God -- really?

As I said

God is the source of Personhood.



It seems that this concept draws a blank in everyone mind.


IMO that's okay. It a start.
 
NiftyNiblick said:
Forward infinity is imaginable.
Just more of the same shit forever.

The human minds struggles with the concept of backwards infinity.


If there was truly a beginning, what was before that?

It doesn't make sense, and if you go strictly by perceptible evidence, coming up with a god creator doesn't help explain anything.
Click to expand...
^ The implication is that time is linear, and is independent of space and matter - that there must have been a time before the big bang.

General relativity demonstrates that time, space, matter, motion, energy are a set of interrelated relationships, and they are not the discrete absolute entities imagined in Newtonian physics -- i.e., it does not make sense to think of a period of time before the big bang; time is meaningless in that framework.

I would offer this much.
If there really was an omnipotent creator, then this universe doesn't represent very much of an effort on the creator's part.
Certainly not an effort worthy of worship.
An omnipotent creator would be capable of much better.

I just can't seem to suspend logic sufficiently to NOT see religion as a form of mental illness.
Smart people who would accept no other important premise on the same quality of evidence and logic do accept the premise of a divine creator.
If they're smart about other things, it can't be lack of intelligence.
It has to be a form of insanity.
Click to expand...

The theological problem of why evil exists, etc.

Freud considered religion to be a form of neurosis.

On the flip side, plenty of brilliant people allow for the possibility of a higher truth, an ultimate reality which does not manifest itself as empirical knowedge and reason. I do not think they are all insane or poorly educated.
 
1. God is His Person.
2. God is the energy core of every speck of matter.
3. God is the empty space [where every speck of matter exists]


FN:
The wise old Boston Brahman would call it Bhagavan, Param-atma and brahman.
 
Cypress said:
^ The implication is that time is linear, and independent of space - that there must have been a time before the big bang.

General relativity demonstrates that time, space, matter, motion, energy are interrelated relationships" and are not the discrete absolute in Newtonian physics -- i.e., it does not make sense to think of a period of time before the big bang, time is meaningless in that framework.



The theological problem of why evil exists, etc.

Freud considered religion to be a form of neurosis.

On the flip side, plenty of brilliant people allow for the possibility of a higher truth, an ultimate reality which does not manifest itself as empirical knowedge. I do not think they are all insane or poorly educated.
Click to expand...


How does 'Big Bang' ... 'Big Crunch' strike you? An endless pulsating cosmos?
 
Pontificating while hookah

Jack said:
:) Some people plan on living THIS life. They don't have time to dream about a Next Life ... or the Ones After That.
Click to expand...

In 2016, 2.2 million Americans have been incarcerated,
which means for every 100,000 there are 655 who are currently inmates. ...
By the end of 2016, approximately 1 in 38 persons in the United States
were under correctional supervision.
In addition, there were 54,148 juveniles in juvenile detention in 2013.

Incarceration in the United States - Wikipedia
 
Jack said:
:) Some people plan on living THIS life. They don't have time to dream about a Next Life ... or the Ones After That.
Click to expand...

What do you do for a living? What do you PERSONALLY do for a living?


How do you MAKE a living?

Is it similar to how a farmer grows crops?
 
Cypress said:
...it does not make sense to think of a period of time before the big bang;
Click to expand...

We're incapable of not doing that.
"Before" conceptually applies whether or not units of time do.
If the big bang actually happened, there was a time before it happened, even if we have no applicable units of time to which we can refer.

Time needs no reference to any other dimension.
It's not in seconds, minutes, or hours--it's not measured by the rotation of the earth around the sun--
but animals don't understand hours and minutes but they still perceive time.

If something happened, there was a time before it happened,
and our cerebral perception is not equipped to functionally describe backwards infinity.

That's one reason why I can't believe we're the final manifestation of evolution. [Although we would be if we were actually made in the image of God.]
There's a big universe out there, and the likelihood of brains with greater function than ours is almost certain.
Just as less evolved creatures can't understand everything that we can,
it's likely that more evolved creatures can understand what we can't. [It doesn't make them God, by the way.]

But making up theoretical concepts, the existence of which we've not actually deduced but rather proposed,
is at most part of a process to learn. It has limited relevance until we can actually deduce what we propose.
 
Jack said:
How does 'Big Bang' ... 'Big Crunch' strike you? An endless pulsating cosmos?
Click to expand...

Big crunch sounded plausible 30 years ago when we were operating under the assumptions of Newtonian gravitational laws.

With the discovery of dark energy, it seems the universe will expand forever until all nuclear fuel is used up, it goes dark, and space time reaches absolute zero Kelvin.

Before that happens, I am looking forward to the imminent collision of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies!
 
NiftyNiblick said:
We're incapable of not doing that.
"Before" conceptually applies whether or not units of time do.
If the big bang actually happened, there was a time before it happened, even if we have no applicable units of time to which we can refer.

Time needs no reference to any other dimension.
It's not in seconds, minutes, or hours--it's not measured by the rotation of the earth around the sun--
but animals don't understand hours and minutes but they still perceive time.

If something happened, there was a time before it happened,
and our cerebral perception is not equipped to functionally describe backwards infinity.

That's one reason why I can't believe we're the final manifestation of evolution. [Although we would be if we were actually made in the image of God.]
There's a big universe out there, and the likelihood of brains with greater function than ours is almost certain.
Just as less evolved creatures can't understand everything that we can,
it's likely that more evolved creatures can understand what we can't. [It doesn't make them God, by the way.]

But making up theoretical concepts, the existence of which we've not actually deduced but rather proposed,
is at most part of a process to learn. It has limited relevance until we can actually deduce what we propose.
Click to expand...

Our perception of the arrow of time results from the fact we live in the vicinity of an influential event - the big bang, the origin of the universe.

At a deeper level of reality, the laws of physics make no distinction between past and present. General relativity demonstrates time and space are interrelated, you cannot have one without the other. I am not formally trained in physics, but I believe this is why the concept of a period of time "before" the big bang is meaningless to physicists.

I agree we are undoubtedly not the final stage of evolution, it is hubris to think we are. We are just smart chimpanzees, and I have long maintained that our cognitive abilities have limits and probably never will allow us to empirically or rationally have complete knowledge of ultimate reality.
 
Cypress said:
Our perception of the arrow of time results from the fact we live in the vicinity of an influential event - the big bang, the origin of the universe.

At a deeper level of reality, the laws of physics make no distinction between past and present. General relativity demonstrates time and space are interrelated, you cannot have one without the other. I am not formally trained in physics, but I believe this is why the concept of a period of time "before" the big bang is meaningless to physicists.

I agree we are undoubtedly not the final stage of evolution, it is hubris to think we are. We are just smart chimpanzees, and I have long maintained that our cognitive abilities have limits and probably never will allow us to empirically or rationally have complete knowledge of ultimate reality.
Click to expand...


Maybe there is no ultimate reality.
 
archives said:
Aquinas tried too hard borrowing from Aristotle to rationalize religious beliefs, part of his scholasticism, should have followed Augustine and relied on Plato, all in the realm of ideas, you either have faith and believe or you don’t, it can’t be, nor needs to be, rationalized
Click to expand...

Christians are supposed to be a people of faith.
 
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