Samulson
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2015
- Messages
- 106
Okay...being a...'whatever' spirituality (agnostic with atheist and pantheist sympathies), I should elaborate on a concept I find philosophically useful that my Christian friend tends to identify as "god" (I even hold a type of reverence for it):
There is some body of conditions of possibility for all existence, both empirically and in terms of those conditions allowing for logic, concepts, etc. to emerge. In some sense, this body of conditions of possibility is 'logically prior'* to all that exists, all concepts it leads to, logic (and the space of possible axioms underlying any system of logic), and even the distinction between existence and nonexistence (for this relies on conceptual distinction in some sense)
*(I say 'logically prior' in irony-quotes because these conditions of possibility are not subject to logic or any other conceptual distinction, for they are what allow them to emerge).
My friend calls this "god", but it doesn't really resemble other gods people have described to me. It might be all-encompassing in terms of conditioning everything that emerges, and it might be 'eternal' and radically free in not being contingent on any empirical phenomenon or constraint of logic. It can be considered mystical, as use of our concepts cannot capture these conditions of possibility fully (so yes, all of my above description is clumsy pointing at something which is inherently inexplicable). Consequently, extra-symbolic mystical states (including psychedelics), meditations on logical contradiction, and other attempts to punch at the limits of conceptualization facilitate engagement with 'the conditions', but they always elude our analytical ability in some sense.
Hence the use of allegory so common in religious myth, the focus on contradiction and blankness in zen, the centrality of contradiction in the Holy Trinity, etc.
I personally like to think of these conditions of possibility as an indeterminate flux generative of an arbitrarily extendable set of actual phenomena but limited to and exhausted by no set of them. I guess this sort of idea may be extracted from Pragmatist philosophy (particularly James and Dewey), but I haven't yet seen it in explicitly theological writings.
This seems pretty different from a lot of "gods", as it is precludes anything even vaguely anthropomorphic. It's not even intelligible to speak of these conditions as having a will, desires, judgements, etc. If 'the conditions' had any such attributes, it would entail that they lack those characteristics which lead to their function in conditioning existence; an anthropomorphic god would be too small and even petty. And 'the conditions' certainly wouldn't hold normative opinions about how humans should relate socially.**
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How is this pantheist? One could say that these conditions of possibility are 'inherent' in every actual phenomenon in existence, as all existence emerges per the possible avenues of development conditioned by them; in some sense, all existence is latent in those conditions. And we are the result of 'the conditions', a culmination of many latent possibilities coming to realization, where the universe writ whole begins to examine and act upon itself. How is my position atheist then? 'The conditions' I describe do not 'exist' (as we usually conceive of existence), because as was mentioned, they function to cultivate existence (and the division between it an nonexistence) in the first place. And because these conditions are beyond description, they don't truly exist even as an idea, nor can they in principle. This not only points to an atheist moment but also perhaps to the concept of "void" common in Eastern spirituality.
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So you tell me: is this a "god"? If not, what is a god?
ebola
**well, one could argue that normative guidelines emerge in that one may submit to and evenly actively cultivate the development of those latent possibilities, but judgment of what constitutes "development" and what qualifies as stagnation or devolution rests on our personal (and social) judgments (and desires, goals, ethical commitments, etc.), not any property of the universe as a whole.
I would describe that as the transcendental aspect that exists beyond quantum zero point.
A question that I have pondered though is, can that transcendental aspect be aware of the other side of that quantum emergence, and still be transcendental?
Or does it have to isolate itself outside of time to maintain that state.