Yeah, Podly, the thing I think you're not getting is that if the world had started by defining God in the way you've done here - without the necessary ingredients of consciousness and an interest in our well-being - then human beings would never have been even remotely interested in him, because they would've decided, correctly, that this "God" has no relevance to their lives. This is why every religion that includes a God includes one who makes certain promises to people and asks them to live a certain way. If God doesn't do that, if he doesn't give people the comfort of believing that someone who understands them is in control, if he doesn't provide some kind of guidance and reinforcement in their day-to-day lives, then they have no reason to care about him. People turn to God because they want to feel that the universe has humanity, that it's not indifferent to them. So if you want to speak to issues of theism and atheism in a way that actually matters to people, you have to define God in terms of what people want of him, and not purely as an abstraction as you're trying to do. That's why I'm dubious of your claim that you've boiled God down to his essential defintion; you've removed the only things that ever made people care about him.
Well I care deeply about my Being being sustained itself by Being. Hell, that is perhaps the thing I should care most about. However, the liberal/humanist tradition has set down that man is this ultimate force in the universe, an atomic existence capable of "pulling himself up by the bootstraps" and doing whatever he can. I'd say that the fact that both by Being and the Being of all and everything is being sustained by one omnipresent [strike]being[/strike] is a good grounds for some sort of primitive religion. I also delineated how Being could possibly interact with people, using interact metaphorically.
Your argument "but that's not what people mean when they talk about God!" is, to me, irrelevant. I don't care about what people think. Most people use common sense and the knowledge passed down to them from the enlightenment tradition. 99% of the time, that's great! However, in metaphysics and theology, that doesn't hold water. I don't care about what people think. I care about what you think. Once I know what you think, I can hold a dialogue with you, where we can push each other's beliefs and find out how much we do not know. And in this not knowing, there can we begin to learn. And THAT is the essence of "human dignity."
there is never grounds for worship. the very concept is an affront to human dignity.
i for one as an atheist do not reject the possibility of Being existing, nor do I even reject the possibility out of hand of Being having some kind of incomprehensible "life" or "mind," although I do find it unlikely and see absolutely no reason to believe it. whether these exist or not doesn't even matter to me. what i do reject is every single god that has ever been posited with a set of qualities or actions, every single god that has been defined or identified as a personal active one that is in any way directly involved in the universe.
Limed for the first spark of truth to have emerged from 29 pages of nonsense.
You guys will have to justify your grounds for "human dignity." Why would people have "human dignity?"
You're equivocating the universe with Being is a failure of identification. As I've said before, "Universe" is not reducible or synonymous to "Being." A universe is a set of things. Being is the Being of that set. You are also necessarily including all possible things, which doesn't seem like something you want to do, because even possible things have Being.
Not that I said "existent"
And this is semantics, Podly. My point still stands. Being—the state of existence of the Universe, or whatever—has nothing to do with the word "god" as it is popularly understood.
Futhermore, your approach to the question of Being, capitalized, is nonsensical. It's based on human language semantics when you should be looking at quantum mechanics.
Luckily for me, as an existentialist, it doesn't matter if they existed or not, because I am free to reapporpiate my past!
there is never grounds for worship. the very concept is an affront to human dignity.
i for one as an atheist do not reject the possibility of Being existing, nor do I even reject the possibility out of hand of Being having some kind of incomprehensible "life" or "mind," although I do find it unlikely and see absolutely no reason to believe it. whether these exist or not doesn't even matter to me. what i do reject is every single god that has ever been posited with a set of qualities or actions, every single god that has been defined or identified as a personal active one that is in any way directly involved in the universe.
Limed for the first spark of truth to have emerged from 29 pages of nonsense.
You guys will have to justify your grounds for "human dignity." Why would people have "human dignity?"
Are you seriously going to make that bullshit C.S. Lewis argument that God is a predicate for human morality?
Human dignity is an evolved cultural concept that can probably be traced back to biological altruism in our evolutionary ancestors.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
Futhermore, your approach to the question of Being, capitalized, is nonsensical. It's based on human language semantics when you should be looking at quantum mechanics.
Really? What makes QM exist?
Luckily for me, as an existentialist, it doesn't matter if they existed or not, because I am free to reapporpiate my past!
What on earth are you talking about?
Historicity of religion. A topic for a much different thread.
Futhermore, your approach to the question of Being, capitalized, is nonsensical. It's based on human language semantics when you should be looking at quantum mechanics.
Really? What makes QM exist?
Nothing. They simply do.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
there is never grounds for worship. the very concept is an affront to human dignity.
i for one as an atheist do not reject the possibility of Being existing, nor do I even reject the possibility out of hand of Being having some kind of incomprehensible "life" or "mind," although I do find it unlikely and see absolutely no reason to believe it. whether these exist or not doesn't even matter to me. what i do reject is every single god that has ever been posited with a set of qualities or actions, every single god that has been defined or identified as a personal active one that is in any way directly involved in the universe.
Limed for the first spark of truth to have emerged from 29 pages of nonsense.
You guys will have to justify your grounds for "human dignity." Why would people have "human dignity?"
Are you seriously going to make that bullshit C.S. Lewis argument that God is a predicate for human morality?
Human dignity is an evolved cultural concept that can probably be traced back to biological altruism in our evolutionary ancestors.
No. I think that "dignity," as it currently stands, is a construction of the Enlightenment Project. No. I think that "dignity," as it currently stands, is a construction of the Enlightenment Project.
Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
edited May 2009
I think someone called Podly on his pantheism back on page 10 or so. I asked him about it back on page 20 or something but he never replied.
Podly, why won't you acknowledge the difference between theism and pantheism? Your "Being" is definitely a pantheist idea, lacking intentionality, personality and all.
Many atheists feel differently towards pantheism, myself included. My stance on pantheism is more of a noncognitivist one, rather than upfront atheism, which would make my arguments on the issue different.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
I feel like I'm being ignored. What about religions that describe morality as a fundamental element of God? Christian theologists have been saying this for centuries. You can't remove one thing that is a supposed fundamental element of God, and then say that the rest matches your description, because you've just removed something that was vital to the description to begin with. Thus, I would think point number 1 has to be false.
I'd imagine that someone wanted to defined a moral God would do the move that Descartes made: God is perfect; an immoral act stems from imperfection; .: God is always moral.
Podly, why won't you acknowledge the difference between theism and pantheism? Your "Being" is definitely a pantheist idea, lacking intentionality, personality and all.
I think that all religion has a pantheistic base. Even Christianity. Especially Catholicism. However, the difference is that the theistic religions see humanity as uniquely tied to God.
I feel like I'm being ignored. What about religions that describe morality as a fundamental element of God? Christian theologists have been saying this for centuries. You can't remove one thing that is a supposed fundamental element of God, and then say that the rest matches your description, because you've just removed something that was vital to the description to begin with. Thus, I would think point number 1 has to be false.
I'd imagine that someone wanted to defined a moral God would do the move that Descartes made: God is perfect; an immoral act stems from imperfection; .: God is always moral.
You seem to be equivocating here between perfect as meaning best and your earlier definition of it meaning "Fully actualised".
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
I feel like I'm being ignored. What about religions that describe morality as a fundamental element of God? Christian theologists have been saying this for centuries. You can't remove one thing that is a supposed fundamental element of God, and then say that the rest matches your description, because you've just removed something that was vital to the description to begin with. Thus, I would think point number 1 has to be false.
I'd imagine that someone wanted to defined a moral God would do the move that Descartes made: God is perfect; an immoral act stems from imperfection; .: God is always moral.
You seem to be equivocating here between perfect as meaning best and your earlier definition of it meaning "Fully actualised".
No. It's more the idea that immorality stems from an imperfection -- that people lie because they are trying to get an advantage or cover something up, etc. The old Kantian idea that a good person would never need to lie. A perfect being would be complete and thus have no need to do anything immoral.
I feel that
1) What I have delineated as the fundamental constitution of God are the essential traits of the divine Being of all major religions in the world
2) I feel that "being mindful" is a human anthropomophism that gives God an attribute that it could never have.
Podly, nobody seems to agree that what you have delineated as the fundamental constitution of God are the essential traits of the divine Being of all major religions in the world.
Even if we did, that's a silly way to think about it. If no religion accepts your criteria as sufficient, then the fact that all of them accept your criteria as necessary in no way indicates that your criteria is sufficient.
Do you have a comment, sir? Also, the reason that people are claiming you have brought religion into the thread is 1) above.
No. It's more the idea that immorality stems from an imperfection -- that people lie because they are trying to get an advantage or cover something up, etc. The old Kantian idea that a good person would never need to lie. A perfect being would be complete and thus have no need to do anything immoral.
But how could a 'complete' being lack any kind of vice? For vices, too, are aspects of being and so a complete being would require vices. Vices, of course, would make it less moral, but would also enhance its state of completeness as it comes to encompass more things and therefore enhance its perfection.
You mean the particles? Not sure yet, but scientists are working on finding a more fundamental form of matter/energy, and many believe that information is actually fundamental.
What makes information exist? I'd argue that existence itself is simply best defined as the presence of information. How and why would you define existence differently, podly?
Historicity of religion. A topic for a much different thread.
Oh fuck no you don't. Does this mean what I think it means? Are you saying that Christianity is true because the gospels are historically accurate? Bahahahaha!
I'd imagine that someone wanted to defined a moral God would do the move that Descartes made: God is perfect; an immoral act stems from imperfection; .: God is always moral.
Therefore, genocide and torture are not inherently immoral.
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Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
Podly, why won't you acknowledge the difference between theism and pantheism? Your "Being" is definitely a pantheist idea, lacking intentionality, personality and all.
I think that all religion has a pantheistic base. Even Christianity. Especially Catholicism. However, the difference is that the theistic religions see humanity as uniquely tied to God.
Hence, you can't then just generalize every version of "god" to the pantheist version.
And by the way, I disagree on the base of religion. I think religion is based on the personal, anthropomorphic god, and any pantheism is invented and embellished a posteriori. And i think this is pretty well supported in anthropology and evolutionary psychology.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
I feel that
1) What I have delineated as the fundamental constitution of God are the essential traits of the divine Being of all major religions in the world
2) I feel that "being mindful" is a human anthropomophism that gives God an attribute that it could never have.
Podly, nobody seems to agree that what you have delineated as the fundamental constitution of God are the essential traits of the divine Being of all major religions in the world.
Even if we did, that's a silly way to think about it. If no religion accepts your criteria as sufficient, then the fact that all of them accept your criteria as necessary in no way indicates that your criteria is sufficient.
Do you have a comment, sir? Also, the reason that people are claiming you have brought religion into the thread is 1) above.
Well let us return to Being. Being is omnipresent -- wherever there could possible be a being, there is Being. Being is omniscient -- Being IS truth, something being something is what makes that true. Being is omnipotent -- nothing exists without it standing in Being. Being is perfect -- Being is never not fully actualized. Something cannot be more than something else. I think that those four criteria meet the ultimate constitution for any God, and that all other attributes (which are human projections about Being and/or the divine) stem from those four traits.
You mean the particles? Not sure yet, but scientists are working on finding a more fundamental form of matter/energy, and many believe that information is actually fundamental.
What makes information exist? I'd argue that existence itself is simply best defined as the presence of information. How and why would you define existence differently, podly?
Perhaps the presencing of energy is the fundamental consitution of energy. I wouldn't want to say that, but I'm sure that there are plenty of metaphysicsists who would.
Historicity of religion. A topic for a much different thread.
Oh fuck no you don't. Does this mean what I think it means? Are you saying that Christianity is true because the gospels are historically accurate? Bahahahaha!
Nope. Historicity is the human interaction with the past. It is not history -- the attempt to discover what was, but the human interaction with the presence of the past. Not because the Gospels are true, but because we are in a historical situation in which the Gospels are a major presence.
I feel that
1) What I have delineated as the fundamental constitution of God are the essential traits of the divine Being of all major religions in the world
2) I feel that "being mindful" is a human anthropomophism that gives God an attribute that it could never have.
Podly, nobody seems to agree that what you have delineated as the fundamental constitution of God are the essential traits of the divine Being of all major religions in the world.
Even if we did, that's a silly way to think about it. If no religion accepts your criteria as sufficient, then the fact that all of them accept your criteria as necessary in no way indicates that your criteria is sufficient.
Do you have a comment, sir? Also, the reason that people are claiming you have brought religion into the thread is 1) above.
Well let us return to Being. Being is omnipresent -- wherever there could possible be a being, there is Being. Being is omniscient -- Being IS truth, something being something is what makes that true. Being is omnipotent -- nothing exists without it standing in Being. Being is perfect -- Being is never not fully actualized. Something cannot be more than something else. I think that those four criteria meet the ultimate constitution for any God, and that all other attributes (which are human projections about Being and/or the divine) stem from those four traits.
I think that volition is a necessary fifth criterion. I don't see how you can claim that Being meets the standard of "essential traits of the divine Being of all major religions in the world" when most if not all religions presume volition on the part of their God, and Being has not been shown to possess volition or purpose.
Ignoring that for a moment, I think you are massively stretching the definitions of those words as used to define the divine.
Grabbing the first definitions from google define:
omnipresent: being present everywhere at once. Your strongest claim is, i think, omnipresence, but it's not obvious to me that that which presences is itself present.
omniscient: all-knowing: infinitely wise. This would seem to imply consciousness, which does not seem to be an attribute of Being.
omnipotent: almighty: having unlimited power. Well that doesn't help much. Let's look at almighty and power.
almighty: Godhead: terms referring to the Judeo-Christian God / having unlimited power. How very nice and circular... moving on.
power: possession of controlling influence. I don't think it is at all clear that Being possesses any controlling influence, let alone unlimited controlling influence. Being would not appear to control anything at all, merely to presence it. Control would seem to imply volition or purpose, neither of which is obviously possessed by Being.
perfect:being complete of its kind and without defect or blemish. This one Being possesses by definition.
1 out of four is not, I think, sufficient here. And if you're trying to say that Being meets a meaningful standard of the divine characterized by these four criteria, I don't think you get to pick and choose your definitions. In order for your claim to have any relevance to anything ever, I think you have to accept colloquial definitions of these terms... these are the definitions you're using when you say that religions have deities that possess these traits.
Well I care deeply about my Being being sustained itself by Being. Hell, that is perhaps the thing I should care most about.
I'm honestly curious to know why. Can you describe in a pesonal way how your life would be different if you'd never heard of the ontological argument? If you didn't agree with any of the things you'd written in this thread, why would that matter to you? In what way would it alter the material circumstances of your life? Would you love your girlfriend any less? Take a different political position? I'm having a hard time understanding how Being as you've established it is at all relevant to the concerns of human existence, or how examining it has the power to improve them. Is that the wrong question to be asking?
I'd say that the fact that both by Being and the Being of all and everything is being sustained by one omnipresent [strike]being[/strike] is a good grounds for some sort of primitive religion.
You'd be mistaken if you said that, though, because religion - primitive or otherwise - is grounded in human need, not philosophical abstraction. If the thing at the center of the religious impulse was really as inconsequential to the specific, material experiences of our day-to-day lives as the argument you've laid out in this thread is, people would never have become passionate about it. Can you pray to Being to help the people you love? To make your crops grow? If someone I love dies in a car crash, will you comfort me by saying that she's with Being now? We turned to religion because we saw a universe that did not appear to share any set of values we could understand, and believing in God allows us to feel that it does. The argument you've outlined has no connection to any of that, and most of the human race has correctly decided that it's irrelevant when it comes to the discussion of God.
I also delineated how Being could possibly interact with people, using interact metaphorically.
What I'm trying to explain to you is that metaphorical interactions are not enough. Human beings have discovered they have certain psychological and spiritual requirements, things they need in order to have a happy life, and a personal, humanistic relationship with the universe turns out to be one of them. God is the the thing that meets that need, and he's only God to the extent that he meets it. The Being that you're talking about is unconnected to that phenomenon.
Your argument "but that's not what people mean when they talk about God!" is, to me, irrelevant. I don't care about what people think.
How nicely symmetrical that your arguments in this thread are similarly irrelevant to people, disconnected from the history of religious practice and the real-life struggles that define human life. To the extent that human beings have ever actually cared about God, they've placed him in the context of various material problems they faced: the problem of who ought to control the society, what kinds of desires were healthy and what kinds were not, who was just and who was not. If you try to consider God outside the context of these things, you're not actually considering God, because these things are what God is to people. He's the guy who can tell you that one way of living is right and another is wrong. What you're talking about is something unrelated to that tradition, and something almost entirely without consequence.
Most people use common sense and the knowledge passed down to them from the enlightenment tradition. 99% of the time, that's great! However, in metaphysics and theology, that doesn't hold water. I don't care about what people think. I care about what you think. Once I know what you think, I can hold a dialogue with you, where we can push each other's beliefs and find out how much we do not know. And in this not knowing, there can we begin to learn. And THAT is the essence of "human dignity."
What I think, since you say you care, is that the kind of theology you're describing has become disconnected from the only reasons people were ever concerned about theology in the first place, which is why it only operates as a kind of intellectual sideshow in philosophy classes and internet message boards, with no real power to enlighten or improve the human condition. I'd be a lot more impressed by your appeal to human dignity if I felt you cared to dignify the day-to-day concerns of people for whom God is a personal savior, people who understand him as the greatest friend they've ever had, as well as the concerns of people like me, who fear those people. That's the debate that defines the course of human history when it comes to God: how will we allow him to matter?
Perhaps the presencing of energy is the fundamental consitution of energy. I wouldn't want to say that, but I'm sure that there are plenty of metaphysicsists who would.
What do you mean "presence"? And you didn't give your alternate definition of "existence."
Nope. Historicity is the human interaction with the past. It is not history -- the attempt to discover what was, but the human interaction with the presence of the past. Not because the Gospels are true, but because we are in a historical situation in which the Gospels are a major presence.
And this has what to do with your apparent belief in the Biblical God?
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
the way in which you delineate them is a terrible stretch. to "present" beings is not potence; it is not an action; there is no causation. it is prior to any action, and thus prior to any form of power. Being has no power. to be "omniscient" is nonsensical when there is no mind to have any knowledge. to be "omnipresent" is paradoxical if Being "presences" things.
I agree that there is so causation. If you will grant me a bit of etymology here -- ousaia -- the participle for being which I have mentioned should be accurately translated as -sence -- was predominantly translated as "substance," because substance is the latin translation for standing-under. (The reason this translation is inaccurate is because the greeks designated this idea by the term hupokeimenon -- that which lies under). This is because the being of something is thought to be that which sustains the beings. Being is substantial -- everything rests upon the [strike]being[/strike] of Being. I feel that this is a more basic description of power, that Being is not a cause, but rather the sustaining "force" of all beings.
one the one hand you say that Being is ungraspable, that it veils itself, and then you turn around and assign it attributes that match the very much graspable, very clearly delineated gods of various major religions - gods that are clearly beings, not Being, and which have very clear attributes.
To risk further venture into theology, perhaps this is the necessary result of human interaction with Being. Being is uncomprehendable. Thus, if one is beholden to Being, humans immediately try to cognitively process what happened. This immediately turns Being into a being, which is thus the subject of predication and attribution.
the Being you speak of cannot match any god in any extant religion; to suggest it does casts enormous doubt on the capacity of any religious text or author to express anything effectively or properly, even if they were actually divinely inspired by a godlike Being, since they obviously have it so spectacularly wrong. why trust anything they say or claim at that point?
This is an excellent critique, for which I have no good answer. As a person who wishes to explain as much as philosophically allowable, I want to give a philosophical answer. However, perhaps theology and religion are better tools to talk about Being than philosophy is. I'm going to think a lot about this, and hopefully give a better philosophical response.
2) I feel that being mindful is exactly as necessary to the definition of God as any of the omnis, and they are all anthropomorphized qualities, because to call this Being "God" is itself an anthropomorphizing act, as is all religion. Religion is the anthropomorphization of the universe, to prevent it from being absurd.
I think that volition is a necessary fifth criterion. I don't see how you can claim that Being meets the standard of "essential traits of the divine Being of all major religions in the world" when most if not all religions presume volition on the part of their God, and Being has not been shown to possess volition or purpose.
Valid critique. However, does volition imply a will? I feel that a "will" is quite difficult to delineate and demarcate.
omniscient: all-knowing: infinitely wise. This would seem to imply consciousness, which does not seem to be an attribute of Being.
Indeed, the general definition of omniscient implies a consciousness -- for instance, an all knowing human would mean it grasps everything true consciously. However, I am approaching it from another angle; namely, that it is Being itself which allows things to be true at all. Being constitutes truth. X is true.
power: possession of controlling influence. I don't think it is at all clear that Being possesses any controlling influence, let alone unlimited controlling influence. Being would not appear to control anything at all, merely to presence it. Control would seem to imply volition or purpose, neither of which is obviously possessed by Being.
As I just mentioned to EM, I feel that power, first and foremost, is not causation, but the ability to be substantial, to sustain things. A baby is "powerless" because it cannot sustain itself.
perfect:being complete of its kind and without defect or blemish. This one Being possesses by definition.
Being is not necessarily perfect by definition. I am arguing along the lines of the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus: that being is univocal. You could argue that things "are" in different ways, but I don't know any philosophers who make that argument. Perhaps Plato? That the "forms" are the only true beings, and "beings" are are simulacra?
the Being you speak of cannot match any god in any extant religion; to suggest it does casts enormous doubt on the capacity of any religious text or author to express anything effectively or properly, even if they were actually divinely inspired by a godlike Being, since they obviously have it so spectacularly wrong. why trust anything they say or claim at that point?
This is an excellent critique, for which I have no good answer. As a person who wishes to explain as much as philosophically allowable, I want to give a philosophical answer. However, perhaps theology and religion are better tools to talk about Being than philosophy is. I'm going to think a lot about this, and hopefully give a better philosophical response.
We'll be waiting.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
the Being you speak of cannot match any god in any extant religion; to suggest it does casts enormous doubt on the capacity of any religious text or author to express anything effectively or properly, even if they were actually divinely inspired by a godlike Being, since they obviously have it so spectacularly wrong. why trust anything they say or claim at that point?
This is an excellent critique, for which I have no good answer. As a person who wishes to explain as much as philosophically allowable, I want to give a philosophical answer. However, perhaps theology and religion are better tools to talk about Being than philosophy is. I'm going to think a lot about this, and hopefully give a better philosophical response.
the Being you speak of cannot match any god in any extant religion; to suggest it does casts enormous doubt on the capacity of any religious text or author to express anything effectively or properly, even if they were actually divinely inspired by a godlike Being, since they obviously have it so spectacularly wrong. why trust anything they say or claim at that point?
This is an excellent critique, for which I have no good answer. As a person who wishes to explain as much as philosophically allowable, I want to give a philosophical answer. However, perhaps theology and religion are better tools to talk about Being than philosophy is. I'm going to think a lot about this, and hopefully give a better philosophical response.
Well I care deeply about my Being being sustained itself by Being. Hell, that is perhaps the thing I should care most about.
I'm honestly curious to know why. Can you describe in a pesonal way how your life would be different if you'd never heard of the ontological argument? If you didn't agree with any of the things you'd written in this thread, why would that matter to you? In what way would it alter the material circumstances of your life? Would you love your girlfriend any less? Take a different political position? I'm having a hard time understanding how Being as you've established it is at all relevant to the concerns of human existence, or how examining it has the power to improve them. Is that the wrong question to be asking?
I'd say that the fact that both by Being and the Being of all and everything is being sustained by one omnipresent [strike]being[/strike] is a good grounds for some sort of primitive religion.
You'd be mistaken if you said that, though, because religion - primitive or otherwise - is grounded in human need, not philosophical abstraction. If the thing at the center of the religious impulse was really as inconsequential to the specific, material experiences of our day-to-day lives as the argument you've laid out in this thread is, people would never have become passionate about it. Can you pray to Being to help the people you love? To make your crops grow? If someone I love dies in a car crash, will you comfort me by saying that she's with Being now? We turned to religion because we saw a universe that did not appear to share any set of values we could understand, and believing in God allows us to feel that it does. The argument you've outlined has no connection to any of that, and most of the human race has correctly decided that it's irrelevant when it comes to the discussion of God.
I also delineated how Being could possibly interact with people, using interact metaphorically.
What I'm trying to explain to you is that metaphorical interactions are not enough. Human beings have discovered they have certain psychological and spiritual requirements, things they need in order to have a happy life, and a personal, humanistic relationship with the universe turns out to be one of them. God is the the thing that meets that need, and he's only God to the extent that he meets it. The Being that you're talking about is unconnected to that phenomenon.
Your argument "but that's not what people mean when they talk about God!" is, to me, irrelevant. I don't care about what people think.
How nicely symmetrical that your arguments in this thread are similarly irrelevant to people, disconnected from the history of religious practice and the real-life struggles that define human life. To the extent that human beings have ever actually cared about God, they've placed him in the context of various material problems they faced: the problem of who ought to control the society, what kinds of desires were healthy and what kinds were not, who was just and who was not. If you try to consider God outside the context of these things, you're not actually considering God, because these things are what God is to people. He's the guy who can tell you that one way of living is right and another is wrong. What you're talking about is something unrelated to that tradition, and something almost entirely without consequence.
Most people use common sense and the knowledge passed down to them from the enlightenment tradition. 99% of the time, that's great! However, in metaphysics and theology, that doesn't hold water. I don't care about what people think. I care about what you think. Once I know what you think, I can hold a dialogue with you, where we can push each other's beliefs and find out how much we do not know. And in this not knowing, there can we begin to learn. And THAT is the essence of "human dignity."
What I think, since you say you care, is that the kind of theology you're describing has become disconnected from the only reasons people were ever concerned about theology in the first place, which is why it only operates as a kind of intellectual sideshow in philosophy classes and internet message boards, with no real power to enlighten or improve the human condition. I'd be a lot more impressed by your appeal to human dignity if I felt you cared to dignify the day-to-day concerns of people for whom God is a personal savior, people who understand him as the greatest friend they've ever had, as well as the concerns of people like me, who fear those people. That's the debate that defines the course of human history when it comes to God: how will we allow him to matter?
the way in which you delineate them is a terrible stretch. to "present" beings is not potence; it is not an action; there is no causation. it is prior to any action, and thus prior to any form of power. Being has no power. to be "omniscient" is nonsensical when there is no mind to have any knowledge. to be "omnipresent" is paradoxical if Being "presences" things.
I agree that there is so causation. If you will grant me a bit of etymology here -- ousaia -- the participle for being which I have mentioned should be accurately translated as -sence -- was predominantly translated as "substance," because substance is the latin translation for standing-under. (The reason this translation is inaccurate is because the greeks designated this idea by the term hupokeimenon -- that which lies under). This is because the being of something is thought to be that which sustains the beings. Being is substantial -- everything rests upon the [strike]being[/strike] of Being. I feel that this is a more basic description of power, that Being is not a cause, but rather the sustaining "force" of all beings.
I love language games as much as the next guy, and I think they can reveal a great deal about the way humans think and conceptualize, but an analysis of language does not prove anything about external reality, especially in the sweepingly universal fashion that has to do with Being.
You have given a history of the idea you put forth, but nothing to support it besides "I believe." Why do you believe that? Why do you think that power as you define it a) is more authentic than the definition of power that I have provided, in terms of causation and action, or b) is more closely related to the definitions of God in any religion?
On top of that, your baby example in a post above feels weak to me. A baby is not powerless because it cannot sustain itself; you are equivocating the word "sustain." A baby cannot sustain itself because it cannot take action effectively. It has neither agency nor the capacity for it. In the way you are defining "sustain," an adult has exactly as much power as a baby to "sustain" itself, namely none.
The sub-stance, the ground-upon-which-things-are, this approach to power is interesting. I could see you making the case for sustenance in terms of making food or making money or other human pursuits as being sustained by something else, which is sustained by something else, but I think it falls apart. You must assign the greatest power by that definition to things which do not have any form of agency, and in fact power, like meaning, recedes infinitely from each entity to that which sustains it. It's like the poststructuralist loop in linguistic meaning, except with power, and you find the transcendental signified's analogue in the transcendental thing-which-sustains, in Being. So nothing has power except Being, making that definition of power, to me, fairly useless unless you are already religious and believe that nothing in the universe has power except God.
There is one alternative where it isn't useless, and that's hard determinism, so I can still accept that definition as logically consistent even though I think there is a better word than "power," since power can be used in either mindset to describe the illusion of agency.
one the one hand you say that Being is ungraspable, that it veils itself, and then you turn around and assign it attributes that match the very much graspable, very clearly delineated gods of various major religions - gods that are clearly beings, not Being, and which have very clear attributes.
To risk further venture into theology, perhaps this is the necessary result of human interaction with Being. Being is uncomprehendable. Thus, if one is beholden to Being, humans immediately try to cognitively process what happened. This immediately turns Being into a being, which is thus the subject of predication and attribution.
the Being you speak of cannot match any god in any extant religion; to suggest it does casts enormous doubt on the capacity of any religious text or author to express anything effectively or properly, even if they were actually divinely inspired by a godlike Being, since they obviously have it so spectacularly wrong. why trust anything they say or claim at that point?
This is an excellent critique, for which I have no good answer. As a person who wishes to explain as much as philosophically allowable, I want to give a philosophical answer. However, perhaps theology and religion are better tools to talk about Being than philosophy is. I'm going to think a lot about this, and hopefully give a better philosophical response.
2) I feel that being mindful is exactly as necessary to the definition of God as any of the omnis, and they are all anthropomorphized qualities, because to call this Being "God" is itself an anthropomorphizing act, as is all religion. Religion is the anthropomorphization of the universe, to prevent it from being absurd.
Could you elaborate more on being mindful?
Are you suggesting that cognition of being is impossible? Are you also suggesting that the only way to really "get" it is through this beholden-ness, or some other religious/mystical experience? What is the means by which such an experience functions, in terms of a physical brain - is there a mystical gland that interacts with Being? How can such a connection occur?
I suspect you will respond with something along the lines of "it's always occurring but we are not aware of it" or that it is a constituent element of consciousness itself or, you know, whatever. But feel free to present a shocking alternative!
As for mindfulness - I have to go get some laundry but I will do that after.
the Being you speak of cannot match any god in any extant religion; to suggest it does casts enormous doubt on the capacity of any religious text or author to express anything effectively or properly, even if they were actually divinely inspired by a godlike Being, since they obviously have it so spectacularly wrong. why trust anything they say or claim at that point?
This is an excellent critique, for which I have no good answer. As a person who wishes to explain as much as philosophically allowable, I want to give a philosophical answer. However, perhaps theology and religion are better tools to talk about Being than philosophy is. I'm going to think a lot about this, and hopefully give a better philosophical response.
We'll be waiting.
Obviously theology and religion are better for handwaving and making shit up—that's basically what they do, respectively.
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Podlyyou unzipped me! it's all coming back! i don't like it!Registered Userregular
he sub-stance, the ground-upon-which-things-are, this approach to power is interesting. I could see you making the case for sustenance in terms of making food or making money or other human pursuits as being sustained by something else, which is sustained by something else, but I think it falls apart. You must assign the greatest power by that definition to things which do not have any form of agency, and in fact power, like meaning, recedes infinitely from each entity to that which sustains it. It's like the poststructuralist loop in linguistic meaning, except with power, and you find the transcendental signified's analogue in the transcendental thing-which-sustains, in Being. So nothing has power except Being, making that definition of power, to me, fairly useless unless you are already religious and believe that nothing in the universe has power except God.
This is a pretty good summary of the argument. You mentioned Mr^2's "Brute facts" earlier. In a similar vein, I believe that all philosophies have "rules" which are in play in all their philosophies -- propositions which are incontestable. "Let there be beings," "Let there be matter," etc. The rules, I think, fall back upon the same "power" that Law has -- they do not cause any particular thing, but they are the forces which limit whathaveyou and allow for anything at all. Being is the ultimate law -- there are things, presenced by Being. There can be no more fundamental law, and thus it has the most abstract and present force.
Are you suggesting that cognition of being is impossible? Are you also suggesting that the only way to really "get" it is through this beholden-ness, or some other religious/mystical experience? What is the means by which such an experience functions, in terms of a physical brain - is there a mystical gland that interacts with Being? How can such a connection occur?
My limitations in cognitive psychology -- which I have learned pretty much solely from ML and Feral -- here stop me from giving any sort of answer ex catherdra or with any definitiveness at all. I would posit that the brain, in any function, processes beings. For a mind to think of Being would be like trying to think of Time separated from beings. We can imagine the structures that might resemble such [strike]beings[/strike], but we cannot comprehend them in their actual [strike]being[/strike]
"The argument examines the concept of God and argues that if we can conceive of God he must exist"
The whole problem with this is that I can conceive of a Flying Cow named Wilbur who gives chocolate cake to fat turkeys during Easter on the Isle of Partoo.
So, now that many of you have conceived this notion, does that make it exist?
I think the answer pretty much destroys the argument by itself.
"The argument examines the concept of God and argues that if we can conceive of God he must exist"
The whole problem with this is that I can conceive of a Flying Cow named Wilbur who gives chocolate cake to fat turkeys during Easter on the Isle of Partoo.
So, now that many of you have conceived this notion, does that make it exist?
I think the answer pretty much destroys the argument by itself.
I'm no fan of the Ontological Argument, but at the very least it would be helpful if you actually familiarized yourself with the argument before posting.
"The argument examines the concept of God and argues that if we can conceive of God he must exist"
The whole problem with this is that I can conceive of a Flying Cow named Wilbur who gives chocolate cake to fat turkeys during Easter on the Isle of Partoo.
So, now that many of you have conceived this notion, does that make it exist?
I think the answer pretty much destroys the argument by itself.
I think you can argue that it does exist as a pattern of thought.
Imaginary things exist ... as imaginary things. They don't exist as patterns of fermions and bosons, though, which is what most people mean by "exist." Of course, you can say the same thing about numbers and laws.
"The argument examines the concept of God and argues that if we can conceive of God he must exist"
The whole problem with this is that I can conceive of a Flying Cow named Wilbur who gives chocolate cake to fat turkeys during Easter on the Isle of Partoo.
So, now that many of you have conceived this notion, does that make it exist?
I think the answer pretty much destroys the argument by itself.
I think you can argue that it does exist as a pattern of thought.
Imaginary things exist ... as imaginary things. They don't exist as patterns of fermions and bosons, though, which is what most people mean by "exist." Of course, you can say the same thing about numbers and laws.
Do they exist as imaginary things, or do they exist as ideas about imaginary things, or as brain states corresponding to ideas about imaginary things? There's a massive difference between those three options.
If all that exists of them are ideas, then it makes no sense to say that, say, unicorns have horns, or that God is perfect. All you can say is that people have the idea that unicorns, if they existed, would have horns, or that God, if he existed, would be perfect. There is nothing to which to actually apply those properties.
The definition of Being seems arbitrary to me. It seems like you could say that the (as yet unfound) Grand Unified Theory of physics 'supports' all that is. Ideas have no physical reality but that of electrochemical patterns in our minds and all of physical law is a part of the GUT and therefore need not be supported.
The argument to that is that it is a physical reductionist stance and that there is such thing as ontological being.
To that one could reply that the fundamental workings of the GUT are interactions between instances of information just as ontological being is an instance of information. Then pure information is the fundamental reality and it is upon information that all else is supported.
The argument to that is that information is, itself, presenced by Being and that Being allows for the instantiation of information which gives rise to all else.
Why, then, can I not posit a further level of abstraction beyond that? And beyond that? I am unable to conceive of a purer 'being' than Being, but does that mean that there is no such thing? Being is exactly at the level of abstraction that I am capable of internalizing, just as three dimensional geometry is the limitation of my intuitive understanding because I am incapable of internalizing purely higher dimensional forms. This limitation does not prevent me from talking about, working with, and conceiving of hyperspheres, hypercubes, etc. In the same way I can conceive of and talk about a Being+ beyond Being which has the property that Being+ supports the capability of Being to 'not be' or whatever Podly's current terminology for the conjucation of 'to be' that Being is.
If Being supports the ontological realm in which being is fundamental (that is, if Being is then being must necessarily be) and time and space are fundamental (as Podly so often says) then because we are systems embedded in this ontological manifold it seems entirely reasonable that other varieties of Being could 'be' which give rise to other fundamental axioms of which we, entangled as we are with this state of Being, are incapable of naturally internalizing. These myriad Beings are supported by Being+.
I can then go beyond this and posit Being++ which supports Being+ in a method wholly alien to human thought wherein each Being+ 'supports' axiomatic realization of Beings in a different manner. Beyond that lies Being+++, Being++++, and then it's just turtles all the way down.
Being is God because it is that which is called I Am. It is the ultimate reality and is the firmament upon which rests creation. Or that seems to be the argument, at least. I don't see Being as having sufficient properties to make it anything but a pantheistic God, which is no true God in my opinion, but if Being is not the ultimate reality then Being is not God. If Being+ is not the ultimate reality, then it is not God. If it's turtles all the way down then there is no God.
Being is God because it is that which is called I Am. It is the ultimate reality and is the firmament upon which rests creation. Or that seems to be the argument, at least. I don't see Being as having sufficient properties to make it anything but a pantheistic God, which is no true God in my opinion, but if Being is not the ultimate reality then Being is not God. If Being+ is not the ultimate reality, then it is not God. If it's turtles all the way down then there is no God.
But there are some pretty fantastic turtles.
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Grudgeblessed is the mind too small for doubtRegistered Userregular
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Well I care deeply about my Being being sustained itself by Being. Hell, that is perhaps the thing I should care most about. However, the liberal/humanist tradition has set down that man is this ultimate force in the universe, an atomic existence capable of "pulling himself up by the bootstraps" and doing whatever he can. I'd say that the fact that both by Being and the Being of all and everything is being sustained by one omnipresent [strike]being[/strike] is a good grounds for some sort of primitive religion. I also delineated how Being could possibly interact with people, using interact metaphorically.
Your argument "but that's not what people mean when they talk about God!" is, to me, irrelevant. I don't care about what people think. Most people use common sense and the knowledge passed down to them from the enlightenment tradition. 99% of the time, that's great! However, in metaphysics and theology, that doesn't hold water. I don't care about what people think. I care about what you think. Once I know what you think, I can hold a dialogue with you, where we can push each other's beliefs and find out how much we do not know. And in this not knowing, there can we begin to learn. And THAT is the essence of "human dignity."
You guys will have to justify your grounds for "human dignity." Why would people have "human dignity?"
And this is semantics, Podly. My point still stands. Being—the state of existence of the Universe, or whatever—has nothing to do with the word "god" as it is popularly understood.
Futhermore, your approach to the question of Being, capitalized, is nonsensical. It's based on human language semantics when you should be looking at quantum mechanics.
What on earth are you talking about?
Human dignity is an evolved cultural concept that can probably be traced back to biological altruism in our evolutionary ancestors.
Really? What makes QM exist?
Historicity of religion. A topic for a much different thread.
Nothing. They simply do.
No. I think that "dignity," as it currently stands, is a construction of the Enlightenment Project. No. I think that "dignity," as it currently stands, is a construction of the Enlightenment Project.
Podly, why won't you acknowledge the difference between theism and pantheism? Your "Being" is definitely a pantheist idea, lacking intentionality, personality and all.
Many atheists feel differently towards pantheism, myself included. My stance on pantheism is more of a noncognitivist one, rather than upfront atheism, which would make my arguments on the issue different.
I'd imagine that someone wanted to defined a moral God would do the move that Descartes made: God is perfect; an immoral act stems from imperfection; .: God is always moral.
I think that all religion has a pantheistic base. Even Christianity. Especially Catholicism. However, the difference is that the theistic religions see humanity as uniquely tied to God.
You seem to be equivocating here between perfect as meaning best and your earlier definition of it meaning "Fully actualised".
No. It's more the idea that immorality stems from an imperfection -- that people lie because they are trying to get an advantage or cover something up, etc. The old Kantian idea that a good person would never need to lie. A perfect being would be complete and thus have no need to do anything immoral.
Do you have a comment, sir? Also, the reason that people are claiming you have brought religion into the thread is 1) above.
What makes information exist? I'd argue that existence itself is simply best defined as the presence of information. How and why would you define existence differently, podly?
Oh fuck no you don't. Does this mean what I think it means? Are you saying that Christianity is true because the gospels are historically accurate? Bahahahaha!
Hence, you can't then just generalize every version of "god" to the pantheist version.
And by the way, I disagree on the base of religion. I think religion is based on the personal, anthropomorphic god, and any pantheism is invented and embellished a posteriori. And i think this is pretty well supported in anthropology and evolutionary psychology.
Well let us return to Being. Being is omnipresent -- wherever there could possible be a being, there is Being. Being is omniscient -- Being IS truth, something being something is what makes that true. Being is omnipotent -- nothing exists without it standing in Being. Being is perfect -- Being is never not fully actualized. Something cannot be more than something else. I think that those four criteria meet the ultimate constitution for any God, and that all other attributes (which are human projections about Being and/or the divine) stem from those four traits.
Perhaps the presencing of energy is the fundamental consitution of energy. I wouldn't want to say that, but I'm sure that there are plenty of metaphysicsists who would.
Nope. Historicity is the human interaction with the past. It is not history -- the attempt to discover what was, but the human interaction with the presence of the past. Not because the Gospels are true, but because we are in a historical situation in which the Gospels are a major presence.
I think that volition is a necessary fifth criterion. I don't see how you can claim that Being meets the standard of "essential traits of the divine Being of all major religions in the world" when most if not all religions presume volition on the part of their God, and Being has not been shown to possess volition or purpose.
Ignoring that for a moment, I think you are massively stretching the definitions of those words as used to define the divine.
Grabbing the first definitions from google define:
omnipresent: being present everywhere at once. Your strongest claim is, i think, omnipresence, but it's not obvious to me that that which presences is itself present.
omniscient: all-knowing: infinitely wise. This would seem to imply consciousness, which does not seem to be an attribute of Being.
omnipotent: almighty: having unlimited power. Well that doesn't help much. Let's look at almighty and power.
almighty: Godhead: terms referring to the Judeo-Christian God / having unlimited power. How very nice and circular... moving on.
power: possession of controlling influence. I don't think it is at all clear that Being possesses any controlling influence, let alone unlimited controlling influence. Being would not appear to control anything at all, merely to presence it. Control would seem to imply volition or purpose, neither of which is obviously possessed by Being.
perfect:being complete of its kind and without defect or blemish. This one Being possesses by definition.
1 out of four is not, I think, sufficient here. And if you're trying to say that Being meets a meaningful standard of the divine characterized by these four criteria, I don't think you get to pick and choose your definitions. In order for your claim to have any relevance to anything ever, I think you have to accept colloquial definitions of these terms... these are the definitions you're using when you say that religions have deities that possess these traits.
And this has what to do with your apparent belief in the Biblical God?
I agree that there is so causation. If you will grant me a bit of etymology here -- ousaia -- the participle for being which I have mentioned should be accurately translated as -sence -- was predominantly translated as "substance," because substance is the latin translation for standing-under. (The reason this translation is inaccurate is because the greeks designated this idea by the term hupokeimenon -- that which lies under). This is because the being of something is thought to be that which sustains the beings. Being is substantial -- everything rests upon the [strike]being[/strike] of Being. I feel that this is a more basic description of power, that Being is not a cause, but rather the sustaining "force" of all beings.
To risk further venture into theology, perhaps this is the necessary result of human interaction with Being. Being is uncomprehendable. Thus, if one is beholden to Being, humans immediately try to cognitively process what happened. This immediately turns Being into a being, which is thus the subject of predication and attribution.
This is an excellent critique, for which I have no good answer. As a person who wishes to explain as much as philosophically allowable, I want to give a philosophical answer. However, perhaps theology and religion are better tools to talk about Being than philosophy is. I'm going to think a lot about this, and hopefully give a better philosophical response.
Could you elaborate more on being mindful?
Valid critique. However, does volition imply a will? I feel that a "will" is quite difficult to delineate and demarcate.
Indeed, the general definition of omniscient implies a consciousness -- for instance, an all knowing human would mean it grasps everything true consciously. However, I am approaching it from another angle; namely, that it is Being itself which allows things to be true at all. Being constitutes truth. X is true.
As I just mentioned to EM, I feel that power, first and foremost, is not causation, but the ability to be substantial, to sustain things. A baby is "powerless" because it cannot sustain itself.
Being is not necessarily perfect by definition. I am arguing along the lines of the medieval philosopher Duns Scotus: that being is univocal. You could argue that things "are" in different ways, but I don't know any philosophers who make that argument. Perhaps Plato? That the "forms" are the only true beings, and "beings" are are simulacra?
Get the popcorn!
This is a very good post.
I love language games as much as the next guy, and I think they can reveal a great deal about the way humans think and conceptualize, but an analysis of language does not prove anything about external reality, especially in the sweepingly universal fashion that has to do with Being.
You have given a history of the idea you put forth, but nothing to support it besides "I believe." Why do you believe that? Why do you think that power as you define it a) is more authentic than the definition of power that I have provided, in terms of causation and action, or b) is more closely related to the definitions of God in any religion?
On top of that, your baby example in a post above feels weak to me. A baby is not powerless because it cannot sustain itself; you are equivocating the word "sustain." A baby cannot sustain itself because it cannot take action effectively. It has neither agency nor the capacity for it. In the way you are defining "sustain," an adult has exactly as much power as a baby to "sustain" itself, namely none.
The sub-stance, the ground-upon-which-things-are, this approach to power is interesting. I could see you making the case for sustenance in terms of making food or making money or other human pursuits as being sustained by something else, which is sustained by something else, but I think it falls apart. You must assign the greatest power by that definition to things which do not have any form of agency, and in fact power, like meaning, recedes infinitely from each entity to that which sustains it. It's like the poststructuralist loop in linguistic meaning, except with power, and you find the transcendental signified's analogue in the transcendental thing-which-sustains, in Being. So nothing has power except Being, making that definition of power, to me, fairly useless unless you are already religious and believe that nothing in the universe has power except God.
There is one alternative where it isn't useless, and that's hard determinism, so I can still accept that definition as logically consistent even though I think there is a better word than "power," since power can be used in either mindset to describe the illusion of agency.
Are you suggesting that cognition of being is impossible? Are you also suggesting that the only way to really "get" it is through this beholden-ness, or some other religious/mystical experience? What is the means by which such an experience functions, in terms of a physical brain - is there a mystical gland that interacts with Being? How can such a connection occur?
I suspect you will respond with something along the lines of "it's always occurring but we are not aware of it" or that it is a constituent element of consciousness itself or, you know, whatever. But feel free to present a shocking alternative!
As for mindfulness - I have to go get some laundry but I will do that after.
This is a pretty good summary of the argument. You mentioned Mr^2's "Brute facts" earlier. In a similar vein, I believe that all philosophies have "rules" which are in play in all their philosophies -- propositions which are incontestable. "Let there be beings," "Let there be matter," etc. The rules, I think, fall back upon the same "power" that Law has -- they do not cause any particular thing, but they are the forces which limit whathaveyou and allow for anything at all. Being is the ultimate law -- there are things, presenced by Being. There can be no more fundamental law, and thus it has the most abstract and present force.
My limitations in cognitive psychology -- which I have learned pretty much solely from ML and Feral -- here stop me from giving any sort of answer ex catherdra or with any definitiveness at all. I would posit that the brain, in any function, processes beings. For a mind to think of Being would be like trying to think of Time separated from beings. We can imagine the structures that might resemble such [strike]beings[/strike], but we cannot comprehend them in their actual [strike]being[/strike]
The whole problem with this is that I can conceive of a Flying Cow named Wilbur who gives chocolate cake to fat turkeys during Easter on the Isle of Partoo.
So, now that many of you have conceived this notion, does that make it exist?
I think the answer pretty much destroys the argument by itself.
Imaginary things exist ... as imaginary things. They don't exist as patterns of fermions and bosons, though, which is what most people mean by "exist." Of course, you can say the same thing about numbers and laws.
Do they exist as imaginary things, or do they exist as ideas about imaginary things, or as brain states corresponding to ideas about imaginary things? There's a massive difference between those three options.
If all that exists of them are ideas, then it makes no sense to say that, say, unicorns have horns, or that God is perfect. All you can say is that people have the idea that unicorns, if they existed, would have horns, or that God, if he existed, would be perfect. There is nothing to which to actually apply those properties.
Read the argument before you say asinine and incorrect things about it.
I love how you seem to think the only problem is that people just aren't understanding the argument. If only they'd just read it they'd see the truth.
I also [strike]love[/strike] how you completely ignored my response to the last time you posted Anselm's Load of Flowery Horseshit.
The argument to that is that it is a physical reductionist stance and that there is such thing as ontological being.
To that one could reply that the fundamental workings of the GUT are interactions between instances of information just as ontological being is an instance of information. Then pure information is the fundamental reality and it is upon information that all else is supported.
The argument to that is that information is, itself, presenced by Being and that Being allows for the instantiation of information which gives rise to all else.
Why, then, can I not posit a further level of abstraction beyond that? And beyond that? I am unable to conceive of a purer 'being' than Being, but does that mean that there is no such thing? Being is exactly at the level of abstraction that I am capable of internalizing, just as three dimensional geometry is the limitation of my intuitive understanding because I am incapable of internalizing purely higher dimensional forms. This limitation does not prevent me from talking about, working with, and conceiving of hyperspheres, hypercubes, etc. In the same way I can conceive of and talk about a Being+ beyond Being which has the property that Being+ supports the capability of Being to 'not be' or whatever Podly's current terminology for the conjucation of 'to be' that Being is.
If Being supports the ontological realm in which being is fundamental (that is, if Being is then being must necessarily be) and time and space are fundamental (as Podly so often says) then because we are systems embedded in this ontological manifold it seems entirely reasonable that other varieties of Being could 'be' which give rise to other fundamental axioms of which we, entangled as we are with this state of Being, are incapable of naturally internalizing. These myriad Beings are supported by Being+.
I can then go beyond this and posit Being++ which supports Being+ in a method wholly alien to human thought wherein each Being+ 'supports' axiomatic realization of Beings in a different manner. Beyond that lies Being+++, Being++++, and then it's just turtles all the way down.
Being is God because it is that which is called I Am. It is the ultimate reality and is the firmament upon which rests creation. Or that seems to be the argument, at least. I don't see Being as having sufficient properties to make it anything but a pantheistic God, which is no true God in my opinion, but if Being is not the ultimate reality then Being is not God. If Being+ is not the ultimate reality, then it is not God. If it's turtles all the way down then there is no God.
But there are some pretty fantastic turtles.
Yes and incidentally, that's how many christian people feel about their bible.