Please Note: This is a DISCUSSION thread.
State your views. Ask respectful questions. Compare and contrast. Deliver pick-up lines. Jest. Flirt. Arrange elopements.
But do NOT attempt to prove someone wrong.
State your views. Ask respectful questions. Compare and contrast. Deliver pick-up lines. Jest. Flirt. Arrange elopements.
But do NOT attempt to prove someone wrong.
Is your concept or idea of god (as distinct from the reality of god) a model or an hypothesis? It seems to me that some of humanity's god-concepts are models and some of them are hypotheses.
An hypothesis purports to tell us that something exists. "My cat is furry." I am claiming that the nature of my cat includes fur. i.e. Fur really exists.
A model merely asserts that something is in at least one way like something (else). "My cat is like a child." I am in no way claiming that the model (a child) is what I literally mean by "my cat". I am only claiming that my cat is in at least one way similar to a child.
A model merely asserts that something is in at least one way like something (else). "My cat is like a child." I am in no way claiming that the model (a child) is what I literally mean by "my cat". I am only claiming that my cat is in at least one way similar to a child.
Hypotheses can be thought of as either true or false. If they are true, then what they hypothesize to be the case really is the case. They cannot be proven true but they can be proven false. To prove them false, you deduce from them predictions that, depending on whether they come true or not, prove the hypotheses either "false" or fail to prove the hypothesis false (but never prove it true).
Suppose you had a trinitarian god consisting of Godel, Boole, and Euclid. If you asserted that Godel, Boole, and Euclid were literally three persons in one godhead, that would be an hypothesis.
Models are not usually said to be true or false. Rather, they are thought of as in at least one way or another useful in making reliable predictions. The model of my cat as a child might be used to predict that my cat will be as demanding as a child. If that does indeed prove to the case, then the model is thought of as useful in predicting that sort of thing.
Suppose you had a trinitarian god consisting of Lana del Rey, Tan Weiwei, and Billie Eilish. If you asserted that it was like Lana, Weiwei, and Billie were three persons in one godhead, then you would have a model.
So, is your god-concept a model or an hypothesis?
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