pointers to something much higher, but lose that usefulness when taken as doctrines that circumscribe truth itself.