Do you believe in higher being?

[Covenant]

Then you're not looking hard enough. Just googling "what-is-a-higher-power" gives sentences like "For others, it may represent a connection to something greater than ourselves, like nature, community or love." Mr. Wong's usage may be very uncommon, but it's not peculiar to him alone.

Those hits are in reference to AA and such things, which I already noted as an outlier. The idea of a 'higher power' in that case is personal, but that seems to be an improper method for judging if or if not something is a higher power sense it sets absolutely no standard for it. Since there's no scholarly definition of 'Higher Power' outside of religion, doesn't it then make the most sense to rely on Common Usage when determining if or if not something would fit the definition of a Higher Power?

I still see it as roughly equalling Creator in the mouths of people who invented the word. And not just them. If you do that search, even the people who come up to the phrase because of AA meetings, and are not religious people, come away thinking of it as some kind of God or Cosmic Force, or Loving Power, which fits the common usage.

I'm just not seeing enough usage, or any usage outside AA meetings, to justify this alternative definition. It's different enough that it's nearly a different term.

In what sense? Society can be meaningfully said to have dispositions, attitudes, and preferences--possibly even disconnected from the dispositions or preferences of most people within it (e.g., Abilene paradox). Just because such things are ultimately reducible in some (nontrivial!) manner to the behaviors of individual people is not significantly different from the fact that the behavior of a person is ultimately reducible to the activities of individual neurons.

I don't see it as having a will any more than I consider individual cells to. They have basic 'desires' and respond to stimuli, but I wouldn't consider them willful any more than a plant. I certainly think of societies as being metaorganisms with many characteristics of life, but I also see those patterns in biospheres and planets.

The same goes for thoughts and articulations. Societies are not so very different from people in the way they do things, but they do so with much less deep thinking. If you could find the most impulsive person with the most factionalized and disordered thought patterns, that's not a bad match for the behaviors of societies in one sense, but governments gum it up. Governments and police are, what? Parasites? Immune systems? Bush railroaded us here to war, and I never supported it. I suppose I could have been the part of America's brain that wasn't so sure... but I frankly feel like more of a sub-organism than part of a larger American society.

However! I am fully willing to admit that I'm just a horrible person to judge this though, as I shun popular and consumer cultures to a largely psychopathic degree. I bet that's what makes me see society as a diffuse framework of smaller subcultures, all of which barely communicate amongst each other and often work towards opposite goals. I question the degree of unification you give an entire 'Society,' not the idea of aggregate, composite "beings."

And being able to converse with people directly is a prerequisite for such things?

No no, of course not. It's just another example of how a society lacks the kind of focus and determinism you'd expect from a more unified lifeform like a parrot or a dolphin. I personally have no idea what America wants, or China, or so on. I still think it's more like a tree or a plant than a person, but that makes it no less 'alive,' just not what I'd consider highly intelligent or a Higher Power. I'm a firm believer in langauge and environment as being foundation elements of human understanding, and societies are more than the sum of their parts, but I think the parts are more important and more real than 'Society' as a whole.

Still though, my qualm is that I don't believe society to be a Higher Power in the way I've seen Higher Powers defined. Nor have I seen evidence that there is a reason to change this definition from the common usage to something uncommon.

You contradict your own notion. I can violate the laws of physics as 17th or early 18th century scientists have set down (in case of the theories of heat, it's even possible with my own body--although with the hindsight of 21st century, I could set up situations in which many other theories would be violated), but that wouldn't make me a 'higher power' by your previously defined notion even if I was magically transported to that century.

You can violate their understanding, but that doesn't mean you're actually violating reality. I'm not saying anything that proves bad science wrong is a Higher Power, I'm saying that you need to demonstrate some kind of outside-context powers before you're able to lay claim to that.

This is why I say space aliens are not Higher Powers. They have access to advanced technology perhaps, and maybe even strange biological abilities we'd consider fantastic. But unless these things are more than just "a better sense of smell" or "stronger muscles" changes of degree, they don't qualify for the definition of a Higher Power.

It's quite possible I'm violating the laws of physics as we know them right now to an even weaker degree--all that would take for this to obtain is that for the known laws of physics being slightly revised in the future, which is actually highly probable.

I split this just to give myself a chance to clarify. If I can be tricked into thinking you know the future, it doesn't mean you ARE a Higher Power, just that I'll think you are. You can make me think a lot of things, but that doesn't make it so. I fully expect for us to be able to do things in the future that we think are now impossible, and that's why it's important to be a skeptic and continually question. If I found out later that your Higher Power was just a trick, you just amend their status.

Even if everyone thinks you're a Higher Power, it doesn't automatically make you one any more than it makes God any more a real Higher Power. I don't see the problem there. People can and will be wrong, from time to time. Doesn't mean we should widen the definition so far that a Pro-Wrestler is a higher power.

But for the most part, your implied difficulty can be resolved just by asking "how much higher?"

My 'Higher' is above the realm of our possibility, in accordance with the common perception of a Higher Power as a cosmic force and whatnot. This is why I don't believe in Higher Powers. If it's possible, just improbable, it can still be a Higher Power situation but it's much less obvious.

[ray245]

Err...guys...I think you have misunderstood my meaning of 'higher being'.

Firstly, I do not saying a higher being MUST literally be a god or 'Q', or sentient. It's along the lines of 'being' Higher than animals or humans, something that allowed the universe to be here. Something that allowed a mixture of chemicals to become cells.

I'm not saying we should worship science and maths like a god, or a being that can snap a finger and change everything.

I am not exactly asking question like ‘what is energy’ literally, I know very well what that was. And I admit some of those rhetorical questions are misleading. It's more along the lines of 'can we create nature?' and do we create the way things were suppose to be.

The science I am speaking about is not exactly literal, it's more along the lines of logic, like the way things were suppose to be. I do not mean it as a term that humans used to study about things around us, but the way things exist.

We can have people making up wrong ideas on how things works, but it does not mean it works like people say they do.

What I am trying put across was, how much are we in control of our environment to say there are no things can be separated from it?

How much 'free-will' do we have to ensure the way we think are always right? Why is some things in the bible not FACT? Why did past theory got proven wrong?

Are you sure there's nothing that make thing FACT? That's my view on higher being. Sure, we can come up with as much fictional view on things, but that does not mean it the fact.

I think this discussion is going away from what I intended. I do not mean it to be another religion-science debate, but as a philosophical one.

For one I do respect other people rights to respect their own belief, but it does not mean I follow my friends’ religion.

[Covenant]

Ah! Thanks for your clarification of a Higher Being, Ray. In light of that, I'm gonna stop debating, since I've got no need to blather about definitions when one's been provided.

[The Grim Squeaker]

For a long time (Ages 110/11-17/16.5) I used to be a A type of deist.
Namely I "Believed" that "something" induced the Big Bang as well as possibly the materials for it (Making something out of the nothing).
I saw this as a form of god then merely a higher entity though It could easily be a form of aliens of the type V+ [Kardashev scale] level or something else as above us as we are today above a single cell amoeba.
We can alter its (The Single Cell lifeforms) environment, alter its genetic pattern and do anything to it but why should we bother when its so much below us?

[Kuroneko]

Since there's no scholarly definition of 'Higher Power' outside of religion, doesn't it then make the most sense to rely on Common Usage when determining if or if not something would fit the definition of a Higher Power?

I wasn't aware of any scholarly definition in religion either. In fact, the usage you propose is even too restrictive for many religions--if the requirements you put forward against counting society as a being are accepted in that context as well (for otherwise, they would not be relevant).

I don't see it as having a will any more than I consider individual cells to. They have basic 'desires' and respond to stimuli, but I wouldn't consider them willful any more than a plant.

I may accept that they're much less "willful" in the sense that humans are, but comparing it to cell or plants is just disingenuous.

The same goes for thoughts and articulations. Societies are not so very different from people in the way they do things, but they do so with much less deep thinking.

So what? It's a purely quantitative difference. To use your own example, dolphins aren't known for deep thinking either, but you admit them to at least count as beings. Societies have been known to perform some introspection and determination for change, even if it is often haphazard and illogical.

It's just another example of how a society lacks the kind of focus and determinism you'd expect from a more unified lifeform like a parrot or a dolphin.

Reflect a bit on what you're saying. You're criticizing this notion of "higher power" because it includes things that are not sufficiently humanlike, or perhaps not sufficiently like the lifeforms we see around us. And yet, you're perfectly willing to apply this label to some hypothetical Intelligence that created the known universe. What heights of chauvinism are these! Why should one expect such an Intelligence to think anything like us, to respond to stimuli in an Earth-lifeform manner, have wants and desires analogous to our own, or even be capable of understanding them? If anything, to properly to encompass the notions of Creator-entities, one would have to allow for modes of thought different from our own--there must be a broadening beyond what you propose. Several of the 'tamer' religions, most directly deism but also some others that draw distinction of an impersonal God, are incompatible with your view.

You can violate their understanding, but that doesn't mean you're actually violating reality.

Correct.

I'm not saying anything that proves bad science wrong is a Higher Power, I'm saying that you need to demonstrate some kind of outside-context powers before you're able to lay claim to that.

Outside what context? There is no such thing as "outside reality"--that's simply incoherent. An "apparently external" power demonstrating its abilities outside our context would simply mean that reality is deeper than we thought it was and contains areas we weren't aware of. While that would be very significant, it's not qualitatively different from the previous scenario of a time traveller demonstrating to 17th century scientists that their models are sometimes very wrong. Again, there is only a difference in "how much higher," or in this case "how far outside our context."

My 'Higher' is above the realm of our possibility, ...

That's true, but it's even worse--it's outside the realm of logical consistency. Such a being would not be "violating reality," but only our understanding of it.

[Boyish-Tigerlilly]

Koroneko, would you refer to the "being" of society as a type of emergent property similar to what ants and other communal insects are like when they come together in hoards?

The hoard tends to exhibit faux-intelligence as a whole different from the individual parts.

[Covenant]

I'm not going to debate definitions, as one has been provided. I'll consider this mostly a side-topic to the original OP.

I may accept that they're much less "willful" in the sense that humans are, but comparing it to cell or plants is just disingenuous.

Why? We can't very well call it an animal. It's an entirely different type of organism, why is it disingenuous to call it something like a plant? Plants are a perfect example, because of the incredibly long duration at which they observe change. Society can change rapidly, but it usually leaves pockets behind, which casts some doubt on it's status as a single 'being'. It may act similar to one the way a school of fish mimics a larger organism, but it is still just a cluster single organisms working cooperatively (but not in unison the way cells do) for several individual goals.

Plants are much more capable of being torn apart and regrowing seperately, and behave in similar fashions to social groups. When I rip a lion apart, it dies. The claw doesn't regrow into a full lion, and it would need to before it's an actual lion. Society behaves plantlike in the fashion that I can chop up a plant, scatter the remains, and there will be several plants growing back in a short matter of time. It also reacts to stimuli and not to a single unified goal, but instead acts as if all of it's parts were seperate, growing longer in some places where the sun hits as other remain stunted. A shared root system, at times, but an ever changing growth.

It's certainly a much more literal comparison.

So what? It's a purely quantitative difference. To use your own example, dolphins aren't known for deep thinking either, but you admit them to at least count as beings. Societies have been known to perform some introspection and determination for change, even if it is often haphazard and illogical.

Dolphins are indeed known for deep thinking! They do things just for fun. The abstract idea of entertainment is an incredible leap in deep thought. Socities don't perform introspection, people do. You may say that my neurons are introspective, but that's not true, they aren't. They merely transmit the data the way Cable TV might.

The type of thought that goes on in a metaorganism like a social group is indeed haphazard and illogical at times, but it's not really thought. The diffusion of responsibility and the pressures of conformity provoke individual behaviors that give society a national character but it has no independant thought process of it's own. How can we ever tell what the Society is thinking? Do we poll it? Elections are a great example about how that process is rather faulty--not only is it nearly always incredibly closely divided, but the red/blue state idea of the American system at least isn't complex enough. The purple country model that shows things by variations described this very simple thought (who should lead) and it demonstrated that there's very, very little group consensus about it in nearly any area of the society.

How can we consider this creation to have a real thought process if the national Societal thinking is so incredibly independant? It's as if every cell in it's body were jostling for command. It may be an alien, unusual, different type of life and I have never claimed it is not. But it's a deranged, mouth-breathing hivemind compared to a social unit like ants, and I wouldn't call it much of a Higher Power.

I want to make it clear again I don't have a degree in sociology, so I may not know enough about this to speak critically about this subject. So far I'm just responding to questions about my thinking though, which I can explain. I fully admit that there are people out there who do this for a living and may very well know that I'm wrong, I just don't know of them or what they think.

Reflect a bit on what you're saying. You're criticizing this notion of "higher power" because it includes things that are not sufficiently humanlike, or perhaps not sufficiently like the lifeforms we see around us. And yet, you're perfectly willing to apply this label to some hypothetical Intelligence that created the known universe. What heights of chauvinism are these! Why should one expect such an Intelligence to think anything like us, to respond to stimuli in an Earth-lifeform manner, have wants and desires analogous to our own, or even be capable of understanding them? If anything, to properly to encompass the notions of Creator-entities, one would have to allow for modes of thought different from our own--there must be a broadening beyond what you propose. Several of the 'tamer' religions, most directly deism but also some others that draw distinction of an impersonal God, are incompatible with your view.

I'm excluding things that are sufficently humanlike. I want them to be so strange to us that we can barely understand them. A being that existed outside time would be so foreign as to be nearly impossible to see. That's a Higher Power. Deism is a perfect example of my definition, as it is something unlike us and unknowable, powerful and operating at a cosmic, creatory scale. I don't believe such things exist, but the Deist/Unitarian definition of "Higher Power" as some great Other capable of changing the universe around it is exactly what I mean. That's why, if it's just an animal that needs to eat, reproduce, and floats along in space... it's not a Higher Power.

Society isn't a Higher Power, as far as I can tell, because it does not demonstrate the characteristics of one. Large, galaxy spanning overminds might seem to be rather Higher Powersy, but if they do nothing besides exist then it's just a huge, amazing animal.

Something that can do more than we, as beings as we understand it, could ever do biologically to technologically or through any other combination of effort... something that is simply superior to us in every single way, forever, no matter what, and can exceed our possible limitations, not just our current ones, I'd call that a Higher Power. Elephants don't count, nor whales or birds or society, since it is forever bound by the limits of what it's constituent bits can do. And I don't mean ONE man, I mean ALL men, in a best case scenario. Otherwise, God may be merely a million years more advanced technologically than us, or lucky. That's quite impressive, but it's just a different step on the same, mundane path.

Outside what context? There is no such thing as "outside reality"--that's simply incoherent. An "apparently external" power demonstrating its abilities outside our context would simply mean that reality is deeper than we thought it was and contains areas we weren't aware of. While that would be very significant, it's not qualitatively different from the previous scenario of a time traveller demonstrating to 17th century scientists that their models are sometimes very wrong. Again, there is only a difference in "how much higher," or in this case "how far outside our context."

Alright then, I can agree on that. The context needs to be very far outside of our own context for it to fall into the catagory of 'Higher Power' as we are to understand it, especially for this thread, especially if it needs to be intelligent. I'm not so sure it needs to be intelligent or organic or anything to qualify, since I think those forces of nature are probably closer to Higher Powers than anything else we could ever imagine interacting with. Brane theory, for example, offers us a host of Higher Orders to deal with right there.

Still, that's just drifting outside of the definition of a Higher Power as it's been set out here, so it probably wouldn't qualify either.

That's true, but it's even worse--it's outside the realm of logical consistency. Such a being would not be "violating reality," but only our understanding of it.

If there's rules we haven't uncovered yet that lay out how creation was done, then that's science and not religion, not a Higher Power in action. The Death Star is not a Higher Power, it's just a machine. It's so many orders of magnitude more complex than a flint axe, but essentially just a tool. It's not like every God is an amazing Higher Power. Thor couldn't even swim, from what I can tell. But they usually apply by violating some kind of physical constraint that'd make them supernatural.

If God is using funny science to do things, and we find that out, then that's just portraying God as Q, and not as a true Higher Power. It may be that our brains simply cannot comprehend the complete truth of the universe. I don't believe that to be so, but we may eventually hit a brick wall after which our comprehension falters and we can only mark it off as "Here there be Dragons." At that juncture we may as well call the dragons Higher Powers, since they operate by rules that are a mystery to us.

At that point, yes, we're limited by our understanding. But we are always limited by our understanding when deciding what is or is not something greater than us and our existance. That's not an arguement for making everything a 'Higher Power' when we already have terms to describe stronger, smarter, bigger things without assigning them religious connotations.

[Darth Wong]

I'm excluding things that are sufficently humanlike. I want them to be so strange to us that we can barely understand them ...

Leaving aside the fact that you're contradicting yourself (ie- this entity must have a single mind, like a human, but it must not be humanlike), why is that necessary? Why are any of your made-up requirements necessary?

From where I sit, it looks like you have an idea in your head of what a "higher power" should be, and rather than defend the exclusivity of this idea, you keep redefining what a "higher power" is allowed to be, until yours is the only remaining acceptable answer. You have certainly not bothered to provide any actual reason for excluding these things other than your personal preference.

In point of fact, if there were some immensely intelligent and knowledgeable entity out there (even one which created our world, for example), it's more likely to be a collective than an individual. We have plenty of experience which shows us that multiple minds working in concert can achieve more than a singular mind. Why should this be different for imaginary beings of immense power? Why couldn't some alien entity's unspeakable power and knowledge come from billions of years of collective development rather than a singular super-mind?

[Covenant]

I'm excluding things that are sufficently humanlike. I want them to be so strange to us that we can barely understand them ...

Leaving aside the fact that you're contradicting yourself (ie- this entity must have a single mind, like a human, but it must not be humanlike), why is that necessary? Why are any of your made-up requirements necessary?

From where I sit, it looks like you have an idea in your head of what a "higher power" should be, and rather than defend the exclusivity of this idea, you keep redefining what a "higher power" is allowed to be, until yours is the only remaining acceptable answer. You have certainly not bothered to provide any actual reason for excluding these things other than your personal preference.

In point of fact, if there were some immensely intelligent and knowledgeable entity out there (even one which created our world, for example), it's more likely to be a collective than an individual. We have plenty of experience which shows us that multiple minds working in concert can achieve more than a singular mind. Why should this be different for imaginary beings of immense power? Why couldn't some alien entity's unspeakable power and knowledge come from billions of years of collective development rather than a singular super-mind?

Doesn't need to be a single mind. That's a seperate criticism of Society as some sort of unified, single, independant being. I don't even think it requires a mind, personally, and was ready to call abstract forces of nature Higher Powers though I doubt that fits the description we're using--even if it was the source of the universe.

I can certainly defend the idea of a Higher Power being exclusive, but I don't even believe in the commonly defined Higher Powers to begin with. I can defend them only in the same way I can defend the common perception of God as being this creator force that over watches people--by referencing that this is the definition used by those people who believe in such things. I can't point to evidence of one, and I can't point to the line in the sand after which something becomes one. Unless we can agree on a definition, however, I don't think we can advance further in this debate.

I've already said that if you want to re-define it, then yes, you could make it mean whatever you like. I think that's an irrational step to take, however, since you're already changing the definition at that point. If you want to use a non-standard definition for the term then you should make note of that when asking if Society can be considered a Higher Power, while also making note that it wouldn't fit in with the other common perceptions of what Higher Powers are and capable of. None of that was said, it was simply entered into the discussion.

I think my personal definition of a higher power or your personal definition of a higher power is too subejctive to be meaningful within a discussion of "Is thus-and-so is a Higher Power" unless the discussion also allows the inclusion of personal definitions of higher powers.

I feel like I'm just not understanding the need to expand the term. It's as if you strongly believed there was a reason to re-define my computer as 'a being.' I can somewhat see where you're coming from, but the reason for it eludes me. That's why the first thing I said in this long debate was "Is this just a mental exercise?" since the question seemed more of a mind-expanding sort of "What is a higher being? How do we define Higher?" sort of thing.

In cases like that, I'm usually for making a new word (like Metaorganism) than re-defining an old one that already describes something. I was also for kicking Pluto out of the planets, rather than expanding the definition to include three more.

I think we need to come up with a way of describing a "Higher Power" that rules out things that are simply larger than you (like an older brother) so that the term is still meaningful in quantifying something besides girth or intelligence or technology, all of which we have terms for. But will also satisfy the need for some criteria we can actually use to test or measure if something satisfies the requirements for Higher Powerdom in a way that current terms do not. It can't just be strength, or intelligence, or numbers. There needs to be an X-Factor that it describes or defines, otherwise it's just a redundant, useless term.

[Darth Wong]

I've already said that if you want to re-define it, then yes, you could make it mean whatever you like.

"Re-define" it? You are still framing your argument in the context of your assumption that your particular interpretation is the only correct one. You have certainly made no attempt whatsoever to show how my interpretation is incorrect; you have only shown that it is different.

I think that's an irrational step to take, however, since you're already changing the definition at that point.

Precisely what does "irrational" mean in your mind?

[Covenant]

I've already said that if you want to re-define it, then yes, you could make it mean whatever you like.

"Re-define" it? You are still framing your argument in the context of your assumption that your particular interpretation is the only correct one. You have certainly made no attempt whatsoever to show how my interpretation is incorrect; you have only shown that it is different.

Why is it reasonable to use a much more obscure definition for a common concept? You're treating the term as if any definition is equally as valid as the most widely used one.

Furthermore, the one you're proposing would be an incorrect usage because it removes any meaning from the term by making an infinitely vast supply of utterly subjective Higher Powers. It takes it so far outside of the common usage (the only realm in which it has any discernable preferred meaning at all) as to be a new term describing a new thing. When describing a new concept, it is better to simply create a new word. You will avoid confusion more often when in discussion of the term and be more precise when using it.

I think that's an irrational step to take, however, since you're already changing the definition at that point.

Precisely what does "irrational" mean in your mind?

Not according to reason. If we change the definition of 'Higher Power' to include things that are like us, only a bit bigger, then it ceases to mean what it used to mean and begins to define a completely different relationship.

It just feels like we're re-defining a color. The name of the color has no real inherent meaning, it's just what it's called. It would be more reasonable to just say "No, society is not what falls under the definition of a Higher Power according to the usage of the term. Perhaps there needs to be a term for giant, life-changing environmental factors like societies."

[Darth Wong]

Why is it reasonable to use a much more obscure definition for a common concept?

Why is it reasonable to appeal to popularity even though that is a fucking logic fallacy, you idiot?

You're treating the term as if any definition is equally as valid as the most widely used one.

And you are treating the term as if anything which is unpopular is automatically wrong.

Furthermore, the one you're proposing would be an incorrect usage because it removes any meaning from the term by making an infinitely vast supply of utterly subjective Higher Powers.

By this idiot logic, the term "more powerful" has no meaning because it is not specific or binary. BTW, what do you think "subjective" means?

Honestly, I'm really getting sick of your endless harping on what is most common or popular. The idea that an interpretation must be incorrect if it is not popular is sheer idiocy. You have to show that it does not meet the criteria of the term itself, which actually does have an English definition. You are simply refusing to accept that definition because it isn't narrow enough for your tastes.

Precisely what does "irrational" mean in your mind?

Not according to reason.

Then show what logical fallacy I am committing, dipshit. I grow weary of your endless appeals to popularity. It's even worse when you act as though failing to appeal to popularity is irrational when the opposite is true.

It just feels like we're re-defining a color. The name of the color has no real inherent meaning, it's just what it's called.

Wrong. The colours have a definition which can be expressed objectively, in terms of the frequencies of electromagnetic radiation.

I've tried to be patient with you but you're a goddamned idiot. You keep repeating your gut reactions and subjective feelings as if they are some kind of special data which I'm failing to account for, and it's getting old. The fact that my definition does not conform to Judeo-Christian prejudice does not make it unnatural, irrational, or incorrect. Hell, it might not even necessarily make it unpopular if you look at the entire world, not just your little Judeo-Christian corner of it.

[Covenant]

I'm going to cede that last point and withdraw from on the basis that even if I think that the popular conception of this sort of thing is still the most valid definition to use, I can't provide any evidence I'm using anything that approaches a worldwide popular conception. I'm not sure who could, but the burden of proof would be on me to do that, I suppose!

[Elheru Aran]

Do I personally believe in a higher being? Yeah.

Do I acknowledge that there is no rational reason for this? Yes.

I'll leave it at that...

[Darth Servo]

I know quite a few people who believe in being higher.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

I suppose this is boiling down to something like, does one believe in the existence of Kardashev Type IV civilizations. I don't think there are any (yet), but I'm intrigued by the possibility.

[SirNitram]

It occours to me, after much thinking(Ironically, while trying to write fiction!) that, if one presumes a 'higher power' responsible for it's organization and structure, it almost screams that there's more than one. Simply put, this higher power would not have to be merely alien in mindset.. A given, for such a mind-bogglingly powerful entity.. But terminally schizophrenic to set up such a chaotic, often contradictory universe.

This supports Mike's point of a SAS(Sufficiently Advanced Society) being likely, because this can then be divided into factions that would create the various bizarrities.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

I am reminded of Nancy Kress's short story Trinity, in which future neuropsychological research enables humans to finally contact the mind of God, totally surprising the hell out of it since apparently humans are just an unintended side effect of it's creative efforts. Concerning higher beings, I'd more readily accept things like angels and demons without a God, since it makes no sense to let beings that can avoid detection and influence anything (within God's permission, of course) do things to mortals that God could hold those same mortals morally responsible for. If incredibly advanced societies did evolve, there wouldn't be any fundamental reason why they couldn't further their own ends by invisible interference in the lives of lesser civilizations, though I couldn't reasonably postulate why they would. But then there's no point speculating about them without specific reasons; we're just as likely to be perpetually sodomized by Rye's intangible Rugby team, and I don't divert much serious attention to them.

[Kuroneko]

Perhaps there was a bit of miscommunication here. I'm using the term 'intelligence' in the broader sense that fields like animal cognition and artificial intelligence use it, rather than high-order mental functions in particular. Since the intelligence of animals was discussed prior (most recently, Covenant defends dolphins in this regard), I didn't think that was the issue, but in light of his objections, he seems to fluctuate between different meanings.

---

[Kuroneko], would you refer to the "being" of society as a type of emergent property similar to what ants and other communal insects are like when they come together in hoards? The hoard tends to exhibit faux-intelligence as a whole different from the individual parts.

Yes, except that I wouldn't use the label 'faux'. Crude, yes--it's a very stupid kind of intelligence and nowhere near any animal much less a human--but it seems to me just a matter of degree rather than kind. It's not intelligent in the sense of "having appreciable, non-negligible intelligence" as the term is typically used, but it has some very minor function along those lines.

We've had a a discussion on something related to this before. There is nothing special about biological neurons except that they particularly well-suited to the task of producing intelligence as compared to other known things. In principle, intelligence could arise out of any large aggregate of interacting parts; neurons are just better at it. Function is more important than physical form in this respect.

---

Why? We can't very well call it an animal. It's an entirely different type of organism, why is it disingenuous to call it something like a plant?

So don't. It's not analogous to an animal, therefore it's analogous to plant? What kind of logic is that? I would say it's more analogous to animals than plants, but if it really bothers you, don't call it anything. Again, to meaningfully talk about a "Cosmic Intelligence" and "Creator-beings" and whatnot in the first place, one would have to accept a definition of "beings" and "intelligence" much more broad than "a kind of animal" and "something that animals have" as you seem to try to force.

It may act similar to one the way a school of fish mimics a larger organism, but it is still just a cluster single organisms working cooperatively (but not in unison the way cells do) for several individual goals.

I italicized the disputed portion of this statement. It's no different than saying that people mimic organisms, but they are "just" a cluster of neurons working cooperatively. Again, I'm not saying that schools of fish are intelligent in the sense typically used (see above).

It's certainly a much more literal comparison.

No. In discussing intelligence, biological functions or the fact that it doesn't function as a physical brain are both irrelevant for reasons already outline. Societies can be said to have dispositions, etc.--those are more important.

You may say that my neurons are introspective, but that's not true, they aren't.

I would never claim such a thing! What I disputed was that in the outlandish hypothetical holding that if your neurons were actually intelligent and introspective in the typical sense but still outwardly functioned as neurons do, that fact alone wouldn't prevent their aggregate (your brain) of functioning as an intelligent mind. That's something that follows from both your and Rye's viewpoints--both of you are claiming something along the lines of "if the individual parts are complex enough to be individually intelligent, their collective cannot be an intelligence." In both cases, no justification for this claim was provided. In your case, you simply restate it in various different forms.

They merely transmit the data the way Cable TV might.

Neurons aren't that passive. That particular model of the mind went away along with Freud (who based a lot of his work on it, in fact).

The type of thought that goes on in a metaorganism like a social group is indeed haphazard and illogical at times, but it's not really thought.

That pattern of argument is going into hard-line anti-AI territory. Are you going to go there as well?

How can we ever tell what the Society is thinking? Do we poll it? Elections are a great example about how that process is rather faulty.

How can you tell what the cats are thinking? Polling seems to give rather faulty results. Please don't misconstrue what I said to being some sort of "super-mind." I've emphasized its crudeness before.

Come to think of it, do you know what you're thinking? For the moment, resist the urge to dismiss the question and consider the following. Much of AI research focuses on high-level reasoning (theorem-proving, game-play, logic, etc.), but the wide spectrum of actual brains demonstrates that these high-level concepts are an evolutionary afterthought. A much larger portion of what your brain does happens below the level of awareness--in terms of processing power, recognizing an image is much more complicated than, say, teasing out the logical implications of a statement.

That's why I can't take objections such as these very seriously. You're quite willing to consider the intelligence of animals, so I don't see why you should have any problem of treating intelligence as being analogous to a spectrum, thus allowing crude, low-level intelligences.

How can we consider this creation to have a real thought process if the national Societal thinking is so incredibly independant?

... You're joking, surely. Independence in one sense doesn't mean there aren't set, even predictable, patterns on the large scale. Analogously, we don't care what individual neurons do either; it's their collective behavior that matters.

I'm excluding things that are sufficently humanlike. I want them to be so strange to us that we can barely understand them. A being that existed outside time would be so foreign as to be nearly impossible to see. That's a Higher Power.

Then why in the blue blazes do you consider statements like "but we can't understand what a collective organism is thinking" or "it doesn't act like the lifeforms we know", etc., as in any way relevant to the discussion?

---
You've missed my point. Once you're willing to admit unfathomable, intelligences transcendent to the known universe, you need a notion of intelligence in terms of function that pays no regard to physical form. But once you do that, all kinds of other things fit the bill. That's exactly my point. Deism doesn't help you in this matter at all--it completely demolishes your rebuttals.
--

Society isn't a Higher Power, as far as I can tell, because it does not demonstrate the characteristics of one. Large, galaxy spanning overminds might seem to be rather Higher Powersy, but if they do nothing besides exist then it's just a huge, amazing animal.

That's exactly what the deistic God is--a huge, amazing animal that supposedly lives in some portion of reality unknown to us.

[Kuroneko]

I'm going to have to cut this short for now, but regarding the discussion on definitions you're having (had?) with Mr. Wong, one should not confuse the alleged properties of higher beings with the definition of the term any more than the exact standards of ethical behavior should be included in the definition of the term 'good'. Making this distinction might help you to see Mr. Wong's position more clearly.

Something that can do more than we, as beings as we understand it, could ever do biologically to technologically or through any other combination of effort... something that is simply superior to us in every single way, forever, no matter what, and can exceed our possible limitations, not just our current ones, I'd call that a Higher Power.

Fair enough. But despite what you say, there is no 'official' notion of this term, and yours is common, it is hardly the only one. It's not even compatible with every religion--if I recall correctly, humans can achieve "OT" status in Scientology, and "OTs" are sometimes called "higher beings" by Scientologists themselves (including, I think, Hubbard himself). That's the most direct non-anecdotal evidence that comes to mind if we limit ourselves to religious contexts as you want us to do.

If there's rules we haven't uncovered yet that lay out how creation was done, then that's science and not religion, not a Higher Power in action.

Why not? Either the higher power is a part of reality or it doesn't exist, and science investigates reality. The Judeo-Christian transcendent God would just be in a supposed part of reality that is not accessible to humans before death, but there is no reason to include such (or similar) transcendence in the definition of the term.

The Death Star is not a Higher Power, it's just a machine.

According to your view, yes. Here's an anecdote. Out of curiosity, a few hours ago I've asked a friend of mine on his view of what a higher power was (belatedly I recalled that this discussion was actually about higher beings, but I said 'power' instead), and he included higher civilizations among them. Under that view, the Death Star would be a product of a higher power.

[Covenant]

Kuroneko, I've already sent you a reply, so you should know by now that I'm pulling out of the debate, but I wanted to figure out some way to express that in the thread so it doesn't look like I'm being rude by not replying.

Obviously, besides not having a scientific knowledge of these fields with which to form any kind of rebuttal, I need to withdraw. I may be hard-line Anti-AI in my thinking, but that doesn't mean much without the credentials. I think it's also obvious that I certainly have opinions about things, but I'm always willing to admit that even if I don't see myself as being wrong, I may just be wrong anyway. Thankfully though, you provided enough good counter-points that I'm pretty sure I understand where you're coming from.

Even while a society brain may not exhibit the kinds of "thought" we see on the outside as intelligence, the kind of thing that may seperate a fish from a dog or a dolphin or a gray parrot or a human, intelligences do very little of that to begin with and spend much more time recognizing stimuli and the like. Things which a society brain could reasonably said to do, at the level of scale at which they operate. A lack of awareness in no way would preclude something from being termed 'intelligent,' especially for the sake of studying behavior and disposition, which do not rely on awareness. I'll agree with that, as I had not considered it in that way, and that makes what you've been saying click into place. Thank you for defining intelligence to me in the correct way I should be using it! That saved me a lot of headaches. Did I get that right?

Anyway, I won't bother disputing your interpertation of the Deistic God. Not being a deist, I won't bother saying I got it right, especially since that wasn't as important as our debate about the intelligent nature of Societal metaorganisms, which I think has been settled to my satisfaction, and probably yours, since you stated it.

Oh, also, thanks for clarifying the disparity between "properties" and "definition" of Higher Powers. I can see where the logical disconnect came from then.

[Lt. Dan]

This is something that can be solved with God's debris
A free .pdf with this topic and many more in a short work. You can get the book for $12 usd at your local bookstore, if they carry it. As to the topic, I think that there is a higher consciousness. But it's not one to save us. That is something that we have to do.

http://images.ucomics.com/images/pdfs/s ... debris.pdf

[General Brock]

I'm not saying about Christianity and the creations of earth and mankind here. What I am talking about, is...do you believe in something like 'Q' or gods that some how shaped the universe we live in, some how allowed the big bang to happen instead of it becoming a totally random event.

For me, I think science itself can be considered as a higher being. Reason? We STUDY science, we cannot CREATE science. Or maths for that matter. We learn from things around us, with new discovery changing our VIEW of science, instead of creating new science logic, or destroying things like physics.

How can we be free-thinkers when there are a set of rules or law(whatever you call them) shape our life?

Can you say 1+1=3? No. Why? Because 1+1 simply equals to 2. Why can't we just create our own set of equations and be right?

What exactly is energy? Where does it come out from? Where does it start? Why can't we destroy or create it?

Hence I believe in higher beings than somehow bound us to the way the universe is. Math and science bound us to that. We cannot avoid from them no matter how much we wanted.

What about you guys? I know most people here did not believe in the Christianity god. But do you agree that we are not 'free-thinking' as we thought we are?

Um, well, not really on tonight... but...

I believe that what we believe in terms of religion as faith or religion as a philosophy is a state of being we aspire to in some way. A collective state of being resulting from shared individual beliefs on true human nature informs and forms our society at an instinctive-emotional level, reinforcing it, a meme, or Jung's collective unconscious. Less so what it is, and more so a culture of what we want and expect it to be. I've read the belief in a benevolent god described as the desire for another parent, for example, one truly all powerful, omniscient, and all-loving and safe. Some form of tangible of reassurance answering to the mammalian instinct to parentage.

As Faram stated, mindless belief is the root of all evil; one of the weaknesses of the Abramic traditions is that it doesn't demand the sort of rigorous re-evaluations and objective perspective science does. It simply puts forth a model of an ideal being and society based upon it, and denies that it might not be appropriate to all people, or even good in a human sense.

Jealously and vindictiveness are common enough lower denominators in everybody; this god is the ideal expression of it some aspire to, and one of the few directly spoken words of this god was an admission to being jealous and vindictive in the denial of other gods.

The Israelites had a more pantheonic faith once; monotheism was adopted after this interpretation of god triumphed rather violently over all the others, and over time this model got jumbled with the earlier Mesopotamian belief that all gods were one. Into this dysfunctional deity, mashed in were the more benevolent interpretations of god from other cults. Christianity then Islam evolved and spread the supremacist creed across Europe and the Middle East, while retaining the more benevolent sentiments of abandoned faiths. I doubt that Christianity could have triumphed over Jupiter, had the Romans not already lost the basis of their faith, becoming a commercial military empire beyond the 'divine' memes of an agrarian city state. The Romans did not lose the need for a faith; rather than rehabilitate old gods, the cultural leaders adopted a new one that appeared to more immediately resonate with their vision, that seemed to have what Jupiter was supposed to have.

Models of being are so varied and complex that monotheism is a bit of a charade, as from the Father-Son-Holy Ghost mysticism, and various prophets and saints fill identifications pure monotheism cannot. Higher beings likely don't exist. The importance of faith, is to believe in what those beings are and to reflect them in oneself; a they live in yhou, you live in them symbiosis. Anyway, that's an un-annotated synopsis of where I'm coming from at the moment.

Personifying the seemingly unidentifiable synergies of the forces of creation and being is a natural thing for a higher social species like humans; there are no comparable models to go on, however. It is an accessable mind model. But science can't really be personified as a higher being. It is a method of thinking about the natural world. Misunderstanding science, letting it become just a word, allows for it to be redefined as a higher being, I suppose, if imposed on it is the religious model of thinking.

Higher beings didn't bind us to the way the universe is; the universe did that on its own.