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Of Religion I
Posted on: Saturday, December 25, 2004
P.S. Yes, you read that right: I'm writing this having already written the piece below. I hadn't expected it to get this intricate but heck, it has.
Before you embark on it, remember that great adage: your mind is like a parachute: for optimal performance, open it to use. 
Well, it's Xmas and I just HAVE to be a partypooper by sharing a thought with you. Yeah, bah, humbug. I saw yesterday a phrase written somewhere; I think it was the title of a movie or some such. It read: "God Is Born", referring, of course, to the Xian interpretation of things and the "birth" of "Jesus." OK, think about that phrase for a second: god is born. God. Born. God getting born. The sheer absurdity of it transcends all ambit of understanding.
*SIGH* Well, now I have to elaborate further, don't I. Besides, since one of my interests listed is religion, it really is high time I proffered a few thoughts on that subject. Well, let us start with what is generally understood to be the foundation of a religion, at least theoretically: "god." Does "god" exist? The short, long, and ONLY answer is: we don't know. We cannot know. So, the chances "he" exists are 50:50, right? At the basest level, yes. But notice that the question mentioned "god"; nothing more, nothing less. It did not mention the name, appearance, characteristics, traits, history, personality, epithets or any other attribute or description of "god." So by "god" the question presupposed its being defined as, shall we say, a supernatural entity. We're not defining that entity in any way. Forget he or she, forget its sentience, intelligence, place/date of birth, constitution, visibility, interactivity and all that we think of when we think of the word "god." We are talking merely about the existence in spacetime (or perhaps without?) of a being (defined in the loosest of terms) which boasts power that can be considered as being defiant of normal natural laws, not necessarily as we understand them. So firstly: do we have evidence that such an entity exists? The answer is very simple: NO. "But hang on," I hear howls of indignation, "Jesus/Mohammad/Shiva/YHWH/Zeus/PinkElephant appeared to xyz and there are records of it in the Torah/Bible/Qur'an/Bhagawadgeeta/Iliad!! How is that not evidence "god" exists!!?" That retort , however, is flawed. Why?
If you present the complete positive eg. Xian philosophy to a group of sane human beings, they will not unanimously accept it, even on principle, let alone down to the finest point. In other words, the self-professed truth of Xianity is not self-evident. It is esoteric. It is human-centric. It is locale-centric. It is culture-centric. It is subjective. Does it, therefore, conform with natural law? Decidedly not. Does it HAVE to conform to natural law? Well, it rather does. Otherwise, ANY religious understanding would be equally valid and equally true. And since different religious understandings, even within the same denomination, are largely incompatible, yea contrasting, it is impossible for them all to be true. Therefore, because there is NO consensus that "x appeared to y which is recorded in z", such a predication is assuredly NOT evidence that our base supernatural entity from the preceding paragraph indeed does exist. Is there a consensus among competent subjects that a supernatural entity exists? No. Is there a consensus in even merely a professional group (such as scientists, astronomers, etc.) to the same end, which would have been reached thru experiments, observation, science and aiding sciences? No. So, we cannot but conclude that there is NO universally evident and accepted proof that an undefined supernatural entity indeed is.
Now, secondly, is there evidence that there is NO such entity? No, and there never can be. A negative cannot be proven so long as spacetime and cognition remain infinite. That should be readily comprehensible so I won't explain it further. In a phrase--which Xians like to use, albeit in a totally flawed context--absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So, there you have it folks: it cannot be proven that a supernatural entity exists. It cannot be proven that it does not exist. Can it be DISPROVEN that it exists? Well, since it cannot logically be insisted that it DOES exist, it is not necessary to DISPROVE that existence. The default position, therefore, is--from the perspective of logic and objectivity--autochthonous agnosticism (and before you remonstrate about that term, to wit, agnosticism, ascertain EXACTLY what it means and in which context I just used it.) We simply cannot know if an undefined entity bearing supernatural power is in existence because there is no incontrovertible evidence to that effect. Does it even matter? Well, no, on this level it does not. Seeing as there is no evidence of the existence of such an entity, it follows that the human kind has not and does not collectively interact with, and has not been and is not collectively affected by such an entity or, at least, is not conscious of either. Therefore, the existence of a generic supernatural entity is merely an ontological, as opposed to epistemological or ethical issue, or, put simply, it is academic since no aspect of our practical lives is affected either way (remember, we are talking about GENERIC "religion" here).
So, if the mere existence of a mere generic "god" is a fifty-fifty question, then what is the likelihood that one, many or more of the thousands of past and present religions and millions of their permutations is or are, in demotic terms, true? Well, very, VERY slim indeed. We will see why in a moment.
Whoah, actually, we won't. I'll split this into two, maybe three parts. So, if you're still awake and with me here, we'll stop and continue next time.
Posted on: Saturday, December 25, 2004
ב''ה
P.S. Yes, you read that right: I'm writing this having already written the piece below. I hadn't expected it to get this intricate but heck, it has.
Before you embark on it, remember that great adage: your mind is like a parachute: for optimal performance, open it to use.
Well, it's Xmas and I just HAVE to be a partypooper by sharing a thought with you. Yeah, bah, humbug. I saw yesterday a phrase written somewhere; I think it was the title of a movie or some such. It read: "God Is Born", referring, of course, to the Xian interpretation of things and the "birth" of "Jesus." OK, think about that phrase for a second: god is born. God. Born. God getting born. The sheer absurdity of it transcends all ambit of understanding.
*SIGH* Well, now I have to elaborate further, don't I. Besides, since one of my interests listed is religion, it really is high time I proffered a few thoughts on that subject. Well, let us start with what is generally understood to be the foundation of a religion, at least theoretically: "god." Does "god" exist? The short, long, and ONLY answer is: we don't know. We cannot know. So, the chances "he" exists are 50:50, right? At the basest level, yes. But notice that the question mentioned "god"; nothing more, nothing less. It did not mention the name, appearance, characteristics, traits, history, personality, epithets or any other attribute or description of "god." So by "god" the question presupposed its being defined as, shall we say, a supernatural entity. We're not defining that entity in any way. Forget he or she, forget its sentience, intelligence, place/date of birth, constitution, visibility, interactivity and all that we think of when we think of the word "god." We are talking merely about the existence in spacetime (or perhaps without?) of a being (defined in the loosest of terms) which boasts power that can be considered as being defiant of normal natural laws, not necessarily as we understand them. So firstly: do we have evidence that such an entity exists? The answer is very simple: NO. "But hang on," I hear howls of indignation, "Jesus/Mohammad/Shiva/YHWH/Zeus/PinkElephant appeared to xyz and there are records of it in the Torah/Bible/Qur'an/Bhagawadgeeta/Iliad!! How is that not evidence "god" exists!!?" That retort , however, is flawed. Why?
If you present the complete positive eg. Xian philosophy to a group of sane human beings, they will not unanimously accept it, even on principle, let alone down to the finest point. In other words, the self-professed truth of Xianity is not self-evident. It is esoteric. It is human-centric. It is locale-centric. It is culture-centric. It is subjective. Does it, therefore, conform with natural law? Decidedly not. Does it HAVE to conform to natural law? Well, it rather does. Otherwise, ANY religious understanding would be equally valid and equally true. And since different religious understandings, even within the same denomination, are largely incompatible, yea contrasting, it is impossible for them all to be true. Therefore, because there is NO consensus that "x appeared to y which is recorded in z", such a predication is assuredly NOT evidence that our base supernatural entity from the preceding paragraph indeed does exist. Is there a consensus among competent subjects that a supernatural entity exists? No. Is there a consensus in even merely a professional group (such as scientists, astronomers, etc.) to the same end, which would have been reached thru experiments, observation, science and aiding sciences? No. So, we cannot but conclude that there is NO universally evident and accepted proof that an undefined supernatural entity indeed is.
Now, secondly, is there evidence that there is NO such entity? No, and there never can be. A negative cannot be proven so long as spacetime and cognition remain infinite. That should be readily comprehensible so I won't explain it further. In a phrase--which Xians like to use, albeit in a totally flawed context--absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So, there you have it folks: it cannot be proven that a supernatural entity exists. It cannot be proven that it does not exist. Can it be DISPROVEN that it exists? Well, since it cannot logically be insisted that it DOES exist, it is not necessary to DISPROVE that existence. The default position, therefore, is--from the perspective of logic and objectivity--autochthonous agnosticism (and before you remonstrate about that term, to wit, agnosticism, ascertain EXACTLY what it means and in which context I just used it.) We simply cannot know if an undefined entity bearing supernatural power is in existence because there is no incontrovertible evidence to that effect. Does it even matter? Well, no, on this level it does not. Seeing as there is no evidence of the existence of such an entity, it follows that the human kind has not and does not collectively interact with, and has not been and is not collectively affected by such an entity or, at least, is not conscious of either. Therefore, the existence of a generic supernatural entity is merely an ontological, as opposed to epistemological or ethical issue, or, put simply, it is academic since no aspect of our practical lives is affected either way (remember, we are talking about GENERIC "religion" here).
So, if the mere existence of a mere generic "god" is a fifty-fifty question, then what is the likelihood that one, many or more of the thousands of past and present religions and millions of their permutations is or are, in demotic terms, true? Well, very, VERY slim indeed. We will see why in a moment.
Whoah, actually, we won't. I'll split this into two, maybe three parts. So, if you're still awake and with me here, we'll stop and continue next time.
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