Up@dawn 2.0

Monday, April 23, 2012

Final Blog Pt 2 - Upon which my Atheism Rests

Last post, I spoke about the disjuncture between "everything" and "every thing". Principally, when we use universal quantifiers, like (x)(y)(x>y), we're saying "for any AND all xs and any AND all ys." I am placing emphasis on the and, because it is an important factor here. Any Y is different from all Ys, especially when we are applying it to the idea of a god. We used the concept "greater" to say that any and all ys are not greater than the x that is a god, and vice versa. That means that God is no greater than the sum of all parts of the universe, and is also no lesser, and vice versa. It also means that God is no greater or lesser than any individual part of the universe, like my pillow. We previously established that we must satisfy both criteria before we can proceed with the statement. So in what respect are we saying "greater"? Do we mean size, power, knowledge? Clearly there are cases where if you are to have the maximum amount that is logically possible of a certain property, so that the property of one thing is equal to that of everything combined, then you must have more than you would of an individual thing - such as intellect, size, or vastness.

This is where Cartesian doubt enters the picture to play chaos with the process of reasoning before we have killed the idea of god before its time. Since we cannot completely trust the ability of our senses to measure the universe in an objective manner, it is only sufficient that we use only the properties we can discern. We don't know the size of god (if existing), or the universe, or the intellect thereof, etc. But we can say that if we assume the premise that a god exists, it has the maximum amount of one quality that is also equal to the rest of the universe, without entering the quagmire of Cartesian doubt on the basis of the contingency of empirical understanding, we can say that the attribute or quality we are looking for is "Godliness" or "G".

If there exists an x that scores a 1 on the binary scale of Godliness from 0-1, that x would be Gx.

Godliness is an attribute which we cannot empirically measure, but can only apply to that which is a god. (I told you it might frustrate some people.)

Now that we have specified here that we are using a measure of godliness, it really throws a wrench at the notion that my pillow cannot be as godly as everything else combined. It now holds the same validity as the notion that a human blood cell is as human as a human heart. We're moving the scale by which we measure from empirical to rational - by which the meat and potatoes of our understanding comes more from the definitive "set" we use more than any tangible or visibly measurable attribute.

So to catch everything up to speed in summary, we have established in this theoretical vacuum that there is everything, and there is nothing that can be more godly than any and all things, and any and all things cannot be more godly than this one thing that we postulate to exist, which we will call "God," and if we are to further expound upon this postulate, we will discover that within the confines of what we denote as "godliness," "God" and "Everything" are identical when it comes to recognizing things based upon their godliness.

Because I am confident in my ability to not accidentally prove the existence of God, I am going to assume that there is one thing in the universe that has the property of "godliness," and if one thing has godliness, then the idea of everything must have godliness, because that one individual thing would contribute to the sum of all things in their godliness.

THIS IS AN IMPORTANT TURNING POINT.
IT IS IMPORTANT NOT TO LOOK AWAY.
BEAR WITH ME. I KNOW I JUST ASSUMED A PREMISE.


If we grant one thing in the universe godliness, then we acknowledge that godliness is a real attribute we can apply to things. If everything has some measure of godliness, then it can't have more than whatever this "god" thing is, and it can't have any less either, because that breaks the definition of what we're calling god.

For all intents and purposes, this god would exist within this theoretical realm. If godliness is a real concept, then god can exist in reality by this definition. HOWEVER, we have not given it consciousness.

Some of you might be saying "but would not one thing having consciousness as part of everything generate a holistic consciousness by which the universe operates on a grander scale?"

Frankly, I'd say no. God does not have necessarily any more awareness than a free market economy does. It can really only exist as a measure of holistic godliness through all of the events and things that happen and exist in the universe the same way the economy is just a cloud of the supplies, demands, and transactions that happen within its market. The events that happen within are not created from an outside purpose, the way a neuron might fire in a brain to create a thought - the events that happen within everything happen because of other events from within everything. This is the only possible alternative, because there is nothing outside everything to influence it.

If we accept this postulate to allow God to exist, it is not the Abrahamic God, nor is it a creator with divine intent. It simply exists as a measure of total godliness permeating all things. Godliness is a standalone field of measurement that is purely autological (self describing)

In short, if we use this postulate to accept that God exists, we accept it as a metalogical "Grand Canyon," vast, natural, and completely unresponsive and dead.



1 comment:

  1. Very interesting approach, Andrew. "Godliness is an attribute which we cannot empirically measure, but can only apply to that which is a god." Literally and strictly speaking, in a monotheistic universe, that has to be so. But I've always thought the pragmatic value of religion (to the extent that it has any, for anyone) is due precisely to the ways in which it drives human aspiration to strive towards ideals. The target may exceed the scope of human intellect but reaching for it may still spill out in salutary ways.

    So, I'd prefer not to take "godliness" out of the equation. My own atheism acknowledges the force of whatever some theists mean by that chimera, as measured in the fruits it delivers via their own devotions.

    But this is your testimonial, not mine.

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