Stumbling Toward God

Take this as a premise:

Part I: There is far too much in the world for anyone to take it all in. We have no choice but to be selective. We filter, and thus create our own individual "realities."

In addition, this is also a premise:

Part 2: There is a greater reality outside of each of our individual realities. There is universal truth that effects all of us, whether we choose to believe it or not.

There's no reason why the two can't get along as long as the set of the individual's ability to percieve is a set that is smaller than the set of what it is possible to bump into. In fact, there should be a great number of things that can very solidly belong to both sets: The way you percieve a thing can be absolutely depended upon to be consistant with any concievable way that you can bump into it. Like rocks. There is little mystery to rocks.

The problem is that there is no comparison possible. Even with rocks, you can only understand rocks at the level of perception that it is possible for you to understand rocks. There might be a larger system or idea or force that the rock is only a part of. No doubt this is true, and it is even possible to come up with more than one plausible description of what that larger system would look like, but the only way to check your work is to measure the consistancy of your theory with the consistency of your perceptions.

So while there definitely is a reality larger than one's ability to percieve it, as can be evidenced on a day to day basis, the ability to understand it is limited to 1) your ability to bump into it and 2) The pattern that you put it into. Rocks can be put into a pattern that satisfies all possible ways that they can be bumped into, so we say that we understand rocks and that they are real.

There are things that we bump into that do not fit within a pattern that can belong exclusively to the set of part 1. But we have deduction. We can establish a pattern that satisfies any and all ways that it is possible to interact with this bigger thing based on what we know about smaller things. The problem is that the more of a pattern pertaining to an outside force that is outside of your ability to percieve, the more possible patterns you can come up with that satisfy the condition of matching your ability to interact. So the problem is one of resolution. You can see a pattern larger than your ability to percieve, but the larger the pattern, the less the detail. Going forward with a strict standard of truth, you can not also go forward with an expectation of a high level of detail. Patterns that fit solidly within the set of percievable things have a high level of detail that is enforced by our ability to percieve them. Things that reside mostly within the set of our ability to percieve have more details that are up for grabs to be interpreted in a number of different effective ways. Things that reside only marginally within the set of our ability to percieve can lack even a basic underlying structure that can be agreed upon by everyone. The only thing that can really be said about such a thing is that it exists but remains undefined.

A thing that large, it would take an act of faith to interact with at all.

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that is a great story!
'faith in the truth'... faith in a system of understanding?
i don't think truth and reality are just in our heads... i think there is what is... sometimes planes have to emergency land on freeways. people driving their cars run right into them, latter when asked why they ran into the HUGE plane in the road they say they didn't see it. well they probably saw it and then their system of understanding dismissed the possibility of their being a plane on the freeway.
i think there are two places from this perspective that the problem could reside. either in your ability to actually see the plane or in you ability to believe that a plane could be on the freeway.

place in the world and a god that suits you... is that me?
if by place you mean system of understanding (network of interrelated truths) that you identify with and use to navigate the world. and a god that suits you mean that if you want the idea of a god to be in that system of understanding you have found a compatible way to put god in that system of yours, well then yes.
if you were looking for a god that simply made you feel better i have the feeling you wouldn't be YOU. what i suspect makes you feel bad is that you don't have a system for understanding the world, that you desire a level of precision in your understanding of the world that you can not find in your current system. so you thought Christians might have a better system. and i think what you are finding is that what make Christianity useful is that is vague. the more accessible an understanding of 'truth' is the less practical.
anything that can be bumped into is subject to 'individual perception'
maybe god is like the plane, it is right there in front of you it couldn't be any bigger or more obvious, but your system of understanding doesn't have any room for a plane in the freeway.
i think that whether you 'like' god or not could have a whole lot to do with whether you are capable of (not seeing but) incorporating god into your understanding. now, whether you ever find god or not seems fairly irrelevant, if there is a god then there is god to find.
what it seems like you need is a system of deciding what is true that has a high compatibility with what is, that you can believe in. maybe christianity is that system, maybe not.
 

with regard to -III-
question: in the second premise there is a greater reality. i'm fine with that, but i am a little hung up because of the first premise’s definition of reality. if we create our own individual realities then it is sort of implied that a 'larger' reality would also be created... is that the implication?
" The way you perceive a thing can be absolutely depended upon to be consistent with any conceivable way that you can bump into it."
i like this idea
comparison... "can only understand rocks at the level of perception that it is possible for you to understand"
so how do you know that you can perceive rocks at the top level of your capability to perceive?
"consistency of your theory with the consistency of your perceptions." back to the dilemma of your own reality
"So while there definitely is a reality larger than one's ability to perceive it, as can be evidenced on a day to day basis, the ability to understand it is limited to 1) your ability to bump into it and 2) The pattern that you put it into." well, that is just, absolutely, fantastic! i'm going to take a moment and read that a few more times!
"but the larger the pattern, the less the detail." yes, i think this is the same thing as when i say the more accessible things are the less practical.
"Things that reside only marginally within the set of our ability to perceive can lack even a basic underlying structure that can be agreed upon by everyone. The only thing that can really be said about such a thing is that it exists but remains undefined." yes but i think that for the most part the ability to define resides in our heads and our ability to articulate. while i may be able to only slightly grip things mostly larger then my perception, my grip is awfully slippery when i try to explain it to someone else.
faith is believing when you know something that you can not explain, believing in the grip you have of it even if you can't share it with anyone else.
 

Sounds like you've got quite a project on your hands. You aim to determine whether there are grounds for asserting the existence of God, beyond those of personal preference. We all know that some people prefer to say that God exists and some don't, so personal preference reasons aren't compelling.

I can see your quandary; it is not unfamiliar. When considered from their pespective, both believers and nonbelievers appear to make sense. How can this be? Its a Schrodinger's Cat type perplexity. The 'postmodern' response is to let this perplexity lie where it is, which tells us nothing. I respect your stubbornness in refusing this answer.

Instances of contradictory assertions being reasonably asserted are not limited to debates about God. I think philosophy is best done by considering particular cases, not by broad abstraction. And I'm curious how you intend to answer the large question you've raised (i.e. whether God 'IS'). Some examples to consider:

People disagree about policy all the time (say, fiscal policy). How can this be? What do we do if A says "more taxes will promote the economy" and B says "more taxes will hinder the economy"? How can some people say the Iraqi war is a 'success' and others a failure? Can we resolve these questions? Should we even make such assertions? Are debates about God like this?

People can disagree about whether a certain kind of bird exists or is extinct. This can theoretically be determined empirically. Can the God question be answered empirically? why or why not?

We can also disagree about whether chupacabras exist or are fantasy. This can't be decided empirically the same way; if you can't find any, they might be extinct but not fantastic. Is your question about whether God 'IS' like this question? How do we go about answering these questions, if we can't do so empirically?

People can have the same quandary I see you as having over personal identity issues, and do so all the time. Think of someone torn as to whether he is 'in love' or not. Our language suggests that this a 'true/false' question, but sometimes perfectly coherent and compelling arguments can be made in each direction. How do we decide whether propositions are true, when deciding them says something about ourselves?

I'm curious which of these examples you see the God Q being most related to. And more curious how you can take the next step and figure out how to tell if God IS or not.