ahhh, defining God. The sandbox of wistful minds.

If being alive is being consciously aware, then we are 'dead' every night, being miraculously reborn upon awakening. We've got the moment and no more.
It's not death we should fear but the pain that might come before.

Making an object [or whatever you choose] into 'God' might be squirming through the wrong rabbit hole. You run afoul of the paradigm of what is- an then inevitably- what is not, God. That's a bad place to go if your looking for ultimate meaning. As Lao Tzu said 'the 'God' that can be named is not the ultimate God . It's all in the definition- if God just becomes limitless possibility then count me in.

God doesn't need replacing... but maybe the concept of God does. People have an annoying way of defining God and then politicizing that idea. Equating God with infinite possibility and deriving nothing from a 'personality' imposed upon it is a good place to start.
We fall back into limitless possibility at the end of our days.
Isn't that good enough?

Insofar as we think in terms of language it is language meaning that determines how we interpret the 'world' in our minds. Even animals have a language based upon simple symbols and spatial coordination.

So they are developmental traits. It is totally possible to derail what could be through neglect or abuse in those formative weeks- maybe this is an opportunity to act before we put mom in a taxi and send her on her way with baby,

Ah, yes the deeper insight thing. Language can lead to many (mis)interpretations. Unless we know the rules of the game and agree to the field of play we are just having a pick-up game in the park. I am more interested in the meme and its widespread appeal amid the hazy meaning that can be so derived. These rhetorical statements by media leaders have been known to morph in many directions.

There may be hard wired inclinations for sure- but the eating me part is my interpretation of 'good', the lion is just being a lion.

Isn't the concept of 'good' a judgement inherent to the observer? The starving cat finds its encounter with the mouse to be 'good', the mouse has reason to see things otherwise.

Semantics- the foundation on which we stand, The term infinite has various meanings. The original old French term means simply 'not finite' or in simple terms undefined, There will always be that which lies outside of our ability to ascertain or even comprehend. We can experience such a paltry slice of the universe that it is simply hubris that one attempts to make grand declarations of reality must be. Who cares what physicists believe- we are children in a sandbox.

point taken!

I think the reason the concept of smallness intrigues me is because some scientists talk of 'point particles' which are essentially one dimensional objects that occupy no space. This idea bothers me because it can't be proven but at the same time means nothing smaller is possible. The idea just seems lazy!
It is always possible to muse about things that are outside of our ability to verify and we are free to do so, but with the caveat that it is just narrative without substance.
I think that we have not yet reached the smallest elements but simply have no way to detect these.
Undoubtedly our capacity to verify objects is limited by our instruments- basically CERN's collider and some pretty complicated physics theory. This realm of minute detection is not static and in the future both the theories and instruments will evolve- we may go smaller yet.
Actually an electron does more or less count as a quark based on it's mass and inability to be split into any constituent pieces I believe.

"However, the Greeks would've been in error only if the atoms they were talking about are the particles science defines as atoms. The possibility remains that the Greek "atom" could actually be quarks and if these can be broken down into simpler particles..."
Yeah, that's how I see it too.
It is really the idea of reaching a point where corporeal substance can no longer be divisible. The question is does indivisibility exist? We stand at this juncture where our scale of existence can be probed in both the direction of smallness or largeness but after a certain point it becomes irrelevant to our reality to move past these in a tangible way. The interaction of particles by high energy collision is our main way to trace our theories of elementary particles, while factors of time and the speed of light seem to inhibit us at the large scale. Your social science allegory is interesting because it does appear that slicing and dicing beyond practicality starts to change the meaning when scales become remote to our existence.

'So far, whenever we get to the absolute end of the line on something, it has turned out that there's still more to find.'
You must be an astrophysicist. A few hundred years ago people were throwing around the wild concept that stars might be many millions of miles away. I guess they were off by few exponential units but it beat the pinholes in the shroud of heaven theory. We tend to reach these barriers of technology then maddeningly assume these are somehow limits of reality.

'Planck units – fundamental relationships – seem to correspond more to what ancient Greeks (& Indian Cārvāka) had in mind than to what early modern chemists, then physicists, anachronistically (mis)labeled "atoms". The only thing that was "discovered" with regard to "atoms" was that John Dalton et al were wildly premature and mistaken.'
Well maybe it was a case of 18th century science doing what it could to meet the definition and falling short. In this case quarks would be atoms in the Greek sense but we may be just waiting for a capacity to scale this down too. Everything rarifies to energy at some level, then it is a matter of how it is packaged at decreasing quantum levels. The story of smallness may be more one of space itself as its properties to accommodate corporeal substance are funneled downward to exotic places.

Ha, I brush my teeth with quantum foam.
"In physics, the Planck length, denoted ℓP, is a unit of length. It is equal to 1.616255×10−35 m... The Planck length is the scale at which quantum gravitational effects are believed to begin to become apparent in what is called the Quantum foam, and where the interactions require a working theory of quantum gravity to be analyzed. The Planck length may also represent the diameter of the smallest possible black hole.'
So gravitation may be a feature at scale but is it a limit? My guess is that the concept of a point particle is more or less shorthand for 'we have no way to make sense past this barrier'... yet. This is a horizon of oblivion where philosophy usurps science.

I think that you have written a really a clear response. The limitations of our ability to understand is more the barrier than what may be the actuality of it all.

"A point particle (ideal particle or point-like particle, often spelled pointlike particle) is an idealization of particles heavily used in physics. Its defining feature is that it lacks spatial extension; being dimensionless, it does not take up space." - Wiki

It looks like there is question about the simple limitations of space itself.

I'm interested in how you interpret the transfer of wealth consideration and what are the mechanisms that will cause this to happen. Please start a topic on that!
Otherwise my observation it is less because people are inherently amoral, more it is of where we are in the reality we individually are able to conjure for ourselves. Some people live day-to-day because they must, others are part of some sub-culture that is given to certain attitudes, still others have time to consider larger topics- these are not always in sync.

Ultimately philosophy is a personal orientation regarding our place in the universe. Since everyone is free to believe as they will it is unlikely that enough people will orient themselves in a way that will bring consensus on collective actions- no more than religion or politics can.

Reason is limited- to the three pounds of grey matter we have between our ears. Our thought s are produced by our brain, which is the mechanism of our perceptions and creativity. It's funny how people tend to wall this up like that which lies outside our knowledge needs a fence to separate real from non-real. But there is necessity in defining reality to a point just to negotiate our daily lives and defining reality helps many people to operate in this world.
Is there 'beyond the real'? This is a semantic journey requiring at least some definition of 'real' and then some way of probing into what might be beyond what is real. We have our senses and our sensibility, then derive some order out of the immediate environment to survive. Anything else is frosting on the cake. I like frosting.

We demonstrate this by definition of finite itself. Generally the clue is when you have something that 'is this' and 'is not that', the duality inherent to finite existence solidifies something into a knowable state. 'This red apple' is not the 'rock on the front lawn' these are finite things that are readily identifiable.

It would be unknowable.
I suppose at this juncture we can only muse whether something does exist beyond our ability to reason or not. Does it matter? If you want it to- just like hidden worlds and pixie dust we are free to conceive wherever our minds can go. We only box ourselves in when we think to some arbitrary wall of oblivion and say there's nothing beyond.
Perhaps musing of yet unheard of reality is our purpose.

You are correct- we have moved away from the idea of eternal recurrence as expressed by Nietzsche. I just liked the idea as a lead in to understanding of deeper reality and used this thread as a pathway to explore it.
Forgive me for not really having an opinion on the concept. This is mostly from the standpoint that the idea of eternal recurrence as expressed by Nietzsche has its place in reality but entertaining the thought that this or any reality conform to a given interpretation becomes mute as we move into deeper ontological precepts like the notion of infinite possibility.
If infinite exists then if you move far enough you will encounter diametric opposites eventually to everything you perceive.

Ha. There is definitely room for all possibility in an 'infinite' universe. So your musing must be correct! [provided the universe is infinite- which I am inclined to accept on flimsy evidence].
You specifically say- 'nothing is chance and we are all complex parts within wider cycles of time.' Looking at the semantics of the first part of your statement- nothing [probably meant in the context of 'excluding no elements'], is chance [where any outcome is derived from a set of circumstances which cannot be random]. This would set up a reality then excluding chance as being a factor in all real circumstances, yes?
And so it is.
Should your own proximate reality be able to create this possibility, which it does, then this scenario does exist in fact. What it says to other possibilities can only be derived locally- in effect by our own limited sensibilities in the present mind, as we all must as part of the human condition.
Bully then, I can buy into this sentiment as you express it.
But for fun I will deconstruct the semantics of your sentence to create something other...
'nothing is chance and we are all complex parts within wider cycles of time'. nothing [in this case meaning 'no thing', which as I now interpret as intended to mean 'that which lies outside the universe of things']. Such universes would be totally alien to our understanding and yet still possible in an infinite universe, then the word combo 'is random' [in this case now reversing your original intent and affirming randomness by just rejiggering the context of 'is random'.
So then these other universes can be totally random in the infinite domain and not even violate your original proximate construct.
Now as for the later part of the sentence- 'we are all complex parts within wider cycles of time'... wow, that is a concept begging more contemplation- like a semester courses worth at university scale.
As for myself, I'm not one to pigeon hole reality instead letting it prosper under its own accord. The capacity of people to muse at the horizons of oblivion is inspiring.
Victor

Suddenly the thread comes to life.
We make assumptions in that there is this phenomenon called 'time' which proceeds from the past into the future. Sensible because that is endemic to the human condition.
But the universe may already be fully expressed and changeless. What we perceive as a changing universe is really our 'proximate' [I'm using this word right away] interpretation of what is occurring. As our experience seemingly rides over what our physical presence allows, we see an illusion of time unfolding.
What may seem to be a Hinduesque cycle of life, may be more in the vein of a Taoist concept 'the Tao that can be experienced is not the ultimate Tao.
Victor