...If you removed all the space inside the atoms that make up the Empire State building you'd be left with a very heavy lump about the size of a grain of rice.
The larger point is that if it's true that the yes/no question at the heart of the God debate is inherently flawed then all the competing answers being argued about may be essentially meaningless, that is, a complete waste of time. — Jake
In science, our goal is to describe everything we observe or measure in the Universe through natural, physical explanations alone 1. — Ethan Siegel
So in my view, that is one of the principle factors underlying the emergence of 'this secular age'. It was felt to be essential to define a philosophy which excluded reference to divinity, as a matter of principle. — Wayfarer
So it's felt to be easier to answer 'no' and then to proceed as if the natural domain, the empirical, observable universe, is real, and try to ascertain its governing principles by scientific method; to flesh out, or reverse-engineer, the foundations, purely on the basis of observation and mathematical reasoning: — Wayfarer
But the problem is, as you accurately observe, that science itself has now cast considerable doubt on how cut-and-dried the naturalistic answer actually is. There are huge debates boiling in physics and cosmology about the nature of matter, of the 'standard model', the Big Bang (which is an inherently mystical idea to begin with!), parallel universes, and so on. So once you move past the formulaic, stereotyped 'god vs atheist' frame of reference, all kinds of possibilities become available, but they're a bit arcane for popular consumption; finding reference points and new frames of reference becomes the challenge. But an interesting challenge it is! — Wayfarer
God should be the whole, not a part. — Shamshir
But we don't want excluding reference to divinity to become yet another dogma, right? — Jake
at the moment one uses any noun such as God, one has created a "thing" presumed to be separate from all other things, for that is the function of nouns. — Jake
But 100 years after Einstein it seems to no longer make sense to assume existence is a 'yes' or 'no' question. — Jake
In Mahayana Buddhism, the Madhyamaka ("Middle Way") school portrays a "middle way" position between metaphysical claims that things ultimately either exist or do not exist. Nagarjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā deconstructs the usage of terms describing reality ('the way things are'), leading to the insight into śūnyatā (emptiness). It contains only one reference to a sutta, the Kaccāyanagotta Sutta from the Samyutta Nikaya:
"Everything exists": That is one extreme.
"Everything doesn't exist": That is a second extreme.
Avoiding these two extremes,
The Tathagata teaches the Dhamma via the Middle.
The God debate typically asks, does a god exist, or not? We can observe that it's typically assumed without the least bit of questioning (for evidence see the infinite number of God debate threads on any philosophy forum) that the only possible answers to this question are yes or no. — Jake
That is, the Empire State building, like all matter, consists overwhelmingly of what we typically define as nothing.
Does the Empire State building exist? In our everyday experience at human scale the practical sensible answer is obviously yes. But if we look closer at what physics tells us a more accurate answer seems to be that 99.99% of Empire State building doesn't exist according to our definition of existence. — Jake
This is where the distinction between science talk and ordinary language is useful. Ordinary language takes priority in my book — S
This is a question I've always pondered, maybe you can help me. What is the best criterion for assessing what constitutes ordinary language?
I'm ignorant, just asking. — Merkwurdichliebe
It's how people ordinarily talk. This can be observed, and most of us pick it up to the extent that by our age, it is easily identifiable. We know that we don't ordinarily talk of existence in a way which leads to seemingly absurd consequences, like that the Empire State building doesn't exist. — S
Participants in the God debate are typically so eager to sell their preferred answer that they almost always rush blindly past the crucial issue of whether whether the question being asked is a useful question which can generate meaningful answers. — Jake
What we should be asking is whether the simplistic nature of the "does God exist?" question has been made valid by by being built upon what has been learned from observation of reality by experts. — Jake
This is the reason I insist on people stating what they mean by “God” before I can say anything else - most of the time this is met with accusations of “reductionism” and/or “word play”. — I like sushi
The God debate typically asks, does a god exist, or not? We can observe that it's typically assumed without the least bit of questioning (for evidence see the infinite number of God debate threads on any philosophy forum) that the only possible answers to this question are yes or no. — Jake
Considering there may be no actual “first cause” we’re cannot running under one, or more, assumptions no matter what we do. — I like sushi
Logic is generally a guide not a soothsayer. Meaning we can establish many logical arguments, but they’re always open to the questioning of inference ... — I like sushi
It is logically impossible for anything to exist without a first cause. — Devans99
Is it then logical for something to be a “first cause” if it cannot be caused? — I like sushi
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