Very rarely are gods easily tested for existence. We can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that actions attributed to gods are untrue; for example, I think we can confidently say that the Genesis creation myth is false. But I'm having trouble thinking of a god that doesn't have the possibility for a "God of the Gaps" regression built into its story. So, we know that the pebble's magical properties don't stand up to scientific rigor? That's because the pebble doesn't feel the need to prove itself. You can't prove that it didn't perform miracles earlier, for believers. Etcetera. That's why I think it's more useful to address concepts of gods by studying the humans who hold them, rather than studying them in their own right.
The Bible's passage of not testing God isn't even followed consistently in the Bible. The name of the figure escapes me in the Old Testament, but a Jewish general tested God's existence with a mat that he prayed to be covered in dew when he woke. The next day he found it, but then asked that everything else should be covered in dew except the mat the next day. Likewise. He then believed that God was on his side, et cetera, et cetera.
I'm not that interested in Biblical apology here, though. I am not trying to suggest that the Bible is a method whereby we can prove or disprove the existence of Jehovah, or would endorse such a deliberate attempt to prove God's existence by some sort of empirical test.
But yes, I agree: We can certainly say that some myths are not likely true. (We cannot, however, scientically prove they are not beyond a shadow of a doubt - only beyond a reasonable level).
If someone wants to evade the consequences of showing that the God pebble still is a God, that's fine. Those people can't be dissuaded, very likely. But we can still do the tests on the pebble that would confirm some claims about it, which would verify it status to people willing to listen impartially. Intractable believers are not disproof that we cannot use (and ought to use) proper methods to determine the veracity of certain beliefs. Of course, it is far more dificult to definitively disprove Jehovah, Odin, Zeus, or whomever, as they presumably are NOT found in X or Y rock, and are personas subject to whims, and don't have drivers licenses and passports like you and I to prove our identity.
But that's the thing, there is another method, which I'm proposing. That's to study something related and apply Occam's Razor based on findings when relevant. OK, so you won't Prove anything, but you'll get a good enough answer, which is better than any purely logical deduction I've seen regarding the existence of any god.
You cannot use Ockham's razor in this instance because
truth cannot be determined. It would be Ockham's Blunted Razor (by Gillette), where reasonableness takes the role of truth. For the purposes of this or that, that's fine. But our incredulity and our explanations
absent a greater investigation would be unscientific.
The logical deduction of God in the proper sense produces far, far more meaningful arguments both for and against than any sort of story telling thing about lesser divinities. These arguments have attracted the attention of the greatest thinkers for 2,500 years, including even those outside of philosophy such as the mathematician Kurt Godel (who made his own ontological argument for the existence of God).
I am -not- saying it is unreasonable to think that a savage is just being superstitious when he worships a pebble as a God. But it is quite a different thing to be reasonable in a normal sense, and scientifically and philosophically rigorous.
Maybe if there was no historical record of Cardinal Richelieu, outside of maybe a few ancient reports of mystical experiences of him, and people had come to believe in him by virtue of these stories being passed around, then the best conclusion would be that he is fictional.
This would probably disqualify most ancient figures (but not many early modern).
The idea, however, is being close to "storytelling" in life is not any indication of one's lack. As we know from the study of dramatics, that there are only a finite amount of plots that form the basis of most stories, and these mirror life in many regards. Both you and I surely have examples of our own life that would require virtually no adjustments to be stories, yet we do not therefore think that these are fictional.
But my point is that nobody believes in just Philosophy God. All Philosophy God is, is an abstraction of the different gods, all of which are probably derived from human storytelling tendencies, or otherwise is not really related to gods. So if we come to a conclusion about "all gods," we can also come to a conclusion about Philosophy God, or otherwise dismiss the usefulness of talking about Philosophy God in the first place.
The God of Philosophy is not a syncretic deity that is merely the compilation of different deities' stories. We're not dealing with Jesusrishuddllah. We're dealing with an entity that is to be deduced from reason and with qualities quite apart from the stories.
The God of Philosophy is only with pains made into the same deity who couldn't see the Tower of Babel through the cloud cover, thus had to come to Earth to see what mankind was up to.
Your insistence that every deity is related to human storytelling proclivities is also unfounded. You'd have to demonstrate that for the deities, which I am not so sure you could do. You certainly could not reconstruct ancient conditions to suggest that people were simply duped in cases where they attest the actions of a deity. You could only say it is unlikely - which I'd agree - but that would not be a justifiable scientific position. Your epistemological foundations would be shaky.
Besides, again: This is irrelevant. The God of philosophy has nothing tod o with myths and stories. Those are all apart from it. God is deducible or else refutable by pure reason only.
Also, it turns out that all attempts to prove or disprove Philosophy God are bogus. At least from what I've seen. They either don't address something meaningful to the concept of a god in the first place (coming back to Philosophy God being an odd god) or they're fallacious. To take the KCA as an example, it includes both: if it was correct, it would prove a First Cause, which maybe proves Philosophy God and maybe proves that a property of some other gods can exist, but doesn't prove any god... and it rests on unfounded premises (no infinite regress can exist; no circularity can exist; all existences are, and always have been, certainly "caused" in the same way as reactions).
They certainly are not bogus. They are up to debate, but not bogus. None of the proofs have definitively settled the debate, but such is to be expected from asking such questions as these.
I am by no means an actual supporter of Kalaam, but to support its
reasonableness as a deduction of God, it is based on widely accepted positions such as vicious circularity is wrong (which, in fact, no one can rationally disagree with), that any finite thing must have a cause (because it is not necessary it must be), and that a
vicious infinite regress is not possible. The problem is determining whether there is a
vicious infinite regress involved in other arguments. That is the crux of the problem. That is hard to determine and the arguments will continue to this end.
That being said, everyone can agree that existence must derive from a necessity. The only thing that could be justifiably postulated would be there is something inherently necessary about existence, in some form or another, in order to account for why anything is whatsoever.
The God of Philosophy, once again, is not the God of any given holy book. That's not the intention. These arguments aren't there to prove Jehovah as depicted in the Book of Genesis, Zeus in the Illiad, or Odin in the Poetic Edda.
You know your philosophy.
Thank you. Of course, I would be up a creek without a paddle if I didn't, as I am trying to make this my profession. (No tin mining for me.)
I don't think that the fact that philosophy has influenced everyday ethics in some cultures changes my point, though. I think you'll agree that philosophers deciding on the existence of something, and then a culture adopting their ideas about the existence of something, doesn't make that thing exist. So maybe I'm misunderstanding why you're bringing this up.
Yes, but what I am arguing is that philosophical arguments have had a dramatic influence on cultural concepts of the good. Our intuitions of the good derive from philosophical arguments that have become engrained in our respective cultures, and these leak into our conception of how to train goodness into people.
Edit: OK, I see that you're using it to show that "arguing about Philosophy Goodness" is useful, because certain philosophical concepts of goodness have become popular, and made things better. I think that this is missing what was actually useful about the process, though. The useful part was finding a goodness that is somehow better than typical ones, and arguing for why. That's pretty similar to what I was suggesting about seeking universals. (I should be clear--by "universals" I don't mean commonalities, I mean seeking things that would be best applied universally.) That's different than speculating about whether or not Philosophy Goodness exists.
I don't disagree with you that looking for universals amongst human behaviour might be a good way to start. (However, there are almost none except those so broad that they almost are meaningless, but that's another topic entirely). However, what philosophy gives us that this doesn't is a rational notion of what goodness
really is. The debate rages on as each moral system has arguments both for and against it, but the
intention to find out what goodness is and how to obtain it, is what makes ethics such a worthwhile and important discipline.
Funny, then, that of the philosophers you've mentioned, Hume is the one I've read the least. I think I read him on social contract theory once and actually disagreed with him. What does he argue with respect to ethics?
In a nut shell: Humans have certain creaturely inclinations that lead to concepts of good and bad derived from the passions that both support and derive from these inclinations. Example: Family is valued because of the familiar affection that both supports the continuation of the family, and is derived by the necessity of family life for human beings to live. These are broadly universal over all cultures, and lead to the passions which govern our sense of good and bad broadly, although the specific circumstances of a given society will determine how these are expressed and what have you. Moreover, because these are passions and not thoughts, goodness is not really an objective quality, and is also not amendable to rational processes, such that our moral sense is basically a process of emotion. In fact, we do nothing but for passionate inclinations which give us the value for doing things.
This is the opposite of Aristotle's ideas that man is a rational agent with natural passions amendable to rational control.