Iamthat wrote:
God’s will is not an attribute and is not ablative.
A perfect circle, like any other perfect thing, is a definitive consistency. Given a point, A, in planar space, a perfect circle is the set of points all of which are equidistant from A.
I still don’t understand why the believers in a transcendent god don’t realize that they’re really pantheists and get it over with.
There’s no fundamental different between “spirit” and “flesh”: it’s all the same.
Pantheism is a belief in immanence, not transcendence. From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
Whoever says that there is no fundamental different between “spirit” and “flesh” is the pantheist. 
My point is that you can’t believe in transcendence without believing in immanence. They go hand in hand.
I don’t recall the name at the moment, but there was a medieval Christian sect that claimed that reality had already ended and that this entire world was merely the memory of God.
Think quickly now: what’s the difference between the memory of an omniscient being and a creation of an omnipotent being?
Vorlon wrote:
An astonishing assertion. How can something be both entirely restricted to the universe (immanent) and be completely independent of it (transcendent)?
Your take on pantheism is quite unusual. Once again from Stanford (same cite as above):
** Libertarian**
But you are the one using the term , god’s will
god………………+…………………god’s will
But it can’t be actualized or produced, as no example can measure up to the definition. So what does prefect define?
A circle is a line, who’s width when viewed up close is like a line written with a pencil on sand paper; rocky mountain terrain.
Plus there is no such thing as: [a] set of points all of which are equidistant from A, as A only has a general position i.e. somewhere about this point. It can’t be located.
If God were “transcendent” in the sense you suggest, then God wouldn’t be the ultimate form of reality: the God-Creation system (and anything else floating around) would be.
“God” is simultaneously immanent and transcendent: it’s the reality that creates the illusion of the world.
Vorlon
Could you reconcile this statement…
…with the discussion of pantheism from Stanford? Are you saying that Stanford is mistaken?
Iamthat
I’m sorry, but I have no idea what you’re talking about. 
Stanford accurately states the certain beliefs held by some individuals, but those beliefs are inherently contradictory. Thus, Stanford isn’t mistaken, but the position he describes is.
Consider a computer that’s emulating another system. The emulator is clearly on a level of reality deeper than the emulatee, yet the two cannot be separated. God is “beyond” and “outside” the world precisely because God is the world.
Do you understand?
Actually, Stanford is a university. And no, sorry, but you’re way above my head. Or something.
Okay, the position “it” describes. Whatever.
Soon you will understand what you do not understand.
Well, that’s a relief.
Oh. Well I was saying that perfection doesn’t exist, as such. But perhaps it is a side issue.
I think what ** The Vorlon Ambassador’s Aide** is putting forward is similar to nondualism.
Just to add some of what I have been told. God is made up of conscious energy units, these units are smaller by far than anything our scientists are working with. God is the sum total of these units, and uses these units to create universes. He also creates us. We are like children to Him and need to grow in our knowledge of Him and ourselves. Our subsequent growth will produce co-creators with God, as we grow so does God adding more and more units, and we will keep populating the void eternally. Conscious energy units have the characteristics of curosity, and of course consciousness, These units are held together and attact each other by a unilateral force called love. Anything can be formed from them that consciousness thinks up. Thoughts are the method of creation.
There is no space or time in the spirit world, and everything happens simultaneously.
The physical was created out of the spiritual and will eventually return to the spiritual when its usefulness is finished.
The above explanation in our written language is as close as can be done. You have to use your spiritual senses to interpret it.
Love
Leroy
I think that this “God” is something beyond any human mind. I mean that it is completely beyond us. Why do I think that? Because, if you think about it, humans have never been able to create something beyond their human state, i.e. transcend their humanity, therefore I think if we can’t even do that, then how can we understand something that is otherworldy? The best I can offer on “God” is an oxymoron: God is perfectly defined as that which is undefineable.
I like that!! May I quote you at some point in the future?
And I offer in exchange a book by J.B. Phillips, 150 pages devoted to explaining the title, which really says it all in five words: Your God Is Too Small.
No matter what conception you may have of who God is, it’s inadequate – He’s more than that.
When we consider who we are today and where we think or presume we came from, everything that makes us who we are is defined by us, our humanity. Therefore, our ability to consider or define things outside of our own humanity (e.g. Spirituality or an omnipotent god) is still only defined by what our conscious allows us to understand - to comprehend. Therefore, until we can experience a realm, world, or being outside of our own, we can only define that which we do not know or understand by the very terms we’ve created ourselves - thereby producing a limitation.
More to the point; we attempt to define and eventually to understand things that have been foretold to us through ancient writings (e.g. the bible) et al, using our own terms, definitions, thoughts, theories etc which only proves nothing because we can only understand that which we have experienced or that which has been told to us. Even then, we can only prove these things using laws, theorems, conditions, etc., but again a limitation because these ‘rules’ are man made and not something to judge with outside of our ‘world’ or our humanity.
We are deficient because we cannot define what we cannot explain or prove due to our lack of experience or understanding of something outside of our ‘human’ grasp.
Will someone please die and then come back and tell us what you saw, felt, touched, etc. Oh wait, those tests are again based on our ‘human’ conditions and experience. Oh what are we to do?
Ugh!
“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.” — Jesus (Matthew 11:25)
Lib, you mentioned Fa-tsang’s Chin shih-tzu chang in this thread.
I’ve been wondering if The Golden Lion Essay captures, at least in part, IamThat’s reference to nondualism, and Vorlon’s :“My point is that you can’t believe in transcendence without believing in immanence. They go hand in hand”, and your “… spirit is not made of atoms”.
It seems to me that transcendence must be neither entirely restricted to the universe nor completely independent of it. If we’re each in a physically-embodied morality play, wouldn’t transcendence be dependent on, as well as foundational to, immanence? Picasso without his paints would be as mute as the paints would be without Picasso.
The lion (atoms) gives form to the gold as much as the gold (spirit) gives form to the lion.
I suppose all of that if possible, Other-wise. Every moral agent might see God in a very different way, given the nature of closed reference frames (subjective consciousness). For me, what is real is what is eternally alive. Atoms decay.