Glad I was too dumb to finish college... - eviltoast
  • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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    6 months ago

    Science can’t prove that God doesn’t exist. Logic, however, can prove that many popular conceptions of ‘God’, such as tri omni super being, is logically inconsistent and thus can’t exist.

    • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      6 months ago

      This is reflects a common presumption among apologists, that if they can somehow prove that god exists, or even presume one does because the negative cannot be proven, that they can presume it is their god from their pantheon.

      Even if we were able to assert logically that a god exists (which Thomas Aquinas and Descartes tried to do and failed based on common presumptions of their era) it still would mean a vast number of possibilities other than the Abrahamic myth on which the Church and modern ministries depend. To be fair, a recent video on Aquinas’ arguments for God as they were understood when he wrote them were beyond my comprehension, and it didn’t address at all how he got from a generic creator being to the Resurrection of Jesus. The thing is, if Aquinas’ logical flow can be explained in modern terms, I should be able to understand it, even if I suck at calculating integrals. (I could follow Greene and Hawking well enough.)

      When considering theistic possibilities, I prefer to look at the simulation hypothesis and Azathoth’s dream. As neither of them assert a divine interest in us personally (either the planet or the species, let alone us individually) they aren’t popular among those who depend on religion, but they make way more sense as philosophical examples. Both of these also don’t assert an afterlife. (The latter is, in fact, cosmic horror intended to allow the reader grasp how ephemeral their own existence is, that the entire universe will vanish and be forgotten when Azathoth wakes once again.)

      Popular religions tend to follow ideas that are popular among humans (that we’re extra important, that justice within human society is important, that we’re not going to die) which is evidence they’ve been honed towards appealing to populism, and not honed towards accurately reflecting what is true or real.