Are you sure about that? The fact that we appear to apprehend (or create, to be fair) God via the limbic system does not mean the limbic system is both necessary and sufficient for the apprehension (or creation) of God. Does it?
Are we certain our pets do not think that we are God?
Well, where time is a non-entity any action or decision is a contradiction. Hyperdimensionality only delays the question; it doen’t answer it. (Turtles all the way down?)
I am not certain, but I believe you are again confusing the notion of utility with something else. Besides, your position that Spirit informs our decisions in this context implies that the two fields (to extend the mathematical metaphor) are not mutually exclusive. Therefore, in the area of overlap (the part of the physical Universe in which Spirit acts and is evident) both sets of postulates must hold true.
For instance: if Spirit moves me in different directions at different times in my life then either Spirit has changed or Spirit simultaneously reated both decisions in the moment of entrance into our timestream.
Gaudere, I think we just need to agree to disagree on this. I’m convinced I have a point that you fail to see; your point, though clear, is not convincing to me. The distinction between what an obvious God would be and what an obvious anything else might be is for me so significant as to render your analogies moot. I apologize for failing to bring this to a clear close, but I think we are have hit on a point where our worldviews cannot be brought to coincide. Thanks for the discussion, though!
Phil said:
Anecdote:
The dog thinks, “My Master gives me food and water, a warm place to sleep on cold nights, he pets me and cuddles me. He must be God!”
The cat thinks, “My Master gives me food and water, a warm place to sleep on cold nights, he pets me and cuddles me. I must be God!” 
Boy, do I ever disagree with that. We seek out what we love. “Where your treasure is, there your heart is also.” — Jesus
Nothing. The limbic system is not in the Spirit. It is in the brain.
Kind of like different interpretations of a Picasso?
I’m sorry, but “create” is most decidedly not fair, not unless you will allow it the other way (i.e., that God might have created the limbic system).
Who can say? We have a cat. I suspect he thinks of us as his master (e.g., when he wants to sleep on the amplifier) and his buddy(e.g., when he wants to sleep nestled beside us.)
Yes, when time is an event co-ordinate. I’ll try this, since you like mathematical metaphors, and are very sharp in comprehending them. Natural time is an ordinal continuum. Spiritual time is a cardinal continuum.
But the Spirit is not “in” the universe in that sense. It does not “inform” our decisions. It establishes them. The Spirit is not a variable; it is a constant. It is not an equation; it is an identity. It is not a particular reference frame; it is Absolute. I’m afraid those metaphors are the best I can do if we have no mutual frame of reference.
The latter is closer. (Aside: I greatly appreciate your forgiveness, and am once again enjoying our discussions. How sad that my own blindness robbed me of a great joy.)
But your God is different, Lib, and does not seem to desire belief in the same manner that Poly’s does. All your God seems to desire is that people love, and people can do that whether they believe in the objective existence of–and trust–a consciousness that created the universe or not. So with your God, I do not have to question why God would require believing in the very existence of Himself based on what most agree is evidence not considered to be a reasonably objective and unambigious proof of existence, when this seems like this would be an impediment to people loving Him as He desires (and, indeed, requires of mankind for their ultimate happiness, if I read Poly rightly). If Poly can still love God freely even when he is given sufficient proof to induce belief, why can’t everyone? But anyway, Poly wanted to drop it.
I’m sorry–“apprehend” was supposed to cover what you said, namely, that God created it. “Create” was supposed to imply the opposite. My apologies if the wording was unclear.
In either case, the limbic system is pretty primitive, and exists in all vertebrates in varying stages of complexity and development. Maybe nonhuman vertebrate animals apprehend or create God, but are wiser than we are and worship quietly and ostentatiously without starting religions.
Please replace “ostentatiously” with “unostentatiously” in my previous post for it to make sense.
Okay since my last challenge didn’t go over so well, let me try a new one. Here it is:
What, in your estimation at this point in your life, would it take to prove to you that God exists? What would it take to prove to you that He not only exists, but that He, in fact, loves you? I am genuinely curious what you consider to be the proof that you need.
Thank you D.B. and others for your response to my original challenge. I see your point that it’s hard to answer.
A few more responses …
Satan: You had originally said that we create God to be what we want Him to be (or something to that effect) and I asked - what if we ‘create’ or ‘want’ Him to be something He’s not?
You responded:
What does this concept of “limiting God” have to do with my question to you? I’m afraid I’m not following you. Please clarify.
SPOOFE: loved your comments. 'Specially about Fox!
Gaudere you said:
But everything you expect and wish God would be … He is. He does clearly exist. You can choose freely to love Him. He doesn’t force you to love Him.
You said:
Ah, shades of C&L … memories, memories ;). Gaudere, I won’t rehash C&L stuff in-depth since you know where I stand except to throw in a brief statement: if God could justly do it, NO one in human history would ever go to hell. But we all deserve hell, so He chose out of love for us to give us a way out even though we don’t deserve it. THAT’S love. He could’ve just say “You deserve it, too bad.” But He gave us another choice.
pldennison said:
Out of curiousity, I’d love to hear more about your experience and what led you to think God was bunk.
You also quoted me as saying I’ve known people who’ve died without knowing God, and said:
The ones I’m thinking of are unambiguously unsaved. They declared plain and simple that they weren’t Christians.
Polycarp: love your comments as usual! 
Night all.
You asked what I thought about the possibillity that God isn’t what a person thinks He is.
This is limiting God. The minute you say, “What if he isn’t,” you are posing a question that God isn’t something.
The minute you say, “God can’t be a certain way,” you are setting limitartions on Him. Try reading your own questions, please.
As you have showed time and time again, FoGgy, you worship a book.
Okay, maybe that is a bit inaccurate… Actually, you are content to limit what you know of God and all of what God is in a book. A book of other people’s experiences with God many eons ago.
You are aware that there have been biographies of mere mortals as long as the Bible that still left stuff out, I assume.
Anyway, the fact is that I will and do know a lot more about God by opening my mind to all of the texts He inspired than you ever will.
In fact, even if I were to never read a single word of it all and simply allow myself to feel Him and communicate with Him, I still wind up knowing more about His nature than you will ever know.
As I said, you are limiting God. And you are so sure that He is exactly what you think He is, you can’t even see this. It’s quite sad really… You say you’re a FriendofGod, but you act like you never met the guy.
Yer pal,
Satan
*TIME ELAPSED SINCE I QUIT SMOKING:
Three months, three weeks, three days, 45 minutes and 21 seconds.
4601 cigarettes not smoked, saving $575.16.
Life saved: 2 weeks, 1 day, 23 hours, 25 minutes.
“Satan is not an unattractive person.”*-Drain Bead (Thanks for the ringing endoresement, honey!)
Yet,
“At least a possibility, Admiral.” — Mr. Spock, Star Trek IV
[sup]1[/sup] As ammended by author.
So it is not God’s prerogative to save nonChristians? I thought he, and not you, was in charge?
Horsefeathers. If God clearly existed, there would be no debate on whether he did. The debate would instead center on whether he was worthy of worship. “Clearly” means “clearly,” and nothing else.
And no free-will either.
And that once proved to be a distraction, to say the least.
William Shatner
j/k
as satan says, you get what you ask for.
Okay, where is David? I insist that you pounce upon John Larrigan’s post at once! 
Nevermind. I get it now.
You know, I’m beginning to worry about the direction this thread is going…William Shatner, indeed!! “And if you join SalvationAuction.com, over 100 gods will bid for your soul. You can choose the best offer!!”
To a very great deal, I agree with Satan on this one. God is beyond our power to conceive; we can only report on “sightings” and what was observed. To delimit Him to a particular concept, no matter how historically grounded, is to attempt to fence Him in to something that human minds can grasp. There’s at least an outside possibility that we’re all right: that there is no such thing as the god that David, Gaudere, and Phil deny, that there is a god who corresponds to what Lib, Friend, and I affirm, and that whatever it is that Joel really thinks when he’s not playing atheist-Jesuit is true too.
I need to take issue with some comments people have made here. For me, for Lib., and for Friend, the evidence for God is unambiguous. His hand is at work in the world around us, his Word created all that is, and all that good stuff. But this is all based on a subjective encounter that each of us had with Him, a life-transforming experience that convinced us and gave us “new eyes to see Him with.” The closest non-religious analogy I can draw is to the “Eureka” experience in which a profound insight completely changes one’s understanding of the subject under study. My personal experience, which I understand is common, is that the calculus is nonsensical until you grasp the concept of limits, at which point it becomes nearly tautological. “Of course it’s that way; why didn’t I see it before?” And without either that experiential ground or a certitude based on authority, reason, or some other grounding, He is not “clearly present” – as every atheist on this board will be glad to confirm.
Phil, having been on both sides of the fence, you may have some insight into this that will help to make it clearer. And I join FoG in asking what it was that convinced you that “this God stuff is bunk.” If you don’t mind discussing it, what was your reverse-conversion experience like?
I disagree, and it will probably have to be left at that. Free men are free to pledge their allegiance or not to earthly leaders, and despite the fact that I’m about to be browbeaten about the difference between God and earthly leaders, I think the point remains. If, for example, a God clearly and unambiguously existed and was the God described in the Old Testament as a petulant murderer, I would under no circumstances pledge my allegiance, love, or anything else to him, regardless of the fact the he created me.
Yes, Phil, but free men (in an earthly context) do not exist.
(Note: I, too, am interested in hearing both of your conversion experiences.)