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Re:What If Consciousness Comes First? by Voloskaya on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @04:12PM (#20519157)
> I understood that we do not understand

There are many things we don't understand, and as time pass we gradually understand more and more of them. What does this have to do with the existence or not of God? Do you go back and forth between atheist/theist every time a new answer is discovered and a new question is asked?

Re:What If Consciousness Comes First? by vlunkr on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @04:20PM (#20519236)
This idea is called "God of the gaps" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God_of_the_gaps.
Re:What If Consciousness Comes First? by dogofthegasp on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @04:41PM (#20519438)
Christian mystical theology has never had a problem with the god of the gaps argument. It's always postulated that God was something so utterly alien from us (prior to time itself!) that we can know him only through revelation. The nature of God lies in the realm of the unknown, for our finite minds cannot grasp the infinite. Knowledge of God is given only through experience and his grace. What has been revealed is logic-defying and mind-bending, although it has a certain paternicity of its own.

Whether the God of the Gaps points you towards atheism or theism depends on your concept of the unknown. If you think of it as a fixed sized bucket of things gradually trending towards zero due to the effort of science, then you are an atheist. If you think of the unknown as practically limitless in size and our process of discovery as barely scratching the surface, then you are pointed towards theism. Generally, materialists trend towards the former and phenomenologists towards the latter.

Re:What If Consciousness Comes First? by vlunkr on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @06:20PM (#20520570)
As the wikipedia article stats, the idea was proposed first by Christians rather than skeptics, arguing that it's a weak form of faith, so you're definitely right on that point.

> Whether the God of the Gaps points you towards atheism or theism depends on your concept of the unknown

I really like this assessment. Looking at the sibling comments here, most seem to think all questions will be answered eventually, but I suppose that's impossible to know, since we don't even know what all the questions are yet.

Re:What If Consciousness Comes First? by eternalny1 on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @04:22PM (#20519257)
Good link.

If anyone who has a true understanding of the concept of "nothing" can point me towards a Big Bang Theory I'd be happy to entertain.

Re:What If Consciousness Comes First? by 50656E6973 on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @04:50PM (#20519523)
>There are many things we don't understand, and as time pass we gradually understand more and more of them.

On the contrary, when it comes to the fundamental nature of the universe, the more we've come to understand, the more we've come to realize how much even more we do not understand.

Re:What If Consciousness Comes First? by Voloskaya on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @04:54PM (#20519575)
This is not the contrary. We realize better how much we do not understand, but we do understand more and more. More things are moving from 'unknown unknowns' to 'known unknowns', this is a progress in understanding, not the other way around.
Re:What If Consciousness Comes First? by 50656E6973 on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @09:26PM (#20521825)
When our understanding takes one step forward and 2 steps back, there is a net loss of comprehensive understanding
Re:What If Consciousness Comes First? by Voloskaya on Thursday July 25, 2019 @10:34AM (#20525684)
Depends if you care about actual comprehension or perceived comprehension. I care about the former.
Re:What If Consciousness Comes First? by 50656E6973 on Thursday July 25, 2019 @04:17PM (#20529158)
When Copernicus mathematically determined that the sun was at the center of the universe rather than the earth, was that "actual comprehension", or "perceived comprehension"?
Re:What If Consciousness Comes First? by eternalny1 on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @04:17PM (#20519207)
> There are many things we don't understand, and as time pass we gradually understand more and more of them. What does this have to do with the existence or not of God?

How did it start?

Re:What If Consciousness Comes First? by VyperCard on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @05:30PM (#20519952)
Nothing cannot exist. Therefore everything that can exist exists.
Re:What If Consciousness Comes First? by eternalny1 on Wednesday July 24, 2019 @05:06PM (#20519697)
Good luck with this coming full-circle when you have to create all of this, from nothing.

"Good Lord"

Don't worry he's cool with that.