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Proof by concept

שו”תCategory: faithProof by concept
asked 4 years ago

In the SD
Hello Rabbi,
I wanted to ask, is it because so many people talk/prove/deny/think about G-d, that the vision mentioned that it is among man’s aspirations, as I believe.
But on the other hand, it’s natural that God is such an undefined concept, and yet everyone talks about it (there are no atheists in the trenches), and even hardcore atheists who exempt the believer from defining God, still understand something of this concept.
Does this mean that this concept exists, and that if the concept exists, it is reasonable to assume that the object itself exists?


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מיכי Staff answered 4 years ago
This is the anthropological evidence (from the existence of a concept to the existence of the object). It is quite weak in my opinion. Anselm tried to prove the existence of God from his concept, but not from the very existence of the concept of God.

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ק replied 4 years ago

Thank you very much, yes indeed it does sound like a kind of anthropological evidence, although from what I remember it is structured differently.
Why do you think it is weak?
Is it because it is possible to explain that God is a composition of ancient concepts? (This is what I was trying to say, which is almost impossible because people do not actually define it and yet understand it).
Or because there is no identity between a concept and its realization?
Or something else?

מיכי Staff replied 4 years ago

First, there may be a false recognition. There is something in reality that I see differently than it is, and as a result, a concept is created in me that does not really exist (realized) in reality.
Second, concepts can be synthesized from other concepts. I see no problem synthesizing the concept of an omnipotent being who created the world and even gave the Torah. What is the problem with that? Ability is something that is understandable to us, and extension to any ability is not an impossible leap. Creation from nothing is not familiar to us, but again, this is an extension that I do not see a problem with.

ק replied 4 years ago

The point is that you don't see anything else in reality. (You don't see God physically the way you see a table that you would say is an object created by chance, when so many people perceive God or something, even if you don't say that it is exactly the same thing one by one (say, like the approaches of Ezra) but there is no doubt that it is something much more fundamental in humanity as a whole). So it seems strange that there is something in reality that you see differently than it is. While you don't see anything.

Secondly, that it is possible to synthesize concepts from other concepts is true, but first of all, as a matter of fact, even in your opinion, you don't claim this as a default claim for every concept that is synthesized, and then you will find something else.

And the main point is In any case, as I emphasized before, people really do not perceive God as an ”omnipotent being who created the world and gave the Torah”, but rather they have an *experience* that perhaps meets these qualities for the concept (and even if you push a person against a wall, he will say so), so most people usually really do not use many descriptions, if at all, towards the concept of God.
So in fact, this is precisely the claim that most people do not really define it. And yet they talk about it in a disproportionate way compared to another object that we would expect to be so undefined and that would be talked about so much anyway (if it did not exist). Therefore, it sounds even stranger to say that it is a synthesis from other concepts.

(The concept of omnipotence is not exactly a familiar concept, and this is already connected to the anthropological view. Creation out of nothing is not exactly an atheistic creation out of nothing, because God exists Himself, so it is not fundamentally different from the creation of an electron in the brain for free choice, as you say (although there is an offset from the belly fat 🙂 and perhaps it is built on a low, "spiritual" level that takes care of coordinating things, just as it takes care of offsetting the positive charge with the negative one that is created randomly).

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