IUBio

Deities cannot exist because of their consciousness

Wolf Kirchmeir wwolfkir at sympatico.can
Fri Dec 5 09:43:48 EST 2003


On Thu, 04 Dec 2003 22:16:08 -0600, Alan Wostenberg wrote:

>That impossibility follows on hypothesis ours is a world of closed 
>natural causes, and nothing supernatural can "get in". But why can't the 
>supernatural invade the natural? Why couldn't an Omnipotent Being reveal 
>Himself to us?

"God" could only reveal itself to humans in natural modes, else we could not
experience the revelation - we would simply not know it was there. That means
we would experience the supernatural as part of the natural. [I'm going to
use G to refer to "god" from here on.]

We could conclude nothing about G's supernatural properties from such a
revelation. Moreover, that intersection between the natural and supernatural
would be an incomplete version of G That in turn means that if G reveals
itself to different people in different ways, all their claims about it would
be true -- as far as their experience goes. But not as far as the properties
of G go.

IOW, even if G is supernatural and real, at best humans would have an
incomplete knowledge or experience of it. Hence arguing about its properties
is pointless. Even arguing about its existence is pointless, since logically
an experience of G could also be some kind of hallucination.*** The best that
can be done is to share experiences of G, which is in fact what mystics do.
(But non-mystics prefer to argue, which is I think psychologically if not
philosophically significant.) IOW, the existence of nonexistence of G cannot
be proven. IMO the best comment made on this issue (but I don't recall by
whom) is that "God exists" and "God does not exist" are axioms.

***A psych. professor at Laurentian University, Sudbury ON, has experimental
results that suggest that G experiences are in fact hallucinations of some
sort. He uses low level pulsed magnetic fields applied to the brain. His
subjects report all kinds of interesting experiences, including ones that
resemble those reported by mystics. Of course, a supernatural G could induce
those hallucinations, but logically there is no way to distinguish G-induced
from magnetic-field induced hallucinations. Sorry, can't recall his name
offhand.

HTH

-- 
Wolf Kirchmeir, Blind River ON Canada
"Nature does not deal in rewards or punishments, but only in consequences."
(Robert Ingersoll)






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