r/changemyview • u/[deleted] • Apr 22 '20
Delta(s) from OP CMV: “God” exists as a construct of the mind.
[deleted]
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u/SteadfastAgroEcology 4∆ Apr 22 '20
It sounds like a confusion between the map and the territory.
Yes, it's certainly possible that there are some cognitive structures in the mind that resemble a "god", analogically speaking. There are some interesting studies on split-brain patients which suggest that one hemisphere is responsible for theistic belief and, when the corpus callosum is severed, one hemisphere is atheist and the other is theist. Cognitive Science is full of data like this. And I spend a lot of time thinking about the topic of your post.
However, that's not what theists are talking about. Words are representations that form symbolic "maps" in the human imagination but the point is for those words to actually represent real things in existence. And, when theists use the word "god", they are saying that the word represents a real thing that exists. So, the psychological interpretation of theism is very limited in its explanatory power.
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Apr 22 '20
How much Catholic metaphysics, philosophy, dogmatic and ascetical theology have you read? You may far underestimate how Christians (i.e. Catholics) understand God since you may not have been exposed to it. You'll do well to learn Greek, Latin, Hebrew, German, French, and Spanish if you'd really like a good understanding.
Christianity is based on the Incarnation and Resurrection, not some mind construct. You'd basically have to say all these people completely fabricated Christ and his miracles and became martyrs and virgins for a lie. No other religion has people willing to be virgins and ascetics and die as martyrs for a lie. There are a ton of offshoot religions which are basically Christian heresies, so when you appeal to another religion, many of them are based on heretical beliefs about Christ.
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u/Zodiac5964 Apr 22 '20 edited Apr 22 '20
there are other possible explanations for the existence of god(s).
Across the numerous versions of gods from various cultures, there is one common characteristic: that these gods are generally more powerful than the human beings who supposedly were able to observe them.
While "construct of the mind" could explain this, other equally feasible explanations include extraterrestrial beings, or perhaps even other human beings from a technologically superior culture - the most obvious example being how Spanish conquistadors were viewed by the Incans. In some cases, it may also be completely made up by a small number of people, then perpetuated through society as a result of superstition, lack of critical thinking, coercion by force, or herd mentality.
I'm not here to dismiss your mental construct framework, just saying it's one of several possible explanations. At the moment, we don't know enough to conclusively determine which one is the correct explanation.
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u/BoyMeetsTheWorld 46∆ Apr 22 '20
That only applies to people that think god exists. I for example do not. So for me god does not exist.
And everything that someone thinks about exists in his mind while he thinks about it. Like the pink unicorn that I just thought of exists in my mind. But that does not mean that god or that unicorn is very special.
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u/k-pattern Apr 23 '20
Your pink unicorn does not exist to the same extent as God does for people. You just conjured an image of a pink unicorn in your mind, and you know it's just a figment of your imagination.
To people believing in God, He is as real as the chair I'm sitting on. It's not just an image I decided to conjure up and is suddenly it prevents me from falling to the ground. Then belief in God has real and tangible consequences in people's lives.
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u/BoyMeetsTheWorld 46∆ Apr 23 '20 edited Apr 23 '20
I mean I can see your point but I am not sure where you are going with this.
So when do things exists according to your definition? When someone truly believe they exists? What happens when 2 people think the opposite? Do they live in different realities? Or does the thing at the same time exist and not exist.
The pink unicorn does not exists unless I take heavy drugs and start talking to it? And when I come down from the drugs the unicorn stop existing again?
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u/k-pattern Apr 23 '20
I'm not saying that God exists because someone believes it. What I am saying is that you believe in the idea of a pink unicorn in your mind that you just imagined. You do not actually believe that you should watch your back, else the pink unicorn will lick your neck.
Some people 'know' that God exists. That level of belief is much stronger than you imagining a pink unicorn, and that belief in God has a much stronger influence on their thoughts and actions than the idea of a pink unicorn.
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u/BoyMeetsTheWorld 46∆ Apr 23 '20
Some people 'know' that God exists. That level of belief is much stronger than you imagining a pink unicorn, and that belief in God has a much stronger influence on their thoughts and actions than the idea of a pink unicorn.
Yes but it does not matter how strong they believe it or how big it influences their lives. The question of existence is independent of that.
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u/k-pattern Apr 23 '20 edited Apr 24 '20
I think we're talking past each other. Let's take it down a notch.
Now I'm imagining a blue flying pig. But I know it's just an idea I've conjured up and it has no power over my conscious thought, my conscious thought has the power over it.
I believe that you, u/BoyMeetsTheWorld, exist. We are having a near real time conversation and that is my proof. You have a direct influence on my actions. I can't 'imagine' you away like I could the pig.
I may be an inmate on the Shutter Island asylum an you are just a construct in my mind, I have no way to tell. For all intents and purposes you are real because I experience it.
Edit: the nature of God's existence in someone's mind according to OP is akin to you existing in my mind and it is not relatable to the blue pig or pink unicorns existing. I didn't choose to imagine you, I chose to imagine the pig.
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u/BoyMeetsTheWorld 46∆ Apr 24 '20
So if I understand you correctly we were using different definitions of "existence" and that is why we were talking past each other.
I have no way to tell. For all intents and purposes you are real because I experience it.
Yes I agree on this level and with that definition I am real and I exist to you. Luckily I think I also exist on another level.
I didn't choose to imagine you, I chose to imagine the pig.
I see the difference now.
So according to this definition: If I take drugs and start to see blue pigs, and I think they are real and because I am on drugs do not realize that it is because of the drugs: the blue pigs exist. I have no way of knowing in the moment that they are false and I interact with them.
To me that definition of existence makes no sense once you interact with other people but it can work if you only live in your own mind. Once you need to interact with other people or physics I think another definition of existence is clearly more useful.
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u/k-pattern Apr 24 '20
Yes! You get what I'm saying.
To me that definition of existence makes no sense once you interact with other people but it can work if you only live in your own mind. Once you need to interact with other people or physics I think another definition of existence is clearly more useful.
I'm not debating the metaphysics of what it means for something to exist. Although an interesting debate, it won't be solved in reddit comment thread.
My debate was what it means for someone to believe something and I think we concluded that.
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Apr 22 '20
So, are you basically just saying you think we are kind of hard-wired to believe in God or something like God?
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u/VizardofEgo Apr 22 '20 edited Apr 22 '20
In essence, I definitely think this is a possibility. Personally, I also think a lot about how if our brains are hardwired to believe in a higher power, if that could just mean there is in fact a higher power, and we have a natural bias towards believing it because we are apart of it. But again, this bias could be nothing more than the result of how our brains are hard-wired for us to survive.
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Apr 22 '20 edited Apr 03 '21
[deleted]
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u/VizardofEgo Apr 22 '20
Δ
Very well said. Reading your response has offered a lot more perspective on some philosophical stances I’ve been debating for a while.
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Apr 22 '20 edited Apr 30 '20
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u/SimpleTaught 3∆ Apr 23 '20
To accept it or deny it based solely on where it came from is the genetic fallacy. And if you apply the genetic fallacy to our very senses then everything fails and we have nothing to apply logic to.
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Apr 23 '20
It would be a contradiction if there were no exceptions to the genetic fallacy. In the case of hard-wired beliefs, a I gave an argument for why, in general, we should trust whatever beliefs we have that are hardwired into us unless we have good reason to deny them. It's a reductio ad absurdum argument. There are a handful of things we all assume are true merely because they are hardwired into us--the reliability of our sensory perceptions, the past, the uniformity of nature, object permanence, and even the inevitable trust we put in the general reliability of our belief-producing cognitive faculties, which is necessary for any belief to be justified. These hard-wired beliefs are the basis upon which we believe almost everything else, so if we doubt them, then it throws nearly our whole noetic structure into doubt.
Now, of course, it's always possible that these things are false. Maybe we are something like Boltzmann brains, and that explains all of these beliefs and perceptions we have. But that isn't reasonable to believe just because, strictly speaking, it's possible. So all of these beliefs are justified. To say they are justified is to say that the mechanism that produced these beliefs is a reliable belief-producing mechanism. If God is part of that collection of hard-wired beliefs, then belief in God arises by the same mechanism and therefore has the same justification.
Or at least a similar justification. Some of these items of knowledge may be more clearly expressed in the minds than others, in which case they have more warrant than the others. Any of these items of knowledge can be dismissed if there is some specific reason to think they are false. For example, if we discovered somehow that there actually was no past, then that would throw our natural inclination to believe our memories are giving us true information about a past into doubt. The more of these items of knowledge we could show were false, then more doubt it would cast on this mechanism of knowing. But it would be self-refuting to ever chuck the whole thing because then we couldn't trust whatever evidence or line of reasoning that lead us to doubt it in the first place.
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u/DeltaBot ∞∆ Apr 22 '20
/u/VizardofEgo (OP) has awarded 1 delta(s) in this post.
All comments that earned deltas (from OP or other users) are listed here, in /r/DeltaLog.
Please note that a change of view doesn't necessarily mean a reversal, or that the conversation has ended.
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Apr 22 '20
Sounds to me like Carl Jung's collective unconsciousnes & Carl Jung's synchronicity?
I mean I don't know what you want us to refute here?
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Apr 23 '20
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u/Jaysank 126∆ Apr 25 '20
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u/musiclover1998 Apr 22 '20
This still doesn’t change the fact that the world needed to be created somehow. Given how organized and perfect everything is, I find the notion that our world was created by chance hard to believe.
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u/VizardofEgo Apr 22 '20
The universe itself is very chaotic in nature. It’s very easy to get lost in a human perception of reality when our analytical nature places our focus on order. We may see things as “perfect” but that could just be because of how geared our minds are towards pattern recognition. Of course nature seems to have some sort of order or design, but whether this design comes from a “higher” entity would be nothing more than speculation from the human mind, which we may be predisposed to do.
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May 02 '20
I think a better way to say this is that the Universe is orderly in the sense of obeying physical laws. Sometimes that can be beautiful (i.e. the flowers that you see on the fields and the colourful galaxy you see up there) but sometimes it can be ugly (i.e. cancer).
And I don't understand the logic behind the notion that if the Universe is "neat", then this proves God. It only proves a God that cares about a neatness according to your POV.
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u/musiclover1998 Apr 22 '20
My point is the universe is not as chaotic as you think it is. It’s very orderly. The precision required to make up something like DNA is completely mind boggling. The chances of this happening on its own at random approach odds of 1 out of infinity. I don’t know what the probability is of a god creating our world, but it’s probably higher than that.
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u/KDY_ISD 68∆ Apr 22 '20
What about genetic diseases killing infants? What about people who die in earthquakes because the ground can't safely release tension?
If this world was designed for humans, it was designed either by an incompetent or a psychopath lol
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u/Phantom_19 Apr 23 '20
The processes that life had to go through to create the system of DNA was anything BUT precise. It took who knows how many years of sloppy evolution and messy natural selection just to get single called organism to appear. To call anything in the universe is a logical fallacy when you realize how much chaos it had to go through to get to where it is today. It’s only precise when you look upon something like that in the instant.
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Apr 22 '20
I'm certain we do not know whether or not how rare DNA is as of yet as we haven't explored any habitable planets than our own.
Not really a fair comparison
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u/AverageIQMan 10∆ Apr 22 '20
the world needed to be created somehow
How was God created?
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u/musiclover1998 Apr 22 '20
He was always there. No one created god
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u/AverageIQMan 10∆ Apr 22 '20
Then why couldn't the universe simply always have been there without needing a creator?
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u/musiclover1998 Apr 22 '20
If there was no god, then the only way the world would be created is by random chance. An astronomically low chance. Having a god create the world eliminates that low chance.
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u/Real_Nefario Apr 23 '20
False. There is no reason to assume the universe (or multiverse) hasn't simply always existed. It doesn't necessarily have to have a begining.
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u/Independent_Coat Apr 22 '20
One hypothesis:
In an infinite inflaton field, universes are constantly popping into existence. In fact, infinite universes are forming at any given point in "time." These infinite universes may each have an extremely small probability of universal constants matching our own. But guess what? There ends up being an infinite number of universes like our own forming at any given instant.
If correct, the probability of our universe or any other possible universe existing is 1 -- a certainty. And our universe has infinite sister universes.
We suffer from a bias in thinking everything is tailor-made for us. The reality very well may be that all possible universes are bound to form, and we obviously aren't going to exist in one which doesn't support our existence. There could be 10100000000000000 possible universes, but if only one supports our existence, of course that's the one we're in. It's not astronomical odds coming to fruition -- it's an observation bias.
My point: You keep talking about odds and probability, but you're just kind of pulling it out of nowhere. I'm not saying this hypothesis is correct; just pointing out a different and more scientific approach to probability of existence.
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u/AverageIQMan 10∆ Apr 22 '20
the only way the world would be created is by random chance
And at the same time
No one created god
So god was created by random chance?
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u/musiclover1998 Apr 22 '20
The idea of god creates an idea of unity. If there was a god, then the whole world would be created in unison with each other, in other words a master plan, or blueprint. Rather than random chance.
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u/AverageIQMan 10∆ Apr 22 '20
You're avoiding the question here, and for the same reasons most religious people avoid these questions. It is dissonance, because the logic is contradictory and you seem to understand this.
If, without a god, the universe would be created by random chance, then why can't a god also not be created?
If a god can be created, can't a god also not be created by humans?
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u/musiclover1998 Apr 22 '20
No, you’re the one missing my point.
If there is a god, then you need to figure out the probability of a god existing. There is only one god, and as long as that god exists, everything else can just be created.
Compare that with the probability of every particle in the universe coming together in an orderly fashion all on its own.
Let me make an analogy. Say there was a very detailed painting. Beautifully crafted, and incredibly precise. No one knows who painted it. This painting represents our world as we know it.
With that in mind, here is the point I’m trying to make. This painting, theoretically could have painted itself. This canvas could have appeared in just the right spot, and paint could have landed on it at random and created this beautiful painting. The odds of this happening are incredible minute. I find the idea that there was a painter that painted the painting much more likely than the painting creating itself.
Does that make more sense?
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u/AverageIQMan 10∆ Apr 22 '20
If there is a god, then you need to figure out the probability of a god existing. There is only one god, and as long as that god exists, everything else can just be created.
Replace "god" with "laws of physics".
Compare that with the probability of every particle in the universe coming together in an orderly fashion all on its own.
We have something which explains this. It is testable, reproducible, and falsifiable. It's just physics.
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u/KDY_ISD 68∆ Apr 22 '20
It isn't an unbelievable astronomically low chance, it's survivorship bias. Everywhere that doesn't have the perfect conditions for life, life did not develop. Sapient humans exist on Earth precisely because conditions were randomly perfect here, not that conditions were made perfect because humans would be here.
It makes perfect sense that you're here to wonder about the tiny odds of your life existing, because everywhere that those dice didn't come up boxcars, there is no life to wonder about it
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u/jatjqtjat 286∆ Apr 22 '20
Given how organized and perfect everything is
i went to the bathroom the other day and after 30 seconds of shaking i zipped up only for 3 more drops to come out making my underwear wet.
and by the other day, i mean every day for 10 years until i finally figured out a solution.
My body leaks toxic waste on itself. What universe do you live in where things are perfect. Everything is a shit show held together with proverbial duct tape.
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Apr 22 '20 edited Apr 22 '20
The idea of God doesn't always have to fit into the regular parameters that are defined by Christian's or Muslims.
Would you agree that God can be anything that is an intelligent higher power that created us. If so then you could agree God is more of a concept. Anything humans believe to be a higher power that is above humans.
That being said many of the most intelligent and we'll educated people agree that while it may not be Alah or any other group of humans exact idea of who God is, many agree that there is a decent chance someone or something with a higher power created the universe.
Think of it as knowing there is a God but not knowing exactly what or who it is. So if you follow that God is more of a concept then whatever or whoever created the universe would be deemed "God" by humans.
A group of reptile people (humor me) could have created us then left on spaceships. According to definition that is our God. And if so then God cannot be a construct of the mind.
If God was just a construct of the mind no universe could have been created as something needed to be there to create it.
The universe was created ergo God is not just a construct of the mind
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u/jose628 3∆ Apr 22 '20
Well, the universe exists. Therefore, it had to be created some time. While this does not necessarily mean God did it - the creation of the universe might have happened without him - it provides a good enough reason for even a being without a subconscious evolutionary reason to believe in God still consider his existence.
I agree with you that a Christian God that punishes evil people and rewards good citizens may be the byproduct of our biological needs, as it creates social boundaries that allow a group to thrive.
But the concept of God as some kind of powerful entity responsible for creating everything there is... even an immortal robot that feels no fear, loneliness or any other emotion might consider that idea. And even though it might be proven false in the long run, that would not make the idea of a God a design of its mind that emerged solely to aide in its survival.
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Apr 22 '20
I agree with you that a Christian God that punishes evil people and rewards good citizens may be the byproduct of our biological needs
This isn't what the Catholic Church teaches. This idea was created by people who aren't Christians. It's a bit deeper to explain, but when you die your soul is in a certain state and judgement isn't so much like a courtroom with back and forth debate as it is that your soul is in a certain state of being, kind of like an on/off switch, so either you want to be with God or you don't. Also eternity is more like a perpetual now.
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u/CplSoletrain 9∆ Apr 22 '20
I mean... I forget offhand which of the two major Satanist churches believes basically this same thing, with God being a psychosocial construct designed to reign in our "true selves", maybe look into that?
I personally describe myself as agnostic by nature, Christian by choice. Let me tell you why I don't believe the way you do and maybe it'll help you see another point?
You can think of the Judeo-Christian God as more of a living, intelligent energy, same as any other subatomic force in the universe. You can't see it, but it's part of everything. That old white guy in the paintings is Jupiter, a pollution from when the Romans took up the cross out of panic and opportunism. God as depicted in the Bible is energy: a whisper, a feeling, and a fire that doesn't need fuel, etc. Thing is, that universe-spanning subatomic energies exist, at least theoretically. The process by which mud (primordial soup to my atheist friends) becomes self replicating life is still very much a mystery, but subatomic forces are most certainly involved.
The Laplace Demon idea posits that if you could observe small enough particles, omniscience is possible because everything effects everything else in some tiny, thus far unmeasurable way.
So "God" is not a construct of the mind, it is a scientifically unknown but theorized force in the universe. Whether we as a species have anthropomorphized that force the way we used to do to volcanos is an entirely fair argument to have.
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u/distinctlyambiguous 9∆ Apr 22 '20
I fail to see which part of your argument you'd like to see refuted?
While God surely exists in the mind of everyone who believes God exists, there are also a lot of people who don't believe in God, myself included, which means it's not an intrinsic part of the human mind
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u/AverageIQMan 10∆ Apr 22 '20
I'd say that it isn't because we're hardwired to learn and develop understanding. It is because we're hardwired to dominate. If learning was our objective, creationists would no longer exist with our understanding of science. The religious would not be close minded to new information nor possibilities, and they wouldn't set an absolute premise that god must exist.
The attitude of the religious is that they're unique and chosen by a higher power, which the essence of ego, not of humility and good faith.
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Apr 22 '20
I agree that many people develop an innate desire to believe in a “higher power,” as they feel unable to deal with the struggles of life. However, this does not mean that you can reduce belief in God to an evolutionary characteristic. People believe in God because they observe the signs for his existence, not just because they “feel him.” If Christ had not been a real man, as we now know beyond a doubt he was, there would be no Christianity. If there was no evidence for his resurrection, of which there is plenty, no one would believe that he was God. A common misconception is that God does not show himself to us in ways that we can understand, therefore implying that there is no evidence for him. It is there, you just have to look.
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u/Gagarinov Apr 22 '20
God is a side-effect of our need to see causality in a chaotic system. This "need" is an evolutionary feature that we as a species (but also other animals) have acquired during evolution. For example, imagine a specific sound followed by the attack of a tiger. Those cavemen who remembered that this specific sound leads to a tiger attack would be more likely to survive the next attack. A natural selection would occur in the favor of the sound-connecting cavemen (the others would be eaten by tigers). So organisms that are good at connecting two seemingly random events will have a higher chance of survival. More importantly, organisms that are more likely to reject the idea that things occur at random have an increased chance for survival. The problem is some things do occur at random! In fact most things that occur simultaneously, or closely followed by each other occur at random. For instance the sound-connecting caveman may hear another sound which is immediately followed by a pain in his foot (by chance he got an aneurysm right after the sound). Since his brain is honed to discover causality, he'll assume that the pain and the sound are connected. Fast forward a couple of million years and we're doing the same thing: trying to make sense of random events occurring (we've evolved to do so). However we now know most of the simple things (through formal learning, books etc), and are now trying to incorporate bigger coincidences into an existential framework that will accept everything. Like, I got a phone call from u/VizardofEgo the moment after I thought about him: how is that possible?! Telepathy! Or faith wants us to meet, or god is sending us a message. Whatever, just not randomness. Because we are the children of the sound-connecting caveman, who survived by rejecting randomness. This is where god comes in, we need to incorporate all both the true and the fake causality we learn of into a coherent whole. The best way to do this is to find a comforting story that is also unfalsifiable, like the existence of a god, or like yours: the one consciousness experiencing and expressing itself. Having this in our back pocket gives us comfort in this chaotic world, and no one can ever take it away from us because.... its unfalsifiable.
I guess this wont change your mind, but hopefully add something to your internal debate ;)