Your idea of God (“an extrapolation and idealized abstraction from human characteristics”) begs the question as it defines the concept using synthetic a posteriori propositions. Other descriptive categories can be used to describe a concept of God, including analytic a priori and synthetic a priori: i.e., God as creator, archetype, symbol, source of meaning, etc. Einstein’s thought experiments rely on imagined empirical observations which are considered self-evidently true. They do not work when the outcome of the experiment is purely conjectural. Conjecture, or more rightly intuition, is the genesis of scientific investigation, but scientific statements themselves are rooted firmly in the empirical by the principle of falsifiability.Zarathustra wrote:I disagree with every sentence in this paragraph. When the writer(s) of Genesis described the earth being made in 7 days, and spelled out what was made on which day, this was not a priori knowledge. The very idea of God--as an extrapolation and idealized abstraction from human characteristics--isn't a priori knowledge. In addition, scientific knowledge often starts out with pure conjecture, and no examination of empirical evidence whatsoever (e.g. Einstein's thought experiments). Empiricism and induction is not how science is done. [Check out David Deutsch's book THE BEGINNING OF INFINITY and our discussions in the Loresraat.]Mongnihilo wrote:Religious knowledge is synthetic a priori, scientific knowledge is synthetic a posteriori, any apparent contradictions are the result of one category's attempt to impinge upon or overrule the territory of the other. When religion did it to science, they were wrong. When science does it to religion, that is also wrong, and foolish. How can there ever be empirical answers to metaphysical questions?
Also begging the question. Though you do not hesitate to present a cosmogony for the origin of religion, it must be regarded as speculative rather than self-evident. The assignment of central importance to the literal interpretation of the creation story (or, mythos), though, suggests a certain amount of simplification or even reductionism in your view. The other, more spiritual, esoteric, and symbolic aspects of religious practice are completely ignored, as are the symbolic interpretations of the creation story. Many view the creation story of Judeo-Christianity as just that: a story concerned with the inference of a spiritual ethos, rather than the phenomenal description of a causal chain. In this way many Judeo-Christians find no contradiction between scientific knowledge about universal origins and the spiritual insight gained by the creation story.Religion started out as an attempt to explain the world. This was its "category." It was simply an unscientific explanation of the world. But its subject matter was the same as science (again, Genesis is a good example). Therefore, the two styles of explanation are in competition. The contradictions in these widely different explanations are ones of fact vs incorrect speculation. They are not apparent contradictions at all, but actual refutations.
Descriptors of phenomena are synthetic a posteriori, while intuitive concepts that are revealed subjectively fall into the category of synthetic a priori (among them concepts such as causality, continuity, the flow of time, etc.). Kant asserts and I accept that synthetic a priori knowledge can extend beyond these chiefly materialist heuristics into the realm of metaphysics, which includes spiritual truth, ethics, aesthetics, and other forms of transcendental experience. In contrast, you appear to indulge in a type of transcendental realism that affirms materialist heuristics as universal while casting out any other kind of non-materialist transcendentalism, and perhaps even denying their reality as subjective experiences.
Though it is not necessary to discuss the origins of religion here, it must be observed that man did not spring forth from the womb of nature in a labcoat. He had to acquire scientific modes of thought over aeons of cultural happenstance. So your anachronistic value judgments concerning the nature and motivations that lay behind primal religious experience and thought are unwarranted. I feel (and it is possible to disagree) that the influence of archetypes are a better way to conceive of man’s emergent relationship with religious ideas.
There can be empirical answers to metaphysical questions simply because some metaphysics are incompatible with our observations of the universe ... just as scientific theories about what happened prior to the Big Bang can be tested because some imply different outcomes than what we observe. Also, some metaphysical theories can be rejected on the basis of being bad explanations of reality, or irrational thinking, without looking at empirical evidence at all.
The rejection of metaphysical materialist heuristics, such as has occurred with time and causality thanks to modern physics, are distinct from transcendental metaphysics which are experienced subjectively. In that materialist heuristics are fundamental to the investigation of empirical phenomena, they must always be regarded as provisional as they cannot be established empirically. Transcendental experiences, OTOH, cannot be falsified along the same lines as that which is observed without, as the transcendental experience is the thing-in-itself rather than a heurism used provisionally to rationalize it. I’m not the first to say this nor the most able, I refer you to the various forms of Cogito over the centuries. It is notable, of course, that it is just to these types of transcendental experiences that people usually attach the most significance, and which are most strongly associated with religion.
Again, I disagree with every sentence here. It's not an appeal to credulity any more than a theory of a magical proton being rejected because it violates known laws of physics. The Jesus myth does not include the possibility that he alone had access to alien technology. It's a story about the Son of God. We can reject this conjecture on the basis of its alleged supernatural elements alone, just as we would reject any myth containing supernatural elements ... such a rejection is based on methodological naturalism, not appeal to credulity.Mongnihilo wrote:The points about the miracles of Christ are merely an appeal to credulity, it does not rest on anything more substantial than the observation that "I haven't personally seen it happen, and I don't trust the reports that it does." But a human body, for instance, in Z's way of thinking is merely a self-assembled self-sustaining set of proteins. In what way is it fundamentally impossible to reanimate one? It isn't, and you know that if you apply your logic with rigor. There are many possibilities, none of which can be definitively eliminated absent proof.
For instance, suppose that Christ never existed and people made the stories up. Or, alternately, Christ had access to alien technology that merely appeared miraculous, as well as insights into the spiritual nature of creation at a level that allowed him to transcend what we conceive of as the expected limitations of mind and matter. You don't have to believe any of that, but you certainly cannot say that it did not happen in any sort of definitive way. You can simply speculate about the probabilities against it, which of course are based on the incomplete information accumulated by a field of inquiry practiced by pretentious simians who are yet barely able to control their primal instincts much less rigorously discipline their cognitive apparati.
Absence of evidence does not equal evidence of absence. You cannot disprove the existence of a phenomenon simply because you are unable to rationalize it or propose a method whereby it can be accomplished that satisfies your sensibilities. As said before, all you can do is consider the matter inductively which introduces a probability calculus, albeit one with uncertain veracity.
In what way does Schrodinger’s Cat, the double slit experiment, and Gödel’s theorem suggest to you that the universe is fundamentally explicable. The mere fact of phenomenon does not prove that said phenomenon can also be successfully rationalized. And that is what you are really talking about when you use the word “explicable.” Rationalized means assembled into a coherent narrative (causality, continuity, time) that appeals to the human intellect. Yes, certain phenomena can be rationalized within certain bounds, provided that a set of phenomena can be assembled into models with explanatory and predictive power. Yet even there, some of the most comprehensively predictive models are some of the least explanatory – and it really shouldn’t be necessary to refer to quantum mechanics at this point. There is a model that defies all attempts to rationalize it.The universe is explicable. Supernatural phenomena are not. Thus, the universe is not supernatural; if it were, it wouldn't be explicable. Assuming otherwise--or even allowing for the possibility--is itself irrational, by definition, because it's allowing for the possibility that the universe isn't rational/explicable. Such a belief is in the same class as creationism, spontaneous generation, and superstition in general. It's the rejection of the possibility of scientific progress, which the past few centuries have shown is not only possible but actual. Our very existence depends upon the universe operating by explicable rules. We would not be here to debate it if that weren't the case. I can say that Jesus (the Son of God in the story) didn't exist because I do exist. And I can say that definitively.
