Significance or God

[tariki]

I think it is maybe best to begin by asking if our world, our Reality, the cosmos, has significance. It sometimes seems to me that to begin by asking "Is there a God" comes with far too much baggage, bringing in presumptions born of beliefs, creeds and doctrines of whatever culture we are have been born into. Instead of the simple question itself sometimes we are more likely to perhaps start rabbiting on about the behaviour of "religious types" and thanking our lucky stars that we have nothing to do with it!

But significance. Speaking only for myself, that there is undoubtedly something rather than nothing suggests that Reality has some sort of meaning/significance. That is simply the thought/conclusion that overwhelms me. Me, myself! I don't offer it as any sort of logical argument.

Reality having meaning/significance, that I can conclude this, reflect upon such thoughts, then suggests that as a human being we have some part to play within such.

That is it. The starting point.

To add, from my own knowledge of the various Faith spoken Traditions - and certainly from the actual experience spoken of by those who immerse themselves in any one of them - the actual distinction between theism and non-theism becomes very problematic.

For instance, reading one or two of the great Christian mystics I wonder exactly where there is a true "dividing line". In the "negative way" (Apophatic Theology) God is the great "incomprehensible"....beyond thought. One such mystic, Meister Eckhart, in his Sermon on "True Poverty", speaks this way of God:-

Nothing that knowledge can grasp, or desire can want, is God. Where knowledge and desire end, there is darkness; and there God shines.

Obviously, those who equate "knowledge" of a "God" with a particular set of doctrines, creeds and beliefs, even "salvation" itself - desiring eternal safety! - would have difficulty in comprehending Eckhart's words at any level. Yet as said, at the level of experience, of personal transformation, often Buddhist (non-theist) can meet Christian (theist) and find much common ground, even true communion.

 

Any thoughts?

[romansh]

Atoms and molecules have affinities for certain configurations. Atoms generally 'like' full orbitals and some molecular structures are 'preferred. Similarly, Biology has certain stable ecologies which depend on the environment. Speaking from a stability point of view non-life is where it is at? 

Life is, if we like, an aberration in death. My affinity is to enjoy it whilst it lasts.

What has significance or God for that matter, to do with anything?

Edited December 18, 2022 by romansh

[tariki]

2 hours ago, romansh said:

Atoms and molecules have affinities for certain configurations. Atoms generally 'like' full orbitals and some molecular structures are 'preferred. Similarly, Biology has certain stable ecologies which depend on the environment. Speaking from a stability point of view non-life is where it is at? 

Life is, if we like, an aberration in death. My affinity is to enjoy it whilst it lasts.

What has significance or God for that matter, to do with anything?

Well, you appear to see what Reality there is as simply matter/energy (or whatever the latest word is) in motion. Basically random yet "obeying" some kind of law, or combination of laws. Our own existent some sort of chance result. "Enjoy" it while it lasts.

All the best

 

[romansh]

1 hour ago, tariki said:

Well, you appear to see what Reality there is as simply matter/energy (or whatever the latest word is) in motion.

You appear to see what I see as simple.

[PaulS]

5 hours ago, romansh said:

Atoms and molecules have affinities for certain configurations. Atoms generally 'like' full orbitals and some molecular structures are 'preferred. Similarly, Biology has certain stable ecologies which depend on the environment. Speaking from a stability point of view non-life is where it is at? 

Life is, if we like, an aberration in death. My affinity is to enjoy it whilst it lasts.

What has significance or God for that matter, to do with anything?

Rom, could there be a 'why' question in there though - as in "Why do atoms and molecules have certain configurations?  Why do some atoms like one thing and other atoms another?"

[romansh]

42 minutes ago, PaulS said:

Rom, could there be a 'why' question in there though - as in "Why do atoms and molecules have certain configurations?  Why do some atoms like one thing and other atoms another?"

Which why? are you referring to Paul ... what causes these certain configurations or what is the purpose? The problem with answering the cause of the configurations will quite naturally lead to other questions.  

I am sure I have posted this before ... Feynman is far more eloquent than I am when it comes to why?

 

 

[PaulS]

27 minutes ago, romansh said:

Which why? are you referring to Paul ... what causes these certain configurations or what is the purpose? The problem with answering the cause of the configurations will quite naturally lead to other questions.  

I am sure I have posted this before ... Feynman is far more eloquent than I am when it comes to why?

Let's run with 'what' causes certain configurations then.  And once we answer what causes those certain configurations, can we then answer what causes those causes to cause configurations, and once we answer that, can we answer what causes those causes to cause other causes to cause configurations.

I won't disagree that it could be an infinite question, but until we have have the finite answer, perhaps there could be a significance that we are unaware of, couldn't there be?

[romansh]

It's OK at some point to say I don't know Paul. And collectively we can have fun trying to find out. 

We don't need to hypothesize fairies under my garden shed though and claim they are doing it.

[PaulS]

Yeah, I agree it's okay to not know and also that we can have fun finding out - which is where hypothesizing about fairies or 'God' comes into it I guess. 

Which for me, questioning Derek's point about 'significance' goes straight to nowhere if I answer it by saying "I don't know".  I mean I don't know, that is true, so my only choice is to not ask that question, or hypothesize about it.  What other possible way forward is there to try and answer these questions, if one should want to ask them?

[romansh]

1 hour ago, PaulS said:

Which for me, questioning Derek's point about 'significance' goes straight to nowhere if I answer it by saying "I don't know".

OK ... first, things we find significant ... we may have an affinity for or perhaps an aversion to. Going nowhere? Perhaps simply neutral on the subject. 

1 hour ago, PaulS said:

I mean I don't know, that is true, so my only choice is to not ask that question

Questions we might ask include why is nothing our default state? Does postulating something that is not testable by definition get us anywhere? The three-year-old asking Who made God? sees right through the charade.

[tariki]

9 hours ago, romansh said:

You appear to see what I see as simple.

I did post more than what you actually quoted of me. 

i'm certainly not seeking to put you in a box marked as "understood". 

 

[tariki]

 

I am running much the same thread on the Mental Health Forum and getting some fine results. Just to share, a cut and paste of a post I have made there:-

 

I'm at the edge of my own understanding here, I am still - on and off, mainly "off"...  - trying to understand/assimilate the thought of Dogen, the 13th century Japanese zen master. He wrote in an old style of Japanese (imagine reading Chaucer's olde English) and therefore evenst the Japanese find him difficult to interpret. Again, he wrote much in poetry.

Yet his reputation grows in the West, among those seeking to relate human consciousness to the advances of theoretical physics - relativity, string theory, chaos theory, quantum leaps and all the rest of it. Mind boggling stuff. No "privileged time" either to form a backdrop - and obviously, at the moment, with our cosmological knowledge in flux, a mixture of both proven theories and speculation. The new paradigm sought, the grand "theory of everything" seemingly far distant.

And so Telegram Sam flounders ar times, but as I say, Dogen and his thought hold my interest - using suitable commentaries.

First, an idea associated with the "dropping of body and mind" which of course has nothing to do with having an empty head, or "not thinking" and all the rest of it. The idea of "ultimate meaninglessness". Over to a commentator:-

To cast off the body-mind did not nullify historical and social existence so much as to put it into action so that it could be the self-creative and self-expressive embodiment of Buddha-nature. In being “cast off,” however, concrete human existence was fashioned in the mode of radical freedom—purposeless, goalless, objectless, and meaningless. Buddha-nature was not to be enfolded in, but was to unfold through, human activities and expressions. The meaning of existence was finally freed from and authenticated by its all-too-human conditions only if, and when, it lived co-eternally with ultimate meaninglessness.

This seems, in a strange sense, to nullify "nihilsm", suggesting that "meaninglessness" is in actual fact a necessity if meaning and freedom at our human level is to be possible.

And in Dogen ontology, epistemology, and soteriology were inseparably united. If we are indeed part of the world, then knowledge of the world, in the final analysis, means that part of the world knows itself and consciousness is woven wholly into Cosmos.

Perhaps I have to add that one fine commentator (Hee-Jin Kim) suggests that such creative practice-expression is not a matter of some refined understanding, but of deep trust in the activity of Buddha-nature:- “(Dogens thought) cannot be fully understood apart from consideration of faith" , the trust in the liberative qualities of spaciality and temporality.

Anyway, I plod on. I never meant to rabbit on so much. In many ways I'm a simple guy, and in the end I think it IS all very simply, that finally, as the Good Book (!) says:- "A little child shall lead them".

"Love has no why" Meister Eckhart.

 

 

[PaulS]

3 hours ago, romansh said:

Questions we might ask include why is nothing our default state? Does postulating something that is not testable by definition get us anywhere? The three-year-old asking Who made God? sees right through the charade.

I reckon lots of things would have been regarded as 'not testable' when they were first postulated.  I'm not saying we start with the postulation that there is a God, but rather continue the question "where does everything come from"?

Of course the 3yr old sees through the charade, but still the question remains - where does everything come from?  Why do things exist?  

[romansh]

7 hours ago, PaulS said:

I reckon lots of things would have been regarded as 'not testable' when they were first postulated.

Agree 100 %. Isn't God by definition "not testable"? If such an entity were testable it would not bear the label of God.

7 hours ago, PaulS said:

but rather continue the question "where does everything come from"?

Yep. But I would also repeat the question why is nothing our default state? In Hawking's and Mlodinow's The Grand Design ... they believe they have a sufficient understanding of where everything comes from and that there is no need to invoke a God. While I agree with them there is no need to invoke a God, where everything comes from is beyond my understanding.

7 hours ago, PaulS said:

Why do things exist?  

And what scientific texts have we read on this subject? 

[romansh]

9 hours ago, tariki said:

I did post more than what you actually quoted of me. 

i'm certainly not seeking to put you in a box marked as "understood". 

It was not me you were putting in a box.  

[tariki]

2 hours ago, romansh said:

It was not me you were putting in a box.  

Oh, I get it now. YOU are putting me in a box "as understood". 

[romansh]

3 minutes ago, tariki said:

I get it now.

I'm not sure you do Derek.

Edited December 19, 2022 by romansh

[PaulS]

5 hours ago, romansh said:

Agree 100 %. Isn't God by definition "not testable"? If such an entity were testable it would not bear the label of God.

I understand that may be a Christian 'position', but I don't see why God would not be testable and/or can't be testable, if God (whatever that means) existed.

5 hours ago, romansh said:

Yep. But I would also repeat the question why is nothing our default state? In Hawking's and Mlodinow's The Grand Design ... they believe they have a sufficient understanding of where everything comes from and that there is no need to invoke a God. While I agree with them there is no need to invoke a God, where everything comes from is beyond my understanding.

I'm not suggesting anybody invoke God because something is beyond our understanding.  I'm saying that 'God', whatever that means, can't be ruled out.  If people suggest they feel there is a purpose to our existence, who am I to say 'wrong', if I can't prove.  I know we can think they are mistaken, but that is just opinion.

5 hours ago, romansh said:

And what scientific texts have we read on this subject? 

Me personally - not an awful lot, but I might look into 'The Grand Design'.  Thanks for the suggestion.

[tariki]

2 hours ago, romansh said:

I'm not sure you do Derek.

To be honest mate, I have no idea what you are on about. 

I'll take a rest from this.

All the best.

 

 

 

[romansh]

18 minutes ago, PaulS said:

I understand that may be a Christian 'position', but I don't see why God would not be testable and/or can't be testable, if God (whatever that means) existed.

I understand it might belong to the Abrahamic set. In the sense, if we assign properties to this God, I agree with you. The same the Michelson Morley experiment tested for the luminiferous ether. But in our collective understanding, there is no need to postulate a 'creator' or whatever.

24 minutes ago, PaulS said:

I'm saying that 'God', whatever that means, can't be ruled out.

The way I am reading this is: We can't rule out whatever we don't have a clue about. Now by definition, I am agnostic (or even atheistic) about Gods I have not dreamt up yet. But I don't see a need to go out and bat for what I haven't dreamt of yet.

30 minutes ago, PaulS said:

If people suggest they feel there is a purpose to our existence, who am I to say 'wrong', if I can't prove.  I know we can think they are mistaken, but that is just opinion.

If people were to argue they feel they have a purpose or even think there is a purpose then there is no argument there from me. Just an opinion? Trump was a good president is an opinion. Not all opinions are equal. Some opinions have foundations built on sand and some on rock.

What can you prove Paul? All we can do is provide corroborating evidence and go where the evidence takes us. 

[PaulS]

2 minutes ago, romansh said:

What can you prove Paul? All we can do is provide corroborating evidence and go where the evidence takes us. 

I think we largely agree, but I am taking it one step further and saying that hypothesizing about things we can't presently prove might just lead to corroborating evidence one day.  It seems to me that the cart is before the horse if we say we shouldn't hypothesize about something if we can't already demonstrate its existence.  Sure, there are lots of things said in this 'God' space that are claimed as evidence which I think you and I would argue against, and perhaps humankind has postulated on a reason for existence ever since it gained self-consciousness without ever demonstrating an empirically demonstrated answer, but that doesn't mean the thinking in this space should cease.

I don't see a need to go out and bat for what I haven't dreamt of yet either, but there is plenty of claims of 'intuition' (for lack of a better word) that there is more to our existence than meets the eye - so I don't rule it out entirely.  If anything, I don't mind speculating about it, but I don't bat for it either.

[romansh]

7 hours ago, PaulS said:

I think we largely agree

We largely do

7 hours ago, PaulS said:

hypothesizing about things we can't presently prove might just lead to corroborating evidence one day

Again I will go to my stand-by fairies under the garden shed hypothesis. Of course it is nonsense, but how much time and effort should we spend on this nonsense? You imply we shouldn't not hypothesize. I sort of agree. But hypothesis has a technical meaning ... hypotheses are based on evidence. Avogadro's hypothesis was based on evidence and it pulled together earlier gas laws. 

What is the God hypothesis? What is the evidence for this hypothesis?

7 hours ago, PaulS said:

plenty of claims of 'intuition' (for lack of a better word) that there is more to our existence than meets the eye

Personally, I am certain that there is more to our existence than meets the eye. God arguments seem to be quite often an argument from incredulity ... I can't see how there can be a universe without a God type thing. 

Can you list the possible reasons (for you) to consider the possibility of God? 

For me ... the ignostic part of me does not have a clue what realistically God means; so, until we can define some properties of this God entity the whole exercise seems pointless. Sherwin Wine had a point (Wiki) I think:

Wine coined the word ignosticism. It is the view that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of God can be meaningfully discussed.

And a quote from my favourite author:
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Edited December 20, 2022 by romansh

[PaulS]

1 hour ago, romansh said:

What is the God hypothesis? What is the evidence for this hypothesis?

I'm not sure I'd call it a 'God' hypothesis, maybe a "perhaps there's more to this life and universe and what we call natural, than we understand presently" hypothesis!

Maybe people 'sensing' significance or something 'more' is grounds to consider such a hypothesis and yes, perhaps we will still be ruminating about it in 2000 years time too!  

1 hour ago, romansh said:

Personally, I am certain that there is more to our existence than meets the eye. God arguments seem to be quite often an argument from incredulity ... I can't see how there can be a universe without a God type thing. 

Can you list the possible reasons (for you) to consider the possibility of God? 

Again, I'm not suggesting hypothesizing God as in some sort of master creator, but rather I question whether there could be God in the sense that there is something 'beyond' our physical understanding of life and this universe.  Some things that make me question such possibilities:

- I can't explain how I believe I communicated with spirits during a seance
- I believe I had a spirit (possibly my uncle) being near to me for months following his death
- The accuracy of a psychic who was so accurate about all sort sorts of things including my future wife who at the time I didn't even know existed
- Something that Bishop Shelby Spong wrote once along the lines of questioning just ‘why’ living things have this desire to live, even weeds which seek to grow in a crack in the pavement.  I too wonder just why there is this will to live in things that contain living cells. 

BUT, I accept there could be other very physical explanations as well.  I just don't know is all.

1 hour ago, romansh said:

For me ... the ignostic part of me does not have a clue what realistically God means; so, until we can define some properties of this God entity the whole exercise seems pointless. Sherwin Wine had a point (Wiki) I think:

Wine coined the word ignosticism. It is the view that a coherent definition of God must be presented before the question of the existence of God can be meaningfully discussed.

And a quote from my favourite author:
Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

That's fair enough - but I wonder if the word 'God' gets in our way with all the baggage that comes with it.  I don't have a clue what realistically God means either, but neither do I realistically understand why things existed before the big bang either, or where they came from for that matter.  And I understand like the 3yr old that that might be a never ending question, but maybe it's not too.

My twist to your favourite author: "I don't have to believe there are fairies at the bottom of my garden to enjoy its beauty, but I am curious why my garden exists at all".

[romansh]

8 hours ago, PaulS said:

I am curious why my garden exists at all

If your twist were true we would be discussing:
The Grand Design Hawking and Mlodinow ✔️
A Universe from Nothing Laurence Krauss
The Big Picture Sean Carroll ✔️
Until the End of Time Brian Greene
Einstein's  Unfinished Revolution Lee Smolin ✔️
The Elegant Universe Brian Greene
The Theory of Almost Everything Robert Oerter
The Fallacy of Fine Tuning Victor Stenger

To be fair these books are not easy and won't answer the Why? that you are looking for. I have put some ticks for the ones I would start with.

9 hours ago, PaulS said:

"perhaps there's more to this life and universe and what we call natural, than we understand presently"

This is purely a semantic issue.  This more to life should we ever find will be natural by definition. I would argue, we just need to reconnect to the universe (not just one another). Not that we could ever disconnect from the universe. And of course, the word religion comes from the Latin for reconnect.

 

[PaulS]

3 hours ago, romansh said:

If your twist were true...

Well I guess there's 'curious' and then there's 'needing' an answer.  I sit at the mildly-to-mid curious end of the scale, but I appreciate your reading list tips. I will have a look for sure.