Forms and Gods

[1137]

A Form is something immaterial and abstract, yet objectively real, which gives a thing it's essence. For example, we can identify any three sided, three pointed shape as a triangle, no matter what the side lengths, angles, or material it is made of, because of the Form of Triangleness. While "triangle" is simply a created human term, if the shapes exist the Form of it exists, irrelevant of what we call them.

But Forms are not always so simple. Rationality exists to various degrees within humans, meaning a Form exists of rationality. But rationality comes with characteristic triangleness does not, such as the intelligent, self aware thought required for rationality's existence. This means a Form of rationality would have to be self aware, intelligent, and share other similar characteristics of rational entities.

Obviously triangleness is something simple, there's nothing overly special about it outside it's nonmaterial existence. But something like rationality is a whole different game. Such a Form would still be eternal, immaterial, and so forth, but also self aware, intelligent, answer seeking, etc. To me, that's exactly the type of thing the term "god" describes. It's necessary, immaterial, eternal, self aware, has desires, yada yada yada. Then there's things like the Form of Order, which would definitionally be necessary for the existence of any stable system, like our universe. Does a necessary, immaterial, eternal thing without which there would be no universe sound familiar? These are of course only two examples.

Therefore, it seems like the necessary acceptance of Forms also requires a necessary acceptance of gods, at least in this sense. Is there a reason to not qualify these as gods?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

A Form is something immaterial and abstract, yet objectively real, which gives a thing it's essence. For example, we can identify any three sided, three pointed shape as a triangle, no matter what the side lengths, angles, or material it is made of, because of the Form of Triangleness. While "triangle" is simply a created human term, if the shapes exist the Form of it exists, irrelevant of what we call them.
But Forms are not always so simple. Rationality exists to various degrees within humans, meaning a Form exists of rationality. But rationality comes with characteristic triangleness does not, such as the intelligent, self aware thought required for rationality's existence. This means a Form of rationality would have to be self aware, intelligent, and share other similar characteristics of rational entities.

Obviously triangleness is something simple, there's nothing overly special about it outside it's nonmaterial existence. But something like rationality is a whole different game. Such a Form would still be eternal, immaterial, and so forth, but also self aware, intelligent, answer seeking, etc. To me, that's exactly the type of thing the term "god" describes. It's necessary, immaterial, eternal, self aware, has desires, yada yada yada. Then there's things like the Form of Order, which would definitionally be necessary for the existence of any stable system, like our universe. Does a necessary, immaterial, eternal thing without which there would be no universe sound familiar? These are of course only two examples.
Therefore, it seems like the necessary acceptance of Forms also requires a necessary acceptance of gods, at least in this sense. Is there a reason to not qualify these as gods?

OK, so a "triangle" is a shape with particular set of characteristics. A "human" is a biological organism with a particular set of characteristics, including intelligence and the ability to recognise "triangles".

"God" is a belief that some humans have, though "God" is not visible like a triangle, and people don't agree on "God's" characteristics.

I'm not following your use of the word "Form" to connect these, or how "triangles" and "humans" are a basis for "God."

 

[idav]

A Form is something immaterial and abstract, yet objectively real, which gives a thing it's essence. For example, we can identify any three sided, three pointed shape as a triangle, no matter what the side lengths, angles, or material it is made of, because of the Form of Triangleness. While "triangle" is simply a created human term, if the shapes exist the Form of it exists, irrelevant of what we call them.

But Forms are not always so simple. Rationality exists to various degrees within humans, meaning a Form exists of rationality. But rationality comes with characteristic triangleness does not, such as the intelligent, self aware thought required for rationality's existence. This means a Form of rationality would have to be self aware, intelligent, and share other similar characteristics of rational entities.

Obviously triangleness is something simple, there's nothing overly special about it outside it's nonmaterial existence. But something like rationality is a whole different game. Such a Form would still be eternal, immaterial, and so forth, but also self aware, intelligent, answer seeking, etc. To me, that's exactly the type of thing the term "god" describes. It's necessary, immaterial, eternal, self aware, has desires, yada yada yada. Then there's things like the Form of Order, which would definitionally be necessary for the existence of any stable system, like our universe. Does a necessary, immaterial, eternal thing without which there would be no universe sound familiar? These are of course only two examples.

Therefore, it seems like the necessary acceptance of Forms also requires a necessary acceptance of gods, at least in this sense. Is there a reason to not qualify these as gods?

There is something to be said on the necessity of forms leading to the acceptance of gods. In particular a god which is not human like can still be said to be of "substance". The idea is that everything is with substance and attributes, and that there must be underlying attributes that everything stems from and therefore the source would be of form manifesting everything else of form.

This reminds me of the Spinoza's take on substance and god.

From http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spinoza/
"What does it mean to say that God is substance and that everything else is “in” God? Is Spinoza saying that rocks, tables, chairs, birds, mountains, rivers and human beings are all properties of God, and hence can be predicated of God (just as one would say that the table “is red”)? It seems very odd to think that objects and individuals—what we ordinarily think of as independent “things”—are, in fact, merely properties of a thing. Spinoza was sensitive to the strangeness of this kind of talk, not to mention the philosophical problems to which it gives rise. When a person feels pain, does it follow that the pain is ultimately just a property of God, and thus that God feels pain? Conundrums such as this may explain why, as of Proposition Sixteen, there is a subtle but important shift in Spinoza’s language. God is now described not so much as the underlying substance of all things, but as the universal, immanent and sustaining cause of all that exists: “From the necessity of the divine nature there must follow infinitely many things in infinitely many modes, (i.e., everything that can fall under an infinite intellect)”.
"According to the traditional Judeo-Christian conception of divinity, God is a transcendent creator, a being who causes a world distinct from himself to come into being by creating it out of nothing. God produces that world by a spontaneous act of free will, and could just as easily have not created anything outside himself. By contrast, Spinoza’s God is the cause of all things because all things follow causally and necessarily from the divine nature. Or, as he puts it, from God’s infinite power or nature “all things have necessarily flowed, or always followed, by the same necessity and in the same way as from the nature of a triangle it follows, from eternity and to eternity, that its three angles are equal to two right angles” (Ip17s1). The existence of the world is, thus, mathematically necessary. It is impossible that God should exist but not the world."