--- ## Philosophic Reductionist Argument Any scientific, philosophical, or question born from consciousness ultimately reduces into the interplay of two fundamental blocks, the [[Νὴ τὸν Ἄγνωστος Θεός|known and unknown.]] [[The Nature of Chaos, Order, & Emergence|This is what the Taoists, Hegelians, and others figured out.]] To encounter _“the unknown”_ presupposes the existence of a _“known”_. A defined conscious experience—the subjective organization of sensory, symbolic, and affective inputs—_constructs_ the very conditions by which something can be rendered **“outside”** its frame. Thus, the **unknown is not some ontic wilderness**, but a **negative space** produced by the contours of what is **already ordered** within consciousness. _This draws from phenomenology (Husserl, Heidegger)_ If you as consciousness had no bounds, if you knew all, had no unknowns, not only would your perception of time and self become meaningless definitions, “you” would be in form the universe itself:  _Landauer’s Principle, Wolfram’s Computational Irreducibility, laws of thermodynamics, information theory, and the Church-Turing thesis._ Thus to the conscious experience, God is the representation of the unknown, or rather, that which (fundamentally) cannot be known. And yet what comes out of the unknown, the known, follows an underlying order, a logos, gods will. Thus we infer if will exists, so must a creator. Half of this is due to reason, and the other, the narrativization of the unknown, as it seems this is a fundamental contention. We fear unpredictability, hence why we see the animalistic as evil. Religion framed the unknowable **not as chaos**, but as a [[The Nature of Representation, Symbolism & Meaning#Convergent Truth A Definition|source of alignment and orientation.]] It **stabilized [[Mimetic Desire → Rivalry → Crisis → Scapegoat → Sacrifice → Myth → Ritual|mimetic desire]]** by giving the community a shared language of transcendence. This is why Moses "sees god" through the crack in two cliffs [(Exodus 33:18-23).](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%2033%3A18-23&version=NIV) Too often we use our human frame to over personify the metaphors being used in these frameworks, which are attempting to describe a logos born literally from what cannot be known. But with science—arising out of the same religious impulse to _know the order of creation_—the **emphasis shifted**: from meaning to mechanism, from Logos to code. *Note: Science was born in an era where there was a lot of religious disagreements between the different sects. Also a sect, the rituals and beliefs, is not the religion / god itself.* Science displaced religions epistemic role, offering reliable tools for modelling the known: • Prediction, • Replication, • Reduction. In doing so it excluded the unknowable, not just methodologically, but metaphysically. It claimed—implicitly—that what cannot be known does not exist. A notion we now know is intellectual hubris. Furthermore, science explains reality. but it does not justify it. It reveals _how_, but remains silent on _why_. This is not a critique of science per se. It is a critique of the sect of **scientism**—the elevation of methodological reductionism into a worldview. Where once **religion grounded the moral order**, now science offers **mechanical precision without orientation**. Hence the modern void: a culture with tools for prediction, but no frame for meaning, living in a universe which in axiomatic definition cannot be predicted at it's fundamentals. ## A Probabilistic Argument I've met and talked with a lot of atheists, as well as a lot of people who simply cannot deal with abstractions, metaphors, or what I'll just call critical thinking. Still, this is one of my most fun arguments for god, because it sets a funny rationalist trap. Simply, forget the notion of god. My question is simple, how many times would you have to flip a coin, and it ONLY LAND ON ONE SIDE, before you think the game is rigged? I could hand you a coin that looks perfectly fine, but at some point, there has to be a rational limit, at which you infer there has been some interference. Correct? What is that number? is it 5 times? 10 times? what about 200 times? If they're being stubborn, we can play an even more practical game. If I trip, and accidentally slap your face, the first time, you're a kind individual, I'm sure you'd give me the benefit of the doubt, but twice? three times? My point, is that there exists a probabilistic point in which the underlying reality doesn't matter, and it becomes the rational perspective to assume the existence of interference, EVEN IF THAT INTERFERENCE DOESN'T EXIST. *Note: They assume it's the inverse of the sunk cost fallacy for gamblers, in which the gambler assumes their odds are better because they lost x times in a row, therefore a win must be coming in the next n turns. Except it's more like bayesian reasoning of an underlying logos.* Anyways, you must have a number, and what ever that number is, I can almost guarantee it's not 1 in 400 trillion, which is the probability of conscious life. That doesn't even account for civilization, food, agriculture, etc. If you are rational, there has to be a point where the probabilistic evidence becomes overwhelming, and if you require a deterministic evidence, well I hate to break it to you, but even science isn't actually deterministic. A scientific claim can only be falsified, not deterministically proven. *Note: part of this is due to dimensionality* The obvious rebuttal is the Post-hoc Anthropic Principle, however, this ignores the role of free will as an extension of the probabilistic, again assuming a deterministic outcome. Furthermore, the Anthropic Principle assumes some sort of multiverse, recursive, or retry system. This simple moves the order a layer higher, rather than dissolving it. It's an escape via abstraction, which isn't scientific in nature, but closer to meta-physical philosophical or as it develops, religious. “We exist, therefore existence must be possible” tells us nothing about **why** existence has this particular form or improbability. It's not really about proving the unprovable, but rather what a game theoretic agent should rationally believe. If the prior probability of conscious life arising by chance is 1 in 400 trillion, and we observe that it exists, what do we update our priors _toward_? It doesn't necessarily have to be toward “God” as traditionally understood, but certainly away from “pure accident.” What we are left with is the inference of organizing principles, ie cosmological constants, etc. The more we as conscious experience the more probabilistic evidence we have to deal with, and because even our conscious, human nature, follows a logos, this evidence will only continue to build up. The question becomes why those constants, why do they exist, etc. Again probabilistically at what point is it rational to infer that the underlying constants, are a form of intent, logos, will... Again, god as metaphor for the fundamentally unknown, rather than the sectarian personification. Again, it comes down at this point to what you choose to believe. I just make the case that the choice to ignore the evidence is not rational. For example, another common rebuttal is that we often argue the existence of a monotheistic god but not of a poly theistic one. For example, a atheist might ask, why can't we infer the existence of zeus / why do we reject zeus and not broader the concept of god? Simply this is a misunderstanding of language and metaphor. You can call the phenomena of lightning and thunder whichever word you'd like, you can even personify it like is done with zeus, applying characteristic to it. We often do this with natural disasters, again naming them human names, calling them brutal, etc, because the rational conscious INFERS intent in the face of the improbable. Naturally as we come up with better explanations for things the need for these lesser explanations dissipates. However, with monotheistic god and consciousness, we live in a universe where the very underlying principles of both imply a degree of uncertainty. I'm fairly confident in saying that the rejection of god is just the deterioration of the common principles we used prior to post-modernist thought to organize our values and vocabulary. It's more about the deterioration of communication, and the gut refusal / denial of our past which causes the inability or refusal to engage in these metaphors. This gut refusal is because we don't want to admit that our ancestors were both intelligent, correct, and committed horrors. It's a deep sense of guilt leading to dissonance. I find it funny, that religion predates agriculture, which predates civilization, yet modern thought has convinced everyone that now, all of a sudden, we are better, more moral, and no longer need the very institutions and frameworks which organized ALL of history. It's not a mistake we live in a time of degradation, or that our global society (in metaphor) idolizes and worships satan (again in metaphor.) You might think this would turn me cynical, our might even lead me to reject god myself, but... *For in the end — the beginnings of something new*