I think the problem with apophatic definitions of God is that it becomes so vague as to become meaningless.
Many of the things classical theists say about God are compatible with my view -- that everything is grounded in mathematical structure, if we just identify God with the ensemble of all mathematical objects.
* Is not a person
* Is infinite
* Is simple (in the sense of no free parameters, for instance)
* Is beyond human understanding
* Is a necessary being
* Grounds all of existence
* The physical world is inside God (for panentheists; not quite your view where there is an overlap but neither is wholly inside the other)
* Is perfect (to the extent that such a claim is meaningful at all, which I doubt)
In order to distinguish classical theism from a view like mine I think you need to make some positive claims. Claims about morality or value, for example, like that moral/value realism is true God is the source of morality/value. Or claims that Jesus (or Buddha, or Mohammed, or whoever) is special in some God-related way.
I was just joking a bit, it's all good! I think Pythagorean metaphysis is an interesting approach, and you surely didn't deny it before or anything, I believe we touched in only briefly :)
Not entirely meaningless. It rejects the idea that there is nothing beyond this world or this Universe. That our lives and the Universe just exist by happenstance and the only meaning there can be is the meaning we bestow upon our lives ourselves.
There is something, but it is way beyond our ability to understand or define. But it is a feeling that there is so much more than is readily apparent in our humdrum lives. That there is a fundamental non-personal ‘spiritual presence’ that pervades and suffuses the entirety of reality. That reality as a whole is somehow infused with this conscious presence that we all somehow partake in. And that all conscious creatures — indeed all things, all events, everything that has been, everything that will be — is infused with ultimate meaning. But what such an ultimate meaning is eludes us in our present states.
Maybe we get a vague glimpse of this ultimate reality in mystical states.
Very entertaining ideas to be sure, but does this made up word reflect the intellectual masturabation involved in the philosophy of mind here on substack? In that psychological way we project an imagined sense of realness onto words like Devil, God, & Somethingists? Because our behaviors are so subconsciously orchestrated & functionally automatic, we fail to notice the consensus trance of our unbalanced experience of consciousness?
And more importantly the reified-reality nature of human languages and our sense of separation from the cosmic reality, life is undeniably immersed in? While from a religious perspective, do we tend to overlook the experiential discernment of Axial-age philosophy, in the story of Jesus of Nazareth? And those cryptically clever subconscious storytelling tropes about Ego death & the personal transformation of the perceptual confusion inherent in our everyday use of language?
And in the experiential discernment context of R. D. Laing's "we are all in a post-hypnotic trance induced in early infancy." Consider:
(Psychologist Charles Tart coined the term "consensus trance" to describe normal waking consciousness, proposing that it functions as a collective hypnotic state. From childhood, society’s cultural, ideological, and linguistic conditioning acts as a continuous induction that narrows our focus. This process teaches us what to perceive, value, and ignore.
The Mechanics of the Trance
Social Programming: Ideological conditioning, cultural taboos, and shared narratives are reinforced so consistently that they function exactly like a hypnotic suggestion.
Constriction of Reality: Rather than experiencing the universe completely and objectively, our brains lock onto a predictive "best guess" of reality that is agreed upon by our community.
Automatic Functioning: Like a hypnotized subject acting on a post-hypnotic cue, we walk through everyday life running on conditioned scripts and automatic reactions rather than true, creative freedom.
Psychological & Neuroscientific Views
Controlled Hallucination: Leading neuroscientists like Anil Seth suggest that human perception itself is a form of "controlled hallucination", where the world we see is shaped by prior expectations and sensory regulation.
Consensus Reality: Also known as Consensus Reality on Wikipedia, it serves as a pragmatic, shared framework to help us communicate and survive in society.
Transcending the Trance: Altered states—such as deep meditation, trance states, and shamanic Trance and Shamanic States of Consciousness—allow the mind to drop this socially conditioned filter, exposing us to deeper, non-dual levels of subjective experience.) A Google AI Overview
While I think there are some intellects that think of God as a "Super-mind", I don't think most every day, traditional, followers of Christianity see the Father in that light. I think they (mostly) view him in that old man with a beard, very judgmental, kinda guy, kinda way. In other words, they see him as a being, whether flesh and blood, or not.
There's an interesting probabilistic case for the nones (no particular religion) or somethings, similar to Draper's moves. Broader theism may be more probable than omni-theism, and broad non-naturalism (possibly like "nones" or the Unitarian Universalism camp) could fare better than both. My qualm as a traditional Christian is that I think there's more evidence for Christianity, specifically more science backing Catholic miracles. And yes, Catholicism does have this sort of big tent, transcendent, ipsum esse subsistens Thomstic God. God is the God of all. Anyway, cool stuff here!
I think that’s a thoughtful way to frame it, though I might put the Christian claim slightly differently: not necessarily that Christianity has more “evidence” in the ordinary evidential sense, but that it may offer more truth by nesting the experience of ultimacy within a thicker field of analogical correspondences — moral, historical, sacramental, communal, and cultural. For someone formed within a Christian world, the language of Christ, grace, incarnation, resurrection, and the Church may carry more of the experience than a thinner “Something” can, not because every other tradition is merely saying the same thing less clearly, but because this tradition provides a deeper and more available structure through which the experience can be received, interpreted, and lived. That is different from saying all religions are interchangeable language-systems; traditions really do differ in what they disclose, emphasize, distort, preserve, and make possible. So perhaps the question is not only which view has the most discrete pieces of evidence, but which symbolic and historical form most truthfully gathers the experience without pretending to exhaust what it points toward.
Thanks. Sure, I can see your almost sort of Wittgenstein way of thinking here, but was kind of speaking more personally there about my faith and miracles while donning the Bayesian hat. Yeah, there is a wider evidence pool the Christian can gather from besides just the medical documentation on Catholic miracles. Historically from the minimal facts about Jesus and the improbable rise of the early church; Christianity's influence on modern morality; strange prophecies such as the Suffering Servant and the destruction of the temple; perhaps plausible assumptions about what an all-good God would do like incarnate and forgive sins, etc. I just think things like modern sainthood miracles and their undergoing scientific scrutiny tip the scales toward Catholicism.
Beyond this though, there is a sense in which Thomistic Catholicism tries to get at the ineffable God, a God that's the self-subsisting foundation, beyond parthood or contingency and unlike anything really in our world. It's like author to book as Bishop Barron quips about this. This is a transcendent God that can speak to all peoples and help out any regardless of their faith. But following His son is probably the plan He had in mind. Anyway, rambling now, thanks for the food for thought!
Also, maybe 'God' is what has not or cannot be captured by mathematical sciences? Basically what we don't know that we dont (and can't) know. Wise man, Rumsfeld 😉
I think the problem with apophatic definitions of God is that it becomes so vague as to become meaningless.
Many of the things classical theists say about God are compatible with my view -- that everything is grounded in mathematical structure, if we just identify God with the ensemble of all mathematical objects.
* Is not a person
* Is infinite
* Is simple (in the sense of no free parameters, for instance)
* Is beyond human understanding
* Is a necessary being
* Grounds all of existence
* The physical world is inside God (for panentheists; not quite your view where there is an overlap but neither is wholly inside the other)
* Is perfect (to the extent that such a claim is meaningful at all, which I doubt)
In order to distinguish classical theism from a view like mine I think you need to make some positive claims. Claims about morality or value, for example, like that moral/value realism is true God is the source of morality/value. Or claims that Jesus (or Buddha, or Mohammed, or whoever) is special in some God-related way.
Somethingism isn't enough.
:)
Hah! Didn't you, in the first of our very interesting and (for me) productive discussions, dodge the question about Pythagorean Metaphysics? :)
Perhaps! Sorry, can't recall now.
I was just joking a bit, it's all good! I think Pythagorean metaphysis is an interesting approach, and you surely didn't deny it before or anything, I believe we touched in only briefly :)
Not entirely meaningless. It rejects the idea that there is nothing beyond this world or this Universe. That our lives and the Universe just exist by happenstance and the only meaning there can be is the meaning we bestow upon our lives ourselves.
There is something, but it is way beyond our ability to understand or define. But it is a feeling that there is so much more than is readily apparent in our humdrum lives. That there is a fundamental non-personal ‘spiritual presence’ that pervades and suffuses the entirety of reality. That reality as a whole is somehow infused with this conscious presence that we all somehow partake in. And that all conscious creatures — indeed all things, all events, everything that has been, everything that will be — is infused with ultimate meaning. But what such an ultimate meaning is eludes us in our present states.
Maybe we get a vague glimpse of this ultimate reality in mystical states.
Very entertaining ideas to be sure, but does this made up word reflect the intellectual masturabation involved in the philosophy of mind here on substack? In that psychological way we project an imagined sense of realness onto words like Devil, God, & Somethingists? Because our behaviors are so subconsciously orchestrated & functionally automatic, we fail to notice the consensus trance of our unbalanced experience of consciousness?
And more importantly the reified-reality nature of human languages and our sense of separation from the cosmic reality, life is undeniably immersed in? While from a religious perspective, do we tend to overlook the experiential discernment of Axial-age philosophy, in the story of Jesus of Nazareth? And those cryptically clever subconscious storytelling tropes about Ego death & the personal transformation of the perceptual confusion inherent in our everyday use of language?
And in the experiential discernment context of R. D. Laing's "we are all in a post-hypnotic trance induced in early infancy." Consider:
(Psychologist Charles Tart coined the term "consensus trance" to describe normal waking consciousness, proposing that it functions as a collective hypnotic state. From childhood, society’s cultural, ideological, and linguistic conditioning acts as a continuous induction that narrows our focus. This process teaches us what to perceive, value, and ignore.
The Mechanics of the Trance
Social Programming: Ideological conditioning, cultural taboos, and shared narratives are reinforced so consistently that they function exactly like a hypnotic suggestion.
Constriction of Reality: Rather than experiencing the universe completely and objectively, our brains lock onto a predictive "best guess" of reality that is agreed upon by our community.
Automatic Functioning: Like a hypnotized subject acting on a post-hypnotic cue, we walk through everyday life running on conditioned scripts and automatic reactions rather than true, creative freedom.
Psychological & Neuroscientific Views
Controlled Hallucination: Leading neuroscientists like Anil Seth suggest that human perception itself is a form of "controlled hallucination", where the world we see is shaped by prior expectations and sensory regulation.
Consensus Reality: Also known as Consensus Reality on Wikipedia, it serves as a pragmatic, shared framework to help us communicate and survive in society.
Transcending the Trance: Altered states—such as deep meditation, trance states, and shamanic Trance and Shamanic States of Consciousness—allow the mind to drop this socially conditioned filter, exposing us to deeper, non-dual levels of subjective experience.) A Google AI Overview
While I think there are some intellects that think of God as a "Super-mind", I don't think most every day, traditional, followers of Christianity see the Father in that light. I think they (mostly) view him in that old man with a beard, very judgmental, kinda guy, kinda way. In other words, they see him as a being, whether flesh and blood, or not.
This may be true about early Christianity, but the even older polytheistic religions surely imagined their gods as persons of some sort.
There's an interesting probabilistic case for the nones (no particular religion) or somethings, similar to Draper's moves. Broader theism may be more probable than omni-theism, and broad non-naturalism (possibly like "nones" or the Unitarian Universalism camp) could fare better than both. My qualm as a traditional Christian is that I think there's more evidence for Christianity, specifically more science backing Catholic miracles. And yes, Catholicism does have this sort of big tent, transcendent, ipsum esse subsistens Thomstic God. God is the God of all. Anyway, cool stuff here!
I think that’s a thoughtful way to frame it, though I might put the Christian claim slightly differently: not necessarily that Christianity has more “evidence” in the ordinary evidential sense, but that it may offer more truth by nesting the experience of ultimacy within a thicker field of analogical correspondences — moral, historical, sacramental, communal, and cultural. For someone formed within a Christian world, the language of Christ, grace, incarnation, resurrection, and the Church may carry more of the experience than a thinner “Something” can, not because every other tradition is merely saying the same thing less clearly, but because this tradition provides a deeper and more available structure through which the experience can be received, interpreted, and lived. That is different from saying all religions are interchangeable language-systems; traditions really do differ in what they disclose, emphasize, distort, preserve, and make possible. So perhaps the question is not only which view has the most discrete pieces of evidence, but which symbolic and historical form most truthfully gathers the experience without pretending to exhaust what it points toward.
Thanks. Sure, I can see your almost sort of Wittgenstein way of thinking here, but was kind of speaking more personally there about my faith and miracles while donning the Bayesian hat. Yeah, there is a wider evidence pool the Christian can gather from besides just the medical documentation on Catholic miracles. Historically from the minimal facts about Jesus and the improbable rise of the early church; Christianity's influence on modern morality; strange prophecies such as the Suffering Servant and the destruction of the temple; perhaps plausible assumptions about what an all-good God would do like incarnate and forgive sins, etc. I just think things like modern sainthood miracles and their undergoing scientific scrutiny tip the scales toward Catholicism.
Beyond this though, there is a sense in which Thomistic Catholicism tries to get at the ineffable God, a God that's the self-subsisting foundation, beyond parthood or contingency and unlike anything really in our world. It's like author to book as Bishop Barron quips about this. This is a transcendent God that can speak to all peoples and help out any regardless of their faith. But following His son is probably the plan He had in mind. Anyway, rambling now, thanks for the food for thought!
Cf. Meister Eckhart.
Also, maybe 'God' is what has not or cannot be captured by mathematical sciences? Basically what we don't know that we dont (and can't) know. Wise man, Rumsfeld 😉