IUBio

Deities cannot exist because of their consciousness

keith keithj43 at yahoo.com
Fri Dec 12 17:57:35 EST 2003


"Wolf Kirchmeir" <wwolfkir at sympatico.can> wrote in message news:<jbysxveflzcngvpbpna.hpffl00.pminews at news1.sympatico.ca>...
> 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.]


This seems to be a bald assertion on your part (not that there's
anything wrong with that:-). But why should I think that we wouldn't
understand a revelation made in a non-natural mode? What do you mean
by "revelation is natural modes"? Would you call having a strong
feeling of convincement a natural mode?
> 
(snip)


> 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.***


So could *all* of our experiences. Since that fact doesn't pose a
problem for most things, why does it pose a problem for knowledge of
God?

> 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.


Of course there is no way to distinguish any authentic experience from
a hallucination. I still don't see the problem.

Keith
> 
> HTH



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