I too, see no evidence of intelligence in Chat Box productions. However, they are invaluable to researchers looking for published research on topics of their interest. Computers are amazing tools due to their speed of processing data and revealing experimental results. However, it is the experimenter who asks the questions and interprets the results who supplies the intelligence. Therefore, I would transform AI to IA for Intelligence Augmentation.
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The following are not quotes of things MarkD has said but quotes of David Bentley Hart which were quoted by MarkD.
No problem with this part.
Christian doctrine that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are THREE distinct persons but one God. God is certainly not less than a person but more.
I am not sure what this means. “Large?” “Has to be thought?”
My objection is to those who think God has no psychological or subjective aspect to Him, claiming that God cannot be thought of as somebody who goes through changes of temperament, makes choices, or has experiences. All of this is a necessity for God to be in a personal relationship with us. That is what a personal relationship means quite different from the relationship with a rock or inanimate object.
Well I certainly doubt that our psychological theories (like the ego) define and encompass what it means to be a person even in our case, let alone that this is something God must be confined to.
In any case I find this comment a little hard to nail down to anything concrete. The question as I see it is simply a matter of capability. Is God capable of thought and feelings? I think the answer is certainly yes.
That is why this “merely” business doesn’t make any sense… as if the inability to think and feel is somehow less than not being able to think and feel. That is just goofy. If you want to see the more that God has then what you do is add more not take things away. Not confined to an external temporal ordering is more, but being incapable of temporal ordering is not more but less. Not being confined to a singularity of personhood is more, but being incapable of personal thought and feeling is not more but less.
No. Withholding from one another is a choice people make. And yes we can know one another. Sounds to me like Hart is dreaming of annihilation where there is no self for others to know.
Ok… but I don’t agree with the way no ego seems to be equated to being without thinking and feeling. I would say that ego is the reason the idea of nonexistence frightens people. But we are quite capable of dispensing with that, so the idea of the world going on without us doesn’t bother us at all. But you can let go of the ego in that sense without ceasing to think and feel. I would see that as rather meaningless like making nonexistence a solution to all your problems. It is nonsense. Not a solution but an avoidance. This is why I don’t believe in the atheist dream of nonexistence, no matter how appealing it might be to me. It is just too easy to the point of being meaningless.
I personally, from well outside of the Christian WV, agree with you though I no doubt imagine how that works very differently. I think God is constantly in relation with us at a much deeper level than language. God is present in the world by way of being present in us. Not to say He is our possession or just a human faculty. It would be more accurate to say we are in God than the other way around.
Some aspects of human subjectivity I doubt have any counterpart in God. I don’t think He has any notion of Himself apart from us and the world, I don’t think he has any of our angst. We come and go in His world but He is and always has been present. He doesn’t have any need of language and what has been attributed to Him represents the POV of another limited individual like ourselves, perhaps inspired by the indwelling God. Hopefully not just inspired by loyalty to a religious institution.
*Thanks for clarifying about the quotes.
Ah… I am not so sure about deeper… but… I think language is the substance of the life of our mind just as atomic matter is the substance of the life of our body. …and I don’t think God is composed of atomic matter, so it is not so difficult for me to imagine the mind of God is likewise composed something different than language.
But I do think God has some analog to both of these: a spiritual substance and a means of symbolizing abstract ideas. But I am not a fan of this “deeper” rhetoric, which I suspect is too much like a carpet under which religious people like to sweep things.
Since that is where I started, my thinking naturally goes from there and extends itself into the Christian worldview. As I often say (which I doubt most Christians would), Christianity is like the icing on the top of the cake for me and underneath are layers of pragmatism, existentialism, and science (physics, biology, and psychology).
Well I certainly do not agree. That is a pantheistic view which I would equate to no God at all.
Here likewise, I do not agree. He created the world to bring us about in order to have a relationship with no ending. And I don’t believe in some overarching absolute time which God is subject to, so this “always” you speak of need not be time extending into a past without end.
He doesn’t have many of them but neither do I. He has his own concerns and uncertainties because that is a part of a relationship also – always!
Only because He has something which serves the purpose, otherwise it would mean He has no need of a means to represent and express complex and abstract ideas – which is only true of a vegetable.
yes.
Did not read the thread. But is God a person? I guess it depends on how you define person. Is God a human? No. Is God a being we can have individual personal relationships with? Not in any meaningful way. We can have a more personal relationship with a stranger we meet and talk to for half an hour. No one magically has a connection to God where he’s sharing things with them that others don’t have. If they do, they can’t prove it anymore or less than the millions of others who claim it. Is God a person as in intelligent being? Probably. Kind of how even animals have personhood, or at least to some of us. Most of us believes animals should have some rights and have individual personalities and see on. I don’t think a cosmic force could influence prophets of times past without having some kind of intelligence and personhood to it. But I also believe that god is so alien to us we have a better chance at understanding a jellyfish as a person than god.
Clearly we have completely different concepts of language and God. I’m used to that . I don’t need to think you’re wrong for me to be right but I suspect it’s different for you.
Jesus is God and Jesus is human, so yes God is human – not JUST a human to be sure. God is so much more. And we have an inheritance from God Himself in ideas which He imparted to Adam and Eve, and by it we are His children. Can a child understand the parent? It takes time but the answer is yes – that is kind of the point of the relationship.
This comment makes me somewhat appreciate David Bentley Hart’s talk about the unbridgeable divide between people – I believe he called this “withholding” from each other. I think there are ways in which we understand God better than we understand people or even ourselves. God is not divided between good and evil full of contradictions and self-destructive habits and impulses. With God there may be a lot to learn (an eternity of it) but what we learn isn’t nearly such a nonsensical mess.
There is nothing magical or even mysterious about it. Our relationship with a human person is simply confined to the space-time locale of his body and the physical interactions we have with it. Our relationship with God is not confined in such a way. Everything we experience and everything we do is part of our communication and relationship with God.
I do not.
There is a divide to be sure in the difference between the infinite and the finite. But I think we are made to understand God. I just think it will take an eternity to do so. But that doesn’t mean that what we understand is nothing. It can be substantial even if it is never complete.
Nope. Our knowledge of God is subjective (i.e. not the same for everyone). The knowledge of an infinite subject can rather easily be totally disjoint with nothing in agreement. But even knowing this doesn’t dissolve disagreements because we can only speak what we know.
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I don’t think Jesus is God. Jesus prayed to God and said only God is good and it says God is the one who handed power over to Jesus.
As for the relationship, I’m just saying the same claims someone makes about God and their relationship is the same claims a kid makes about their imaginary friend. Or it’s the same claims I can make about any deity. Someone claiming to have a personal relationship with Jesus or with God is the same as me saying it about Hercules and Zeus.
No one can prove a personal detail about god that’s not revealed in some scripture. What would be something personal you know about God that’s not in the Bible?
I would agree this is a reasonable interpretation which can be made to work with the rest of the Bible. It is not my preference and it is not the Christian interpretation.
Of course that is the nature of religion and its role in life which requires subjective participation. The objective observation of science is quite insufficient for living our life.
Proof is unavailable for most things in life. The same applies to many human interactions. Sometimes corroboration isn’t possible for many different reasons.
What do you mean by “personal”? Seems to me that the answers to prayer are personal.
I underestimated you but only because of the way you assert things as fact in the subjective realm. I wouldn’t do that.
To me personal is not something that is really confusing. It’s something that is obvious to anyone who looks at a relationship. We have personal relationships with our families. We have personal relationships with our friends and even our enemies. When I use personal it’s not a trick word full of gray areas.
I have never met Brad Pitt. I’ve seen many of his films and interviews. I’m a fan of of his work. He does not even know I exist. I could feel like I had a personal relationship with him because of his work like stalkers do, but it’s just not true.
When someone says I have a personal relationship with God it’s simply something that cannot be demonstrated. There are thousands if not millions of people alive right now claiming a personal relationship with God. But not in a single case can you prove is it God or is it just their feelings or a coincidence. But I could easily prove beyond reasonable doubt I have a relationship with my fiancee. There are videos, pictures, and so on of us together. There is a call log. You could ask me random basic questions about her life and interest and I could mostly answer them and she could verify it. You can see pictures and videos of me with my cat Shine. You could see how she snuggled to me, but flees and hisses at any other human and know beyond a reasonable doubt that she and I have a personal relationship.
But no one can do that with any god.
I’d say that comes with the territory as far as being made as God’s image!
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