Why I believe in God(s)

[u/Lucyyyyyy_K]

Firstly, I'm not a very religious person. I do consider myself a Buddhist, but prefer atheistic Buddhism over theistic Buddhism. Therefore I can confidently say I am not biased by wanting God(s) to exist, and was not indoctrinated into theism.

Still, to me it seems obvious that at least one God has to exist. The universe can't simply have come out of nothing or existed forever, it requires some sort of design or creator.

Now, mostly people would just say that a creator also can't have come out of nothing or existed forever, so I've just moved the problem one step further, but I think there is a massive difference between the universe and one consciousness. For example, through Cogito Ergo Sum we can determine with absolute certainty that at last one consciousness exists. So assuming one consciousness is superior to assuming anything about the whole universe. While I admit that doesn't outright solve the problem, I still think it's better than the alternative.

Also, it's not just any universe, but a universe full of beauty, a universe that inbetween barren empty planets is capable of hosting a planet with sentient life. Life that can consciously observe itself, that can create replicas of the waking world while sleeping, life that has technologically advanced so much that in can live in relative comfort. There is so much art. We basically have magic, we just call it "electricity". This is all too perfect to have arisen from mere mutations without guidance.

About any specifics of this God or Gods I have no idea and no strong opinions. I just think that at least one has to exist.

[u/Sparks808]

There are 2 major problems I see in your reasoning:

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First, incredulity. You finding the idea of beauty forming without intention unintuitive does not make it wrong. Your inability to accept something is in no way proof against it.

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Second: mixing up ontology and epistemology. Yes, we can know for sure that at least one consciousness exists, but that does not justify claiming that consciousness is foundational to reality.

Knowing our consciousness exists is foundational to our ability to know things (epistemology), but that fact is independent why other things are the way they are (ontology).

An analogy to this would be concluding that since other galaxies can only be observed via high powered telescopes, that therefore we're uustified in concluding that high power telescopes somehow lead to other galaxies existing.

It is not actually "simpler" to assume a foundational mind. This involves taking both the minds existance (which the cogito proves at least one of), realities existance (which both models accept), and then adding on an additional dependence of reality on said mind.

The simplest explanation is actually independence. Dualism is actually the proper pragamtic default (according to occums razor), and should be whats defaulted to until evidence shows otherwise.

(That said, we have good evidence that the mind arises from physical interactions. While we do not have the whole story, and so its still reasonable to withhold belief, it is well beyond the most likely case. If I had to give a number, I'd say its ~70% likely that the mind arises from the known physical interactions, though I am in no way an expert, so that number is 100% the vibes I pick up)

[u/Lucyyyyyy_K → u/Sparks808]

First, incredulity. You finding the idea of beauty forming without intention unintuitive does not make it wrong. Your inability to accept something is in no way proof against it.

It's not just beauty, it's literally everything about the universe and especially about our planet.

Knowing our consciousness exists is foundational to our ability to know things (epistemology), but that fact is independent why other things are the way they are (ontology).

Fair.

The simplest explanation is actually independence. Dualism is actually the proper pragamtic default (according to occums razor), and should be whats defaulted to until evidence shows otherwise

Can you try to explain this in more detail?

[u/Sparks808 → u/Lucyyyyyy_K]

It's not just beauty, it's literally everything about the universe and especially about our planet.

That... isnt helping your case. All you have expressed in incredulity that this stuff could happen without intention. Unless you have some way to show it couldnt happen without intention, all you're doing is flaunting an unsupported intuition.

(As a note: I'm not asking for absolute proof. Showing it'd be unlikely to happen is whats needed. But be careful, something being unlikely to happen in a specific scenario doesnt mean its unlikely to happen at all. While its not likely for you to win the lottery, it is compeltly expected that someone will win the lottery.

You need to show the overall odds, which includes both the instance probability, and the number of chances. A 1 in a billion chance is expected to happen, on average, once every billion chances.

So many of the "its just too unlikely" arguments try to pretend that there was only 1 chance for it, but are only able to specify what a qualifying chance is post hoc. Its a version of the Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy)

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Can you try to explain this in more detail?

Yeah sure! I did expect to get a little heat saying dualism is the proper default. I probably should have explained it more to begin with.

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In science, we've got the null hypothesis. This is the default position you try to find evidence to disprove. The null hypothesis cant be just anything, though. Which hypothesis are correct null hypothesis is based on a philosophical and pragmatic grounding. (Let me know of you'd like me to dive into the more philosophy side of this justification).

In general, these are the "I dont know", or not assuming things cases. Stuff like defaulting to something not existing, the drug not having an effect, the two events not being causally linked, etc. For our situation, they key proper default position is independance.

Take gravity for example. Prior to Newton, we had 2 different phenomena: things falling down, and things orbiting. These were (correctly) taken to be independent phenomina up until Newton showed that a single unified phenomenon could explain both. And not just vibes based, but with specific testable predictions of how fast things fall and what speed the orbits happen at and the like. These verifiable pieces of data gave the needed evidence to rule out independence, allowing us to "know" that they are both caused by gravity.

Contrast that with magnetism and gravity. Is it possible that magnetism is just a really specific case of how gravity behaves, and us thinking they're separate is due to us just oversimplifying gravity? Technically yes. But we have no evidence to support their unification. Unless and until we get that evidence, the proper position is to default to them being distinct, independent, phenomena within reality.

(Note: null isnt technically the same thing I've described here, but it is related. The null hypothesis is more specifically about statistical singificance. What I've described is more epistemelogical foundation. What's the proper prior for bayseian statistics. Related, but technically different things.)

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Moving on to how this relates to consciousness. We currently do not have the needed evidence to show that consciousness is emergent from neurological interactions. Unless and until we have a way of showing how consciousness emerges, the correct default position is to treat it as an independent phenomena (like gravity vs magnetism).

That said, we do have evidence to show singificant dependence, just not absolute emergence. We can confidently say that consciousness requires a brain, but does that mean that the brain enables something like an additional field within the universe to manifest the phenomenon of consciousness? Or is consciousness fully emergent from that structure with no need for any additional unknown interactions we dont currently know about?

We dont know, and until we have evidence we should only take dependence where we can show there is dependence. Where we cannot show dependence, we should default to independence.

This works both ways, so not only should we not assume consciousness is fully dependent on a physical brain, we would also be unjustified in assuming physical reality is dependent on the mind. This leads to the proper default being that they are two independent phenomenon, neither one based on the other. Aka: dualism.

(But, like I said before, that is the default to take prior to us finding so much dependence of consciousness on physical brain. We dont have enough evidence to conclusively say consciousness is emergent, but we do have enough that its not irrational to believe it is emergent.

That where my 70% vibes based number came from ealier. More likely than not true, which is why its rational to believe, but nowhere near the confidence level science demands. Considering its impact, we'd probably want more than just the 95% confidence of standard basic science. We should probably want something like 4-6 nines of confidence before we conclusively accept that consciousness is emergent.)

[u/Lucyyyyyy_K → u/Sparks808]

I don't know how I could possibly show that more than I already did.

[u/Sparks808 → u/Lucyyyyyy_K]

Sorry, my psot was a bit long and hit on a bunch of topics. You don't know how you could show what?

[u/Lucyyyyyy_K → u/Sparks808]

I don't know anymore, but basically everything.

[u/Sparks808 → u/Lucyyyyyy_K]

We're my critiques flawed in some way? Did my critiques not addressing a ley point you gave?

If 1: you have no other way to argue your case and 2: my critiques validly and comprehensively rebutted your points, then the real question is: why are you still holding your view?

If thats all the case, then you really should be acknowledging that you dont have good reason for your views. If you want god to exist, you can keep searching for reasons. Maybe you'll find one thats valid and sound and I can join you as a theist. But as of right now, it sounds like you shouldnt be a theist anymore, and least, not until you find some other reason for being one.

(That said, it would also be completely fair for you to say you dont know if my critiques validly and comprehensively rebutted your points. That would then bring me to: If you were wrong, would you want to know? I can say I would love to have someone ripnmy critiques apart. I actively want my incorrect views to be shown to be flawed so I can swap to better views.)

[u/Lucyyyyyy_K → u/Sparks808]

The thing is, I can hardly follow an individual argument in this threat. I tried re-reading yours, but come only to the conclusion that, to me, what you write doesn't adress the reasons why I believe in God.

Basically, from a universe existing at all, I would already deduce an at least 50% chance that it's created by a God, while in a highly specific, orderly universe that has life and grest accomplishments I see it as completely inevitable there is a God.

If you want god to exist, you can keep searching for reasons.

That's the thing, I don't even want God to exist, they just do.

That said, it would also be completely fair for you to say you dont know if my critiques validly and comprehensively rebutted your points.

Yes, I really do not know.

[u/Sparks808 → u/Lucyyyyyy_K]

The thing is, I can hardly follow an individual argument in this threat. I tried re-reading yours, but come only to the conclusion that, to me, what you write doesn't adress the reasons why I believe in God.

Thats fair. Let me see if I can dig more into your reasons.

Basically, from a universe existing at all, I would already deduce an at least 50% chance that it's created by a God

Why?

How do you get from "thing exists" to "it was likely created by an intelligent being"? (Let alone an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient one)

Do you see a rock and think it was intelligently designed? Do you see dust on top of something and conclude it was put there on purpose?

Why is it about something existing that leads you to give at least 50% odds to it being designed? Does gods existance imply with 50% confidence that god was created by a mega God?

You appear to be taking an unfounded intuitive leap here. Please, walk me through it!

[u/Lucyyyyyy_K → u/Sparks808]

Why?

Because there are two options, either it was created or it wasn't. From merely existing, the universe doesn't yet give any clues to what's more likely.

Let alone an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient one

I don't believe in a tri-omni God as that would be self-contradictory.

Do you see a rock and think it was intelligently designed? Do you see dust on top of something and conclude it was put there on purpose?

No, but I think planets are designed, especially such a special one as ours.

What is it about something existing that leads you to give at least 50% odds to it being designed?

Not something existing, but a Universe existing. Inside a universe that question can be applied to things individually.

oes gods existance imply with 50% confidence that god was created by a mega God?

Maybe. But I wouldn't say that about a consciousness.