Do you know why God cannot KNOW?

by Terry 81 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

• 

  PSacramento

  I think the issue is that you are making an unprovable assertion.

  That is correct, I don't deny that at all.

  Now why, I ask you, do people (humanity) insist on reading the bible to discover WHO God is?

  It's a starting point for those that thrist to know, no more, no less.

  Our brain has a one on one relationship with the nature of our earthly reality.

  Man's sin is a default of his human nature.

  God's goodness is a default of God's nature.

  Agree to all the above.

  Communication and understanding of Man and God take place with words, writing and thoughts irrevocably tied down to an attempt at rational discourse.

  Yes, that is a starting point, but I think that the written word is more about man trying to explain God to other man, than anything that God does/did, God doesn't need the written word BUT He uses it so that we can take those steps to Him.

  Rational is a ratio between verifiable and non-verifiable data whereby we actually determine a DIFFERENCE!

  Otherwise, morality is impossible to judge on the basis of understanding what is moral/immoral.

  That's a different thread, LOL !
• 

  Terry

  Otherwise, morality is impossible to judge on the basis of understanding what is moral/immoral.

  That's a different thread, LOL !

  Well, I'm too tired right now to start that one!
• 

  PSacramento

  I hear you !

  The reality is that when we speak of God, we are simply stating an opinion that can't be proven, from both sides of the argument.

  IF God exists ( and that is a big IF of course), then the world we KNOW and the reason, rational and laws of it dont' apply to Him because he is GOD and He is NOT part of this world.

  I often wonder if God is subject to them when He "crosses over" into our dimension and part of me thinks He is since this world is the way it is and the "laws" we have were "created" by Him BUT at the same time I realize that what we know is based on our perception and understanding of reality as we know it NOW and I wonder what we will know 1000 years from now, know what I mean?
• 

  Etude

  Terry:

  " I can't see this being true in any meaningful sense." -- that living "actions" are no different in many ways to non-living actions, like shooting a rocket and " Reductionism doesn't work for certain things such as the MIND sets before itself. "

  Perhaps reductionism may not work on situations involving the mind, not that I'm agreeing that my example technically involves reductionism at all. Maybe. But take a couple of examples, and you might agree that via reproducible stimulus, the mind will behave exactly in ways that we attribute to other causes. About 7 years ago I alluded to this on my thread: "Do you stimulate your "G" spot?" I remember posting a picture of helmet rigged with electrodes that can stimulate a specific sensation in the brain (by targeting the brain's "G" spot) akin to "spirituality". My point for mentioning this is that indeed a reproducible effect related to a mind state can be achieved with significant accuracy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_helmet

  Even if the exact chemical or electrical process is not known, it's logical to conclude that one actually takes place in order to be able to create the same effect time after time. If you have doubts about what I'm insinuating, please google "man plays piano after". I was thinking of one particular case I saw (involving Dr. Oliver Sacks) where a man was struck by lightning while on the phone and was subsequently endowed with the ability to play the piano and write music.

  In the googled examples, I found many more instances than I had expected of people becoming musical savants after incurring a head injury. I'm not saying that we can understand the exact process via which this happened. But it seems incontrovertible to me that the brain's chemistry and electrical matrix can be altered due to a traumatic event and allow for something to happen that we deem beyond a mechanical process, like shooting a rocket into space. Truth and beauty may be irreducible, but it seems to me they certainly reproducible, not just by the source of truth or beauty, but also by recreating a definite and direct process in the brain that provides the same sensation or conclusion.

  So, I didn't see the "reductionism" to the degree that we can explain how the firing of neurons produce a specific memory or feeling. But, I guess I can agree that a specific and discrete process occurs and can even arise that explains a thought or feeling and can even be part of a determination of thought. If that process could be known with sufficient accuracy (which is doubtfull for now), it might be possible to predict what a mind is going to do next. http://singularityhub.com/2009/01/08/reading-your-mind-with-fmri/
• 

  Terry

  So, I didn't see the "reductionism" to the degree that we can explain how the firing of neurons produce a specific memory or feeling. But, I guess I can agree that a specific and discrete process occurs and can even arise that explains a thought or feeling and can even be part of a determination of thought. If that process could be known with sufficient accuracy (which is doubtfull for now), it might be possible to predict what a mind is going to do next.

  Hmmm...

  We know that the brain does work electrically and organically to produce a sort of ghost in the machine which enables the brain's owner to interface with

  all perceptible stimulation.

  Additionally, the human mind can dabble with its own after-echoes. These resonances become recursive and all attempts

  to analyze them create meta-entanglements. If we think about thinking, for example...

  Now, I understand that we can stimulate the brain and "cause" precitable reaction. But, how is that different from clapping your hands and frightening off

  grackles in the tree in your driveway?

  My toothache may be universally and empathetically accessible to others--but--that is an inference objectively appraised. It is a far cry from being identical to MY PAIN which is subjectively experienced by ME.

  When a gay guy looks at the very same women I'm lusting after I'd have to hypothesize that an essential difference is happening in our respective brains.

  Is this because the woman is somehow different to each of us? Doubtful.

  Is our filtering/appraisal/conceptual mechanism that much different? Dunno.

  Our personally acquired VALUES determine how we FEEL about what we see and hear and think. Ineffable, intangible and irreducible to specs.

  However similar me and the gay guy might well be-- our respective identity as a person makes our values considerably at odds.

  Our mind is our nature.

  Map it as you will--it is irreproducible for what it actually is as a part of the individual human whose nature lies therein.
• 

  Terry

  Bobby Fischer's sister gave him a chess set when he was a boy and it triggered something pattern-wise within him that sparked an obsession eventually ending in near madness, paranoia and self-ruin. But, in between, he became World Chess Champion in 1972.

  All of us have access to the same "raw information" that Bobby Fischer had in his brain. (Books, magazines, etc.)

  This certainly doesn't help any of us to UNDERSTAND him or his remarkably abilities or madness.

  Data itself is almost irrelevent!

  Neither you nor I play as well as Fischer because we would have to BE him---not just KNOW what he knew.

  The GESTALT of genius and talent is identity; personality/worldview/organic structure/motive/ambition/etc.etc.etc. Not just data.

  I am no genius nor do I possess talent.

  But, for the last 20+ years I've hacked away at music composition using a synthesizer keyboard.

  I've discovered that I understand (at some unthinking level) how to manipulate sounds.

  This manipulation has a resemblance to actual music composition that a talented composer might well create.

  But, there is a difference! I'm merely using a state-of-mind detached from a conscious reckoning toward a particular end point.

  Here is a link to a piece I "composed" this morning.

  I put a title on it just because you HAVE TO or others cannot relate to it:)

  But, I assure you I had absolutely NOTHING in mind when I was manipulating the notes and selecting timbres and rhythms and harmonies, etc.

  http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1595587/Holiday%20Fantasia.mp3
• 

  Etude

  Terry:

  " Additionally, the human mind can dabble with its own after-echoes. These resonances become recursive and all attempts to analyze them create meta-entanglements. If we think about thinking, for example... "

  Sure. My point is that ultimately any "after-echoes", "resonances" or delusions our minds experience are coded in electrical impulses that obey the laws of physics. Due to individual differences but with the same constraints of the laws of physics, individuals will react differently. But the process is still the same. That allows for some things which are fundamentally the same make us agree on a lot, like whether it is day or night or that a forum exists called .

  But it's quite likely that the women I lust after are different in looks than the ones you lust after. So, my lust is not your lust. But, they both can still be attributed to an identical process (not trajectory) of brain chemicals and electric impulses. If you could account for your variances and I for mine and input all of that into the fastest and most advanced computer ever built along with some rules, it might be able to predict that you like Mansfield breasts and that I like J-Lo butts. Did we get off topic?
• 

  Terry

  our minds experience are coded in electrical impulses that obey the laws of physics.

  I'd have to understand what the basis is for asserting the firing of neurons obey the laws of physics. How do you account for the "Will"?

  Where does Newton, Feynman or Hawking get into that one? :)

  The basic argument you are entertaining is perhaps the identical one made in the days of John Locke from Determinists who thought

  everything could be reduced to quantified analysis of causes and effects. Yet, Behaviorist are still scratching their heads trying to figure out

  why anybody does anything against their own best interests. Yes, that dovetails nicely into what sort of woman we lust after :)
• 

  DATA-DOG

  I like the looking into all possible outcomes of all possible choices by all persons. Like in the story ' DUNE'. God does not make you do anything, but who is to say that he does not manipulate events that cause you to make a choice that he knows is best for you?

  Terry, I think I get it. If I have knowledge of a bomb about to go off, well that is KNOWLEDGE that I posses even after I divulge the information. The bomb going off is true up until the very moment that it is no longer true ( bomb disarmed ). If I had the power to manipulate individuals I could make sure that the bomb still went off making my true statement still true. Hmmm, I thought I was getting it. LOL!!!
• 

  Etude

  Terry:

  " I'd have to understand what the basis is for asserting the firing of neurons obey the laws of physics. How do you account for the "Will"? "

  Hmmm. You kinda jumped from one end of the universe to the opposite end there. We know that any thought processes involve the "firing of neurons" because we can actually measure which ones fire and which ones are inhibited and we use scientific tools based on electronics and other laws of physics to make those measurements. We also know that this is the way thought is conducted because when the electrical activity responsible for consciousness stops working, we declare a person brain-dead and pull the plug.

  Really -- I don't see how we can contradict that. Now, the "will", Feynman or Hawkins is another matter. The knowledge of how those firing of neurons create thought and intellect, is presently beyond our understanding. But that there's a fundamental mechanism by which that happens is hardly in doubt.

  In an earlier comment I made reference to "60 Minutes" piece showing how researchers are now able to tell if you're thinking of a particular object or if you're lying about something. They can't tell what you're lying about, but they can tell the difference from when you're telling the truth. Of course, this presently requires a sophisticated MRI and a person's cooperation. But the point is that we already have a rudimentary way to ascertain what goes on in someone else's mind. It's crude, but the implications are enormous.

  I'm not saying that today or any time soon we will be able to read someone's mind. I am saying that given a sufficiently large intelligence, it may be possible to accomplish what we're trying to do today: finding what's on someone's mind. I suppose I could seem less deterministic or a reductionist by stating that given the possibilities, a large intelligence may not at every chance come up with THE answer. The calculations may lead to multiple answers that are likely to occur. But it would narrow the possibilities. In that respect (not being reductionist but as a parallel example), it would be like a game of chess that is played before the first piece is actually moved. The possibilities are already there and can be projected forward by several moves, knowing that the other player has a finite number of moves at the outset.

  I don't disagree with your original premise about what god cannot know but not for the self-referent reason you mentioned. The way god is explained to us, s/he is boundless, omnipotent and a limitless sage. But that also means that s/he cannot escape his/her own make up (whatever that is) and would be automatically prohibited from creating an equal. The paradox that questions his/her existence is in the contradiction of his omnipotence and what s/he's unable to do.