contact - do you love your father?

ok, so i'm watching that old movie contact the other day; you remember the story, jodie foster plays an astronomer who spends her time searching for extraterrestrial messages and ends up recieving a message and they build a big space machine to make contact.

anyhow, a big part of the film is where they're trying to decide who gets to go on the machine once it's built. foster's character should obviously go because she got the message, but she gets rejected because she's an atheist, and the board says that 95% of the world's population believes in a god. she ends up going and meeting an extreterrestrial on a foreign planet, but when she returns, ironically, she can't prove anything about her experience to her fellow scientists.

there's a quote from the movie where mcconaughey's character, who believes in god, challenges foster by saying:
Palmer: Do you love your father?
Ellie: Yes.
Palmer: Prove it.


i was watching the movie with a group of people; at this point the christians among us nodded happily, i heard "touche!"....


i'm wondering if anyone has any comments?

 

touche

 

aha..... double time!

 

According to the Christian concept of God, God is an object--a body extended is space. If I were to see God, then I could walk over and poke him and say, "Hey, here's God." In other words, God, assuming the Christian-version is true, is observable.

Love is not an object. Love is merely a word meant to describe either an emotion or an action, so love is not observable as an object. A certain cognitive state may be labeled as love and then observed, but I don't believe this is very useful. The cognitive state could always be relabeled with a different term.

God is a lot like the vase of flowers on my computer table. I don't see a vase of flowers. I can't touch them or smell them. I cannot observe a vase of flowers on my computer table in any way. Should I assume that they are there and act accordingly so I don't knock them over or, since I have no verifiable or demonstrable reason to believe that they exist, assume they don't exist until given a verifiable or demonstrable reason to believe that they do? I'll go with the latter because there could be a countless number of vases that I can't see, and life is too short to pussy foot around hoping that I don’t knock one over.

 

Hippygirl

Also in that movie is another excellent scene.

The boss gets to go on the trip and she does'nt
"thats the way the world works" he says

'funny', she replies
"i thought the world was what we make it"

And she is correct.

Occam

 

Umm... no. There may in fact be some theologians who believe that God is extended, but most do not. Berkeley for example explicitly said that God is purely active and unextended, meaning that God cannot be perceived. I'm trying to think of whether Descartes believed God to be extended or not. Spinoza certainly did, but who takes the rationalists seriously anymore, anyway?

Well, love certainly is not a thing, but it can still be an object of thought, can't it? Then again, I cannot conceive of pure love without conceiving of something other than love in that same mental picture. Nevertheless, "loving" is certainly an example of intentionality. Maybe we can get somewhere with that.

Love could be renamed as a brain state, but what would be the point? Whether you call love "love" or "cortex C2 emitting electrical impulses," it still means the same thing. We could use neuroscience to discover the particular brain states of different particular kinds of love, thus making us able to be more specific when talking about love. But it seems to me that that would be to put the cart before the horse. We have to find out what love as a totality is before we can categorise the different types of love. I think that you may be dismissing the idea of empirically observing a love-struck human being's behavior too quickly.

I take it then that there is no vase on your table. Nice analogy, btw.

 

Both problems...Proving love exists...or proving God exists depend largely on the definitions of God, or love..

You can't really go about a serious discussion of existance until you have a good definition.

 

Well, there's two sides of this. Most theologians would say god is not that simple, a being, something there while you are here, like a chair across the room.

However, most people behave as if this were what they believe: god is a heavenly king, up there and we're down here. Theologians can say their piece, but it's the people who really define their faith.

But it's confusing since Christians often say "God is love" which is pretty damn abstract. It's a really confusing religion when you go further than surface features and ask the big questions.

 

now, back to the movie...
i suspect that our travelling physicist (played by jodie foster) did indeed love HER father - after all, when she arrived at her destination, the entity who talked with her on that cosmic beach had the appearance of her dear ol' daddy...




all in all, a pretty good movie, & a pretty excellent book...
& i do miss dr carl sagan, one of my favorite ummmm agnostics...

 

Definitions don't have anything to do with it either because definitions can never prove existence. For some reason, people who use the ontological argument for the existence of God don't understand this. Yes, it is in the "nature" (i.e. definition) of God to exist. But it is also in the nature of centaurs to have four legs. The fact of the matter is that centaurs don't have four legs because they don't exist. As Hume realised about 250 years ago, the only way to prove the existence of a thing is to see it, and unfortunately God cannot readily be perceived.

 

The ending of that movie was one of the biggest let downs in film history...what a cop out, and with terrible computer graphics too.

 

Whether or not there is a God depends greatly upon what God is.Very few people still believe that Thor the God of thunder exists other than a concept in the mind of people. If yo want to assert that there is a God than you must have some idea of what it is you are referring to. The word God stands for a concept,but few agree what the concept IS. Just because you trow the word GOD out doesn't mean any two people have the same,or even similar understanding of the underlying concept.

Only when you have some parameters of that concept can you argue whether or not that concept is valid.

Is GOD male? Does God have a body? Is God an active or passive element?

People that claim to believe in God don't all agree on any of these points or any other parameters of the definition of what God IS. It is useless to argue with anyone who doesn't even know what they are arguing about. (I'm using the discussive definition of argue, not the angry interpersonal version of argue)

I have yet to run into any evidence,or circumstance where the belief in God adds any useful,productive or informative value to a situation. There are many unknown things in the universe,but I can think of no situation where the belief in God has expanded our knowledge of anything.

An example is...In the question of the origin of the universe,If one says God made the universe,then you are still left with the question..Where did God come from,and how did God do it. There is no more information than simply investigating the evidence will provide.On the contrary if you think God is the anwer one would tend to stop looking,resulting in continuing ignorance.

Science may go off in a wriong direction occasionally,but over time it will self-correct as more information is gathered.Religion on the other hand has had to continually back away from it's positions,as more information come to light.Religion also has a long history of trying to stop others from learning more about this wonderful place.

 

that was a great response, keepin' on... i wrote down a couple of quotes, hehe!
thanks,
oh, & welcome to the forums!

peace,
sophia

 

Thank you for the welcome.

I also wanted to echo the situation as it comes to proving whether love exists.The first thing that must be done is to define what love is,then find a way to test it.

I assume that love is a state of mind,a type of emotional imprinting.We don't have particularly good science for this now,but imagine that you could check levels of brain activity,or particulat hormones and strongly correlate them to the state of love. Then you could see if the presence of a certain person or the memoriies of them triggered that particular response.Then you could argue that you have some eveidence for proving that someone loved a particular person.

The question of proof of the existance of God get's much more difficult,unless this God character shows up and announces it/him herself. So far there are only accounts in a book and a lot of people insisting that you just have to believe. There's way more evidence that UFOs are alien transports and full of ugly creatures that do experiments on people than there is eveidence that there is a God,but we don't have much of a problem ridiculing people who believe in aliens.

It gets turned on it's head when we ridicule people who doubt that there is a God.

 

but the novel's ending was quite exciting, intellectually...

imho...

 

Keepin'on:

After thinking about it for a day, I think I've realized where your problem is. You, as you have said, think that the problem lies in definitions. Physicists have definitions of mass and force, mathematicians have rules governing the behavior of lines and circles. You think that if theologians could come up with a definition of God, then a lot of problems of theology could be solved. This is not the case for two reasons:

(1) Theologians do have definitions of God. They may not all agree upon it, but that's irrelevant. Simply because everyone agrees on a definition of something doesn't mean that that definition is correct.

(2) This is the important point. If you were to come up with a definition of God, how would you go about doing so? Physicists deal with observable phenomena, so it's easy to come up with a definition of mass or force or whathaveyou. Mathematicians deal with conceptual entities. They do not exist anywhere but in the mind. Mathematical truths are all analytic, meaning that they cannot possibly be false. There's no such thing as an unextended line, for example. Now, let's get to God. If there is a God, then he must exist. So God can't simply be a concept like a line or a circle, which have no existence in the real world. So, a definition of God can't be analytic, since analytic statements don't prove existence. At the same time, however, we can't come up with a definition of God through empirical methods either because we cannot perceive God. So below you ask a few questions, such as what is the gender of God and is he extended. The real problem is not simply to "come up" with a definition of God, but how we are to get the information necessary to invent a definition. Anyone can spout out a definition of God, the thing is that there is no way to verify if the definition actually corresponds to any real thing.

So, my point is that your methodology is backwards. You can't invent a definition of an object of study without actually being able to see that object first, unless of course the discipline is math, in which case the definitions must be correct because they cannot be any other way. But keep in mind that the principles of geometry and such cannot refer to anything that actually exists. So, it's not simply a matter of coming up with a definition for God, but a question of upon what evidence are we to build our definition.

 

If you assert that there is a God and I assert that there's no God.my reasoning is based on the likelihood that if there was a God I would think there WOULD be some evidence.Since there isn't I ask anyone why do you believe in something that there's no evidence for?

If you say there is one, than why do you think there is? That is further complicated by the lack of concensus about what it is you actually think exists, without evidence?

I would think that theists should at least get some agreement about what exactly they do believe in, before they come after someone that thinks it's all smoke and mirrors.

You can describe any real object with it's basic parameters....Size, mass,color, behaviour...hair color..you name it.God doesn't have one single characteristic that most theist agree upon.I think that in itself argues against Gods possible existance.

I would think that if there's some guy that made everything, knows everything, etc. there would be some actual percievable effect somewhere.Or is that too much to ask?

 

There is evidence for God's existence, however, you have to learn what it is. God manifests God's self through touching, ideas, arranging 'coincidences', etc.

The same reason I think you exist. You interact with me. God does too.

I actually think God exists, and have evidence. However, my evidence would be hearsay to you- so you must ask God (who knows all of your thoughts) in a non public way. Speak to God in your heart, make no demands, and wait for God to respond in a way that you understand. Don't go around telling people about your conversations with God- let God respond in God's own way without you trying to elicit a response through people. This is the way to see God's hand in things. Keep something absolutely private, between you and God, and God will show you that God is there through occurences around you without you telling anyone else about your private thoughts with God. God will speak to you through others- the conversations around you will be guided towards your private thoughts with God. It won't happen constantly, but enough to show you that God is thinking about you and guiding your life.

Keep in mind that other people are not aware of your private conversations with God, they are vectors for God's communication with you, what you and God keep private stays between you and God, unless it would benefit you more to have it in the open.

Try what I suggested. Keep some thoughts private- between you and God. God will make God's existence known to you.

 

What you call God can just as easily be called concience,or a connection with a deeper part of the mind. An internal dialogue doesn't make it, as far as I am concerned, into the Almighty deity that rules us all.

From my personal experience I think you are simply dissociating your concious self and your unconcious, and calling your own unconcious self God.

 

That's not what you're arguing here, though. You want theists to come to a consensus and give you a definition of God. You seem to place a lot of weight on the idea that if we had a definition of God, then we would be able to deduce the existence or non-existence of God by virtue of that definition. I'm going to try to explain why that's not true.

I don't say there is one, but if there was what difference would it make if anyone agrees with my definition as long as I am privy to the content of that definition. I mean, if God really exists, then what does it matter how many people know it? Just having consensus on a definition doesn't mean that it will actually correspond to the state of affairs.

Besides, generally speaking, most people, even those who don't believe in God, have an understanding of what God is supposed to be. Things like omnipotent and infinite. Even if this is really vague, it's still a definition.

You're talking about theism as if it's a religion in the same way Pentecostalism or Reformed Judaism is a religion. Theists in general don't need a consensus because they believe in different gods. All of those gods, however, still share common qualities.

That's not true at all. Omnipotence (potential), benevolence (behavior), infinicy (size/mass): most if not all gods share these qualities. Most importantly, however, they all share the quality of being, which no definition can ever prove. That's why it doesn't matter if we have one or 10,000 definitions of God. We can still go through each and every one of them and conclude that none are based on experience, meaning that they all lack content.

They argue that there are percievable effects, like the fact that the universe exists. Have you ever seen a clock that wasn't made by a clockmaker? The trouble with these arguments, however, is that they are based on inferrences, not direct sense data. So they too lack a firm ground for knowledge, even if they do have content.

Do you see my point now?