3 ms·

> My pet theory: Something has always existed. There was no beginning. No origin. No first cause. No t=0. No start. It's always been there. What was before that

> My pet theory: Something has always existed. There was no beginning. No origin. No first cause. No t=0. No start. It's always been there. What was before that? That. And that. And that. Always that. Your pet theory is the view of Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, and the Roman Catholic Church. The mistake that people make (you can even see it in this thread), is that they start with some preconceived conception of God, with all it's baggage, and then they attempt argue for, or against, this concept. The more productive approach is to recognize and acknowledge the necessary existence of a base reality. Then you simply assign the English word 'God' as a reference pointer to this base reality. const God = (the one base reality that exists necessarily)

ben_w 4y ago
> The more productive approach is to recognize and acknowledge the necessary existence of a base reality. Then you simply assign the English word 'God' as a reference pointer to this base reality. You can, but I'm not sure how "then" onwards is going to help — the people I've seen conflating these things before will still conflate them after doing this.
- jondeval 4y ago
  I don't follow you. Can you elaborate?
  - ben_w 4y ago
    Alice: "So, we're all agreed, the word 'god' just means 'base reality'?" Bob: "Yup." Christine: "Sure. And because this base reality exists, that proves I was right all along about Jesus: he did die for our sins." Dhvan: "You mean it proves me right about Brahma." Eris: "…the horned god." Freya: "…Ragnarök." and so on.
    - jondeval 4y ago
      Yup. I see what you mean and I do think in practice conversations may proceed this way. And I think you are illustrating well the point I made above. The key idea though is that if you make a dispassionate analysis of what this base reality must be, you find that it has certain 'attributes'. So for example, anything that has horns would not be good candidate for base reality since the contingent concept of 'horn' would need to be explained by, and derive its very existence from something much more simple. So that simpler thing would be the less bad candidate. Etc.

ben_w 4y ago

> The more productive approach is to recognize and acknowledge the necessary existence of a base reality. Then you simply assign the English word 'God' as a reference pointer to this base reality. You can, but I'm not sure how "then" onwards is going to help — the people I've seen conflating these things before will still conflate them after doing this.

jondeval 4y ago
I don't follow you. Can you elaborate?
- ben_w 4y ago
  Alice: "So, we're all agreed, the word 'god' just means 'base reality'?" Bob: "Yup." Christine: "Sure. And because this base reality exists, that proves I was right all along about Jesus: he did die for our sins." Dhvan: "You mean it proves me right about Brahma." Eris: "…the horned god." Freya: "…Ragnarök." and so on.
  - jondeval 4y ago
    Yup. I see what you mean and I do think in practice conversations may proceed this way. And I think you are illustrating well the point I made above. The key idea though is that if you make a dispassionate analysis of what this base reality must be, you find that it has certain 'attributes'. So for example, anything that has horns would not be good candidate for base reality since the contingent concept of 'horn' would need to be explained by, and derive its very existence from something much more simple. So that simpler thing would be the less bad candidate. Etc.