God clearly can’t exist because an omnipotent, omniscient, and just God is a paradox already. Omnipotence and omniscience means that God, if they exist, would have full control of every moment of the universe (even if they only “acted” initially). Some (I’d argue nearly all) people suffer for reasons out of their control. Only deserved suffering is just. Since undeserved suffering exists then God cannot exist (at least omniscient, omnipotent, and just - as we understand those terms). God could be an omniscient, omnipotent asshole or sadist… God could be omniscient and just (aka the martyr God who knows of all suffering but is powerless to prevent it)… or God could be omnipotent and just (aka the naive God who you could liken to a developer running around desperately trying to spot patch problems and just making things worse).
Alternatively, by omnipotent maybe the scriptures are just hyping them up - “God is so fucking buff - this one time they lifted up this rock that was like this big. Fucking amazing.”
As you said, that does depend entirely on God having those properties, exactly as you define them.
Alternatively, if definitive property is “universal consciousness”, then God clearly must exist. Either consciousness is an emergent property of sufficiently complex systems, in which case the entire universe is obviously more complex than the human nervous system and consciousness should certainly emerge within it; or, consciousness is some external field, like gravity or electromagnetism, that complex systems can channel. Either way, the existence of your own consciousness implies a universal one.
I don’t think your alternative proposal makes sense, at least not to me. An emergent property being present in one complex system doesn’t imply that it must be present in all complex systems.
What does imply it’s presence, then? The emergence of comparable effects is implied by isomorphic complexities. If you can’t define the foundational structure which implies emergence, you can only fall back on a probabilistic approach.
Unless you can define exactly what structure it is that belies the emergence of consciousness, you must acknowledge that the comparative complexity of a more complex system is undoubtedly probabilistically suggestive of at least comparable, if not far more complex, emergent behavior.
The proposition that consciousness is emergent, but only at a very specific and narrow band of complexity, falls quickly to Occam’s razor. It’s logically and probabilistically ridiculous.
My point is that not all complex systems are the same. Maybe it depends on your definition of consciousness but from what I know we have only ever observed that in a very specific set of complex systems which is brains and possibly fungi. Two different systems being complex isn’t enough in my view to infer that they would have the same properties unless there are other similarities.
It absolutely depends on your definition of consciousness. Every conversation about a concept depends on the definition of that concept. My definition is based upon sensation, processing, and decision-making, in regards to the self and the environment. I’d argue that plants and even cells exhibit simple forms of consciousness. If you take the emergent-property perspective, I’d argue even molecules and individual particles have a broad and abstract consciousness, although certainly several orders of magnitude less sophisticated than yours or mine.
The statement “we have only ever observed that in a very specific set of complex systems which is brains and possibly fungi” tells me less about consciousness than it does about our ability to observe it.
God clearly can’t exist because an omnipotent, omniscient, and just God is a paradox already. Omnipotence and omniscience means that God, if they exist, would have full control of every moment of the universe (even if they only “acted” initially). Some (I’d argue nearly all) people suffer for reasons out of their control. Only deserved suffering is just. Since undeserved suffering exists then God cannot exist (at least omniscient, omnipotent, and just - as we understand those terms). God could be an omniscient, omnipotent asshole or sadist… God could be omniscient and just (aka the martyr God who knows of all suffering but is powerless to prevent it)… or God could be omnipotent and just (aka the naive God who you could liken to a developer running around desperately trying to spot patch problems and just making things worse).
Alternatively, by omnipotent maybe the scriptures are just hyping them up - “God is so fucking buff - this one time they lifted up this rock that was like this big. Fucking amazing.”
As you said, that does depend entirely on God having those properties, exactly as you define them.
Alternatively, if definitive property is “universal consciousness”, then God clearly must exist. Either consciousness is an emergent property of sufficiently complex systems, in which case the entire universe is obviously more complex than the human nervous system and consciousness should certainly emerge within it; or, consciousness is some external field, like gravity or electromagnetism, that complex systems can channel. Either way, the existence of your own consciousness implies a universal one.
I don’t think your alternative proposal makes sense, at least not to me. An emergent property being present in one complex system doesn’t imply that it must be present in all complex systems.
What does imply it’s presence, then? The emergence of comparable effects is implied by isomorphic complexities. If you can’t define the foundational structure which implies emergence, you can only fall back on a probabilistic approach.
Unless you can define exactly what structure it is that belies the emergence of consciousness, you must acknowledge that the comparative complexity of a more complex system is undoubtedly probabilistically suggestive of at least comparable, if not far more complex, emergent behavior.
The proposition that consciousness is emergent, but only at a very specific and narrow band of complexity, falls quickly to Occam’s razor. It’s logically and probabilistically ridiculous.
My point is that not all complex systems are the same. Maybe it depends on your definition of consciousness but from what I know we have only ever observed that in a very specific set of complex systems which is brains and possibly fungi. Two different systems being complex isn’t enough in my view to infer that they would have the same properties unless there are other similarities.
It absolutely depends on your definition of consciousness. Every conversation about a concept depends on the definition of that concept. My definition is based upon sensation, processing, and decision-making, in regards to the self and the environment. I’d argue that plants and even cells exhibit simple forms of consciousness. If you take the emergent-property perspective, I’d argue even molecules and individual particles have a broad and abstract consciousness, although certainly several orders of magnitude less sophisticated than yours or mine.
The statement “we have only ever observed that in a very specific set of complex systems which is brains and possibly fungi” tells me less about consciousness than it does about our ability to observe it.