Is there any reason to believe in God?

[Jotto999]

If I had never heard of God, and if our culture never brought it up, there would be nothing whatsoever that I'd miss out on. And oh how much farther progressed humanity would be.

 

[RedYellow]

While yes we are defining orange, that orange exists regardless of us no? And it would have the properties it possesses regardless of us, no?

The atoms and arrangement of the orange would exist without us, but not the identity. To the universe, there is no real point at which the orange begins or ends, it's part of an ongoing continuum of causal events. Is the tree distinct from the orange? Is the ground from which the tree grew, or the seed that came from the previous tree distinct from that orange? It wouldn't exist without either of those things, it is made from the very interaction of those things.

But along comes the human brain, which, has developed a language of identity and purpose. Does the tree know what the orange is for? Of course not. The growth of the orange is just a behavior of the tree. We observe that behavior and separate it into compartments, little collections of facts, as well as recognizing the natural relationships between those facts. It's only our ability to see it from the outside, that gives it identity. The universe is a process, it can't identify itself except through our eyes, precisely because we are separating it from ourselves.

Thus, nothing we can observe about the universe can be said to be literally prescriptive, only descriptive. Math is a philosophy of the basic behaviors of reality when broken down into imagined measurements. Same goes for logic. Logic doesn't dictate the behavior of reality, it observes that behavior and interprets it in ways that are relevant only to conscious observation.

 

[brewpanda]

The atoms and arrangement of the orange would exist without us, but not the identity. To the universe, there is no real point at which the orange begins or ends, it's part of an ongoing continuum of causal events. Is the tree distinct from the orange? Is the ground from which the tree grew, or the seed that came from the previous tree distinct from that orange? It wouldn't exist without either of those things, it is made from the very interaction of those things.

But along comes the human brain, which, has developed a language of identity and purpose. Does the tree know what the orange is for? Of course not. The growth of the orange is just a behavior of the tree. We observe that behavior and separate it into compartments, little collections of facts, as well as recognizing the natural relationships between those facts. It's only our ability to see it from the outside, that gives it identity. The universe is a process, it can't identify itself except through our eyes, precisely because we are separating it from ourselves.

Thus, nothing we can observe about the universe can be said to be literally prescriptive, only descriptive. Math is a philosophy of the basic behaviors of reality when broken down into imagined measurements. Same goes for logic. Logic doesn't dictate the behavior of reality, it observes that behavior and interprets it in ways that are relevant only to conscious observation.

Mm, I see what you are saying.

You are going to shoot me, but I actually would say that without us conceptualizing it, causation can't be known to exist. So that then we couldn't say that the universe had or has a continuum of causal events. Causation isn't necessary to it.

However I would say that while, yes, matter can be seen or expressed as various objects and atoms and particles and waves consistently in association with one other, that still doesn't remove identity. An atom is still an atom, a particle still a particle, a neutrino still a neutrino. So the specific quanta, the specific building blocks of matter exist as having identity that exist in relation to other identities.
Of course, the counterargument to this is WSM and the counter to that is space itself, which also has a counter! But even on the grand scale, a universe has an identity of being singular to itself, unless of course there are multi-verses in simultaneous existence, but then of course the argument to that is, if they have distinct properties or mass, than they themselves are distinct of another. In the case of an eternal model, or eternal multiverse model specifically, I would grant, identity breaks down.

Your last paragraph, regarding prescription vs description I am not fully certain that can be held to be true. What we say about the phenomena we experience and observe can be either descriptive or prescriptive, but we are not being descriptive about things in themselves. So while it might be erroneous to conclude that logic or identity is necessary in the noumenal world, we could suppose that it is necessary in the phenomenal world. Though I am still not sure that math/logic is necessarily prescriptive.

It is just as rational to assume that because the phenomenal world is only one of perception not actuality, it is likely that any abstracts regarding the phenomenal world are simply conceptions applied to it. Which isn't to say that the abstracts couldn't be necessary in a noumenal world, just that they are arguably contingent in this phenomenal world upon perception.
Your position is reasonable enough!

Thank you!