Wes's Philosophy Thread

All nature is but art unknown to thee,
All chance, direction which thou canst not see;
All discord, harmony not understood;
All partial evil, universal good;
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite,
One truth is clear: Whatever is, is right.

Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
An Essay on Man

Today, it occured to me: God cannot be good. Nor evil. Nor limited in any way. Nor can God be personified nor described by any characteristic term, nor have any political viewpoint or individual ideas, nor have any equals (for any two things exactly identical in form and in spacetime position are equal to one of the thing).

Limits are what defines us. Our roleplay is good because we limit it with quality standards. When something is good, there is a limit placed on it that means it cannot be bad. Conversely, the bad cannot be good and is limited.

God does not exist as some sort of spiritual entity. If there is a God, is is the God found in the mind and experience and mathematics and in all things, for what God is, simply put, is the infinite, the limitless.

That, possibly, is the reason for our existence: Because God is limitless, God is already everywhere and doing everything, and yet cannot do anything but BE because God cannot change God's state; We lack the infinite but God lacks the limits and thus cannot do anything or be anything but all things, places, and times.

 

[Doshii Jun]

I understand the above.

But limits are designed to be pushed and stretched, neh? Otherwise, we cannot BE more than we are. No offense, but I refuse to just BE. That makes life too boring.

 

[Rei]

I want whatever you're smoking.

Heehee, no seriously though..you say god cannot be good or evil, or <social commentary on current geopolitical situation> but that is irrelevent when it is made to be so. The postulation on the infinate then becomes pointless, when we see that the beliefs that are placed upon the minds and wills of others (forced or not) have their limits, and become conflict, and strife. So we say god cannot be good. It cannot be evil. Why? That will still mean this force of infinity exsists. Any spirituality cannot come from such an unnatural creation of the human mind.

Sorry..I'm done!

 

[Wes]

For here we are not afraid to follow the truth wherever it may lead, nor tolerate any error so long as reason is free to combat it.

Thomas Jefferson

But limits are designed to be pushed and stretched, neh? Otherwise, we cannot BE more than we are. No offense, but I refuse to just BE. That makes life too boring.

Again, limits are what define us, and also what define time for us. You can readjust your limitations to an extent, but you are and will always be limited (except perhaps in that you share spacetime with the infinite, God, if God exists).

There's an expression: "Life's a bitch, and then you die." How would you interpret this in a philosophical sense? One student in my class said, "The person is a pessimist." That's probably true. Another analysis is that life isn't worth living. I disagree, however, because some experience-simply existing is a gift that few people truly appreciate. The "secret of life" is to appreciate what you have. It's the only way you can be happy. Taking things for granted is the opposite, and is, according to Weiss, the root of all "sin." I'm not saying we shouldn't strive for more than we have, but let's not be dissatisfied with what we've got already.

Have you seen these guys in New Orleans? There was a 500-pound fat woman babbling almost incomprehensibly about "Where's me food? Where is my water?" Lady, you are responsible for yourself. Each one of us is also responsible for ourselves. If we sit around and wait to be helped, someone's going to come along and take advantage of us. Rocks and trees sit around and things happen to them. We're more than that, though. Be someone who does things, not someone to whom things happen.

There are levels of conciousness, Plato says: 1) The vegetative soul, which is basically something alive. Trees, bugs, plants. 2) The sentient soul, which includes animals. These animals can sense, and have characteristics of the vegetative soul, too, and 3) the rational soul. The rational soul shares the characteristics of 1 and 2 but can also reason. Humans are the only animal that can be all three. When you let things happen to you, or loose control to urges, you're being a sentient soul, not not rational. It's not smart.

Man, once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without a rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.

Thomas Jefferson

 

[Zakalwe]

Lady, you are responsible for yourself. Each one of us is also responsible for ourselves.

Have you read Hobbes? He would agree with you up to a point. Without society life is short, cruel, and painfull. In anarchy everyone is out for themselves at the inconveniance of others.

However with society we can build a better world, where it is not required that we have to struggle for our own survival, and depend on each other, as well as the dominating influence of a sovreign.

Which no one has.

Sorry, I don't phiolosiphise well at 12:25

 

[Jon]

Hello!

I was browsing the forum, and read Wes' posting. It looked interesting, so I thought I'd reply (oh heck, I just love to discuss these things).

I have to agree with Wes's basic assertation that anything without limits is undefinable. If something is without limits, it compasses all possible definition. In turn, this makes me wonder if the phrase 'without limits' is an artifact of the language. If something is without limits, it cannot, by definition, be limited. That is, in turn, a limit.

Applying this to a specific, could a God, using this definition, ever be in fear of its life? (Not just one element, the entire thing.)

 

[Wes]

You know what, Jon? You're right.

Is there really anything limitless, then?

 

[Jon]

Hi,

I'd like to hope not. To be limitless means there is no farther room to expand. The problem is, this in turn demands limitless possibilities.

It occurs to me that I am using two definitions of limit. The limitless in limitless possibilities uses the term to mean 'without exhaustion'. As I understand your prior use of it, you meant limitless to mean 'including all possibilities'. To take a mathematical analogy, there are limitless numbers of integers (inexhaustible), but the domain of the integers is not limitless (all-encompassing). I can easily see the inexhaustible limitless, but I have trouble with all-encompassing.


Jon.

 

[Kimura]

I think if you make a distinction between that which is real and that which is theoretically possible, it becomes quite a bit easier to deal with the concept of infinity; nothing infinite exists, no machine with infinite energy conservation exists, no object with an infinite density exists. However, in theory, the use of infinity is very useful since sometimes, in nature, things of inverse proportion come so close to 0 that any difference is negligible; for example, an electron in a magnetic field in a vacuum will hardly lose any energy, while a black hole approaches infinite density the more it absorbs, and it just keeps on absorbing more.
Basically, reality is limited, but the imagination is not; so, it's easy to imagine the concept of infinity but it's pretty much impossible to define it within the limits of our world.
Does that even make any sense?

 

[Wes]

René Descartes said, if I remember correctly, that God must exist because the concept of the infinite is something that could never arise from our minds alone.

 

[Jon]

However, in theory, the use of infinity is very useful since sometimes, in nature, things of inverse proportion come so close to 0 that any difference is negligible; for example, an electron in a magnetic field in a vacuum will hardly lose any energy, while a black hole approaches infinite density the more it absorbs, and it just keeps on absorbing more.
Basically, reality is limited, but the imagination is not; so, it's easy to imagine the concept of infinity but it's pretty much impossible to define it within the limits of our world.
Does that even make any sense?

Makes good sense to me, although the desity of a black-hole remains entirely theoretical. One thought: If you ignore proton decay, which I think is still unproven (although not proven false), how long will an electron spiral around a hydrogen nucleus, assuming it is left undisturbed? Even if you assume a closed universe, there should still be an atom or two that escapes the net gravitational attraction of the infalling matter.

 

[Kimura]

Well, according to the second law of thermodynamics it should keep going forever (as expected) but in order to measure/verify this you'd have to disturb the particles and then your data is ruined. This is the whole quantum uncertainty principle and thus the reason we can't replicate more than single particles or very stable substances with our current technology; I used to think this was the Schroedinger's Cat thought experiment but I just checked it on Wikipedia and it's not actually that...Maybe someone else can provide a more concrete example..?

 

[Zakalwe]

Isn't it intresting that on StarArmy even in a Philosophy thread we can't get away from physics and the most destructive objects in the universe.

That itself would be an intresting discussion.

 

[Kimura]

Philosophy /is/ the most destructive object in the universe.
P.S. "interesting" FTW ^.^

 

[Turboneko]

René Descartes said, if I remember correctly, that God must exist because the concept of the infinite is something that could never arise from our minds alone.

However, Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that God and Christianity planted the seeds for their own demise. Christian beleif of absolutism and truth paved the way for nationalism and the scientific method, two tools that render blind faith unthinkable for any educated person. He also stated that "God is dead"; people began to focus more on the construct of emotional God instead of the "truth"-- the whole focus of the church.

 

[Jon]

Christian beleif of absolutism and truth paved the way for nationalism and the scientific method, two tools that render blind faith unthinkable for any educated person.

Yet isn't nationalism itself blind faith in one's country? And certainly modern Science takes a whole lot of faith, as we describe things too tiny to see with claims that because we cannot place them with our tools they cannot be placed (uncertainty principle), and things to large to see with huge correcting factors no one has ever identified (dark energy/matter).

Science also is, as yet, unable to make any headway in whole arenas of thought, such as the nature of the 'self'. It seems to me that even an educated man, if he or she is prone to deep thought, must eventually find his or her way back to a core group of axioms held on to by faith, 'blind' simply because we don't have the tools the analyze any father back.

I fell that the flaw of many religions is the unwillingness to change based on what is seen, while Science maintains that nothing unseen can exist.

 

[Turboneko]

I fell that the flaw of many religions is the unwillingness to change based on what is seen, while Science maintains that nothing unseen can exist.

Someone once told me "Science is too young to understand religion." I proceeded to tell him "that may be true, but religion is too old to stop and listen to what science has to say."

 

[Karma Mechanic]

Yet isn't nationalism itself blind faith in one's country?....

Yep the masses will always move on from one "god" to another, its the just the way of the world, ya know.

 

[Jon]

Maybe

Some Hindu religions include the notion that if you gain enough Karma you progress to another world entirely. If you believe in reincarnation, perhaps our world is, by definition, full of people who are at the level you would ascribe to 'the masses'. At some point in time they will advance in whatever direction they are heading, and new souls will fill the gap, maintaining the general average.

 

[Zakalwe]

Uhm, what's always intrested me is intention. Follow this:

If you do a good deed for anything other than being a good person, then it is not a good deed, it only seems to others as it is. It is the intention, not the act itself that is important, and if the intention is selfish, then it isn't good.

For example: You help someone, but it is only so you look good to other people. This is not a good action.

And now for the most intresting position. We have been taught that if we sin, we will go to hell, and in the story of Lazerous and rich man, we have been taught that simply doing neither good or bad is not good enough, we must actively help others in order to prevent ourselves going to hell.

And that is the point: Christians do good deeds in order to ensure there position in the afterlife. It is this that is the goal, not helping someone. You are, in effect, doing the same thing as the example above, doing something only so you'll look good. In this case do good in the eyes of God.

This is a selfish action, since you are looking out for yourself, not for the person you are helping.

Perhaps it can be theorised that if you are a Christian, none of the actions you can do are good, since you do it in the knowledge that doing a 'good' deed will make it more likely you will avoid the firy pits of hell.

And so: As a Christian I can not be good.

How's that for philosophy?