ID as a Cultural Phenomenon (Humans)

by xeno6696 , Sonoran Desert, Friday, September 25, 2009, 03:18 (5330 days ago) @ dhw

dhw:-> You wrote: My greater overall point is that for either raw materialism or immaterialism, the conclusions of no god and there is a god are purely filled in by philosophical predisposition on the matter. If you do not have this predisposition, the data is clearly inconclusive.
> 
> I'm not sure that either David or George would say their conclusions are based on philosophical predisposition (though maybe they won't identify with "raw"), but that is for them to say. I'm 100% in agreement about the inconclusiveness of the data ... but who knows, maybe my philosophical predisposition favours inconclusiveness.
>-Though David already chimed in: The logic is inescapable. If you do not have actual knowledge about the creator, all you are doing is airing opinion or conviction. (This makes me unpopular with many people, but its true.) You can make inferences all you wish, but as you are well aware, cogency isn't the same as soundness. 
 
> I offered the concept of a God that was not perfect, omniscient and omnipotent. You wrote: Here we are presented with the fact that the creator is imperfect. [...] Since that might be the case, we would have no way of telling the difference between God and our own selves. My statement is that this line of thinking is projecting humanity for our own sake.
> -My issue with the "imperfect designer" is probably due to my barbarian instincts that tell me that a being as powerful as this god could've done things a little better. I realize I'm little better than a Calvinist; but note they share that same Teutonic tendencies. -> ... For me this view renders the relationship between God and our world far more comprehensible, and at a stroke does away with the intellectual contortions necessary to explain such contrasts as good and evil. But "no way of telling the difference between God and our own selves"? I think there are vast differences. We don't even know what form he might take ... a universal mind can hardly be compared to a tiny finite body. That mind is incalculably more intelligent, more knowledgeable, more creative than ours. The human mind simply boggles at its inventiveness. We're not talking only of life on Earth, but of everything else that's out there, of which we know only a fraction. Just as I would argue that mentally and emotionally we differ from animals by degree, I would argue that we differ from God by a degree that's beyond measurement, but it still makes sense to me that if he's there, we are in some respects his reflections. 
> -The only thing I can really say here is what my signature spams. Though Xenophanes was critiquing Homer, his words can be cleverly misconstrued to say that the "humanness" of gods is really just that of ourselves and our race collectively looking in the mirror. How much of what we know about the creator only comes from ancient peoples long past that had no access to ANY of the basic knowledge about the world that we currently possess? If we say that literal traditions are also meaningless, it destroys an even larger array of humanity. When you take all the humanity away from god(s) and make them that totally abstract... I actually agree with some Christian theologians when they say that there is no point in worshiping such a cold and distant deity. -> You agree that almost all cultures believe in something spiritual, but "this something is so incredibly vague and abstract that it becomes meaningless." 
> 
> I would not equate vagueness and abstractness with meaninglessness. Indefinability, unknowability, maybe. If there's a designer (I really like your distinction between ID and design, by the way ... very useful), I'd say its nature is unknowable; we can only speculate on it (as I've done above), and all religions are based on such speculations. You say, "a truth can only be truth if it remains such regardless of your frame of reference". Clearly such objectivity is impossible here, but I'm not sure that truth is always what matters. Love, beauty, music etc. have a reality and hence a meaningfulness for each of us, though their essential nature may be indefinable and unknowable, and concepts vary from one society to another. Maybe all concepts of the designer are asymptotes (I had to look it up, and it's a really good image). There's no way they can actually join up with the thing itself, but maybe they do come close in their own way. On the other hand, of course, there may not be any "thing" for them to come close to.-Well, I can't speak for the designer, but what we do in Calculus is see what number the asymptote is moving infinitely towards and say "that's the answer."

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\"Why is it, Master, that ascetics fight with ascetics?\"

\"It is, brahmin, because of attachment to views, adherence to views, fixation on views, addiction to views, obsession with views, holding firmly to views that ascetics fight with ascetics.\"