Why believe in "a" God?

If we’re starting from a place where we think God exists we might also consider that physical death is not so horrible.

It seems you object to those who see God as a Mommy and Daddy in the sky {so do I} and yet that’s the kind of God you’d prefer.

Would that be Daddy, Mommy. or both?

That sounds sarcastic and I don’t mean it that way. I just think that we’re called to be peers not servants or children.

Namecalling? I was just using a true and applicable descriptive term… nope, I’m gonna dig myself in deeper here, aren’t I?

Apologies. Reprimand deserved and duly noted.

Actually, a more accurate translation is Combined Whole.

But then again, I’m apparently not smart enough to be a theist. Maybe if I try harder at school? Or develop temporal lobe epilepsy?

I missed this beauty.

I would ask what the working memory mechanisms (which cognitive science considers essential to any computational process one calls “consciousness”) in a rock are, but I suspect I may as well ask one. I apologise if you find my belief that rocks are no more conscious than alive disrespectful, but stupid is as stupid does.

Y’know, I wish you wouldn’t bury your insults in the middle of long texts that make my eyes glaze over in the middle of the night where I might miss them.

At any rate, identifying another poster as “stupid” is outside the bounds of this Forum. Stop it.

Sentient Meat, repeating the insult, even self-referentially, does not help matters.

[ /Moderator Mode ]

I’ve never encountered anyone more brilliant than SentientMeat. He parries intellectual challenges like Neo yawning as he slaps away the fists of a dozen Agents Smith. He is the best defender of atheist philosophies I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve encountered plenty. Were it not for the surety of my own experience and internal knowledge, he would already have convinced me of the veracity of his view. And even so, I recognize its validity. Owing to his impeccable honesty and almost childlike love of truth, few theists are able to rise to the challenge of debating him effectively. I greatly admire him. If his intellect is weak, then mine is dead.

Let’s see. Burning alive, bone cancer that’s so painful it kills by heart failure, flaying alive, eaten alive by wolves, Ebola that basically melts you, stung to death by fire ants, Fatal familial insomina that burns out body and mind over a few months, multiple broken bones with internal bleeding, disemboweling, and on and on…

Physical death is quite horrible enough for me.

Actually I didn’t single anyone out, I painted atheists with a broad brush. I also used the term stupid relatively, and pointed out that in my view God was an essential part of all that exists, and that removing God from the equation removed the capability of true understanding. I didn’t say atheists cannot be “intelligent” only that they cannot be relatively as intelligent as one who doesn’t remove such a thing. Then some people identified my broad brush as being about them, as they self-identify as atheists, so I used the word ‘stupid’. You’re right, I could have been more politic about it and said they were ‘less capable of true comprehension’, but I chose the word stupid. I shall remember in the future to couch my statements in prettier rhetorical prose.

Simply, I think atheism is incorrect, and as it is incorrect about something more fundamental than mathematics, they couldn’t possibly be correct, they are working the “I am not” paradigm, where everything must be described in terms of opposites, which within the mystic tradition is pretty commonly considered an illusion. In all fairness, I didn’t say anything that has not been a standard part of this debate for the past couple of millenia. The very term atheist is defined by what it is not, it’s defined by a negative. It is defined as one who does not believe in God.

Erek

You know, for someone who claims special knowledge denied to us mere, less-than-human atheists, you’ve yet to produce any evidence you’re right. Nor have you refuted anybody’s argument.

Also, how can a hypothetical god be more fundamental than mathematics ? How can atheism “not possibly be correct” when there is no evidence it’s wrong, and a fair amount that it’s right ( the basic injustice of the universe, and that there is so much evidence it developed without help ).

Finally, the “mystic tradition” is pure garbage; utterly useless nonsense. People depended on it for thousands of years and gained nothing, because it’s sterile and empty. Only with science did progress become possible; your mysticism is an anchor that drags humanity down into an abyss of ignorance and superstition.

Studies based upon a shared bias.

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Second, “faith” and “intelligence” are opposites; faith is about not thinking. Claiming it makes you smarter is silly.
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I don’t agree with this defining of faith or intelligence. Faith is belief without proof, it does not equate to lack of thinking. I defined the intelligence by the ability to know the truth, and stated that lacking the single most fundamental characteristic of all existence, the truth is unknowable.

Much of what you consider to be science was developed by Mystics such as Pythagoras, Newton etc… Revelatory knowledge turns out to be true for me all the time. I get most of my knowledge that way. I get the information, and then I go out and attempt to verify it using my critical thinking skills.

No, your self changes form, it changes to a form with brain damage. I disagree with your assessment that the whole of being in contained within the brain. The mind is the entire body, not simply the brain, it is the nervous system, the sensory inputs as well as other major organs. That’s why people make decisions with their guts and their hearts as well as their brains. Some people make decisions with their genetalia. This does not imply a lack of conciousness. In my opinion

So you’re trying to tell me that his research into gravitation, calculus and currency manipulation didn’t work out? Remember the alchemists dream was to turn basic elements into gold. The current Faith based currency system of the Federal Reserve is based largely upon his alchemical attemps from when he was working in the Tower of London handling England’s currency. The thing most people fail to understand about geniuses, is that they don’t segment their work as much as other people do. A person like Newton would consider all of his work as part of one larger body of work, rather than little individual compartmentalizations. From what I’ve heard of Newton, he very specifically considered himself and alchemist.

Again I wholly disagree with this assessment.

Well, then you have limited yourself to a very specific definition, so I suppose for you this is true, as you have decided it is such.

Do you have any evidence for all this ? How can a rock or the universe be conscious ?

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You sound like the ultimate materialist. The mere fact that the atoms of something survive doesn’t mean that thing survives; it’s the arrangement of atoms into patterns that define an object. You have claimed immortality by redefining existence down to it’s crudest level.

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Sure I am the ultimate materialist, as all of existence to me is a singularity, so every aspect is connected to every other aspect. The atoms survive something, but their new pattern is determined upon their path through their previous existence(s). When your body decomposes, the atoms that leave it are left where you once were.

Sure, it’s safe if you are into being anti-skeptical. A common mistake people who like to think of themselves as skeptics make is thinking that absence of evidence is evidence of absence. Lack of information only tells one that there is a lack of information. A true skeptic will reserve judgement, and will decide neither positively or negatively in a situation with a lack of evidence.

Everything is evidence of God. The question of need is irrelevant, God exists, it’s not a matter of need, it’s a matter of what is and what isn’t. Scrying traditionally was done by staring into a shiny black bowl in order to see other places, remind you of a CRT at all?

Another common misconception is that knowing how something works suddenly makes it a different thing from what it was in the past.

A good example is Astrology vs Astronomy. Astronomy merely names celestial bodies, as can be told by the name Astro-Nomy where as Astrology or Astro-Logos believes that the movement of the celestial body are cognitive processes. One does not even address the idea of whether or not it is conscious and the other states that it is consciousness. This is why I believe the rock is conscious, as I define consciousness as an experience of self. In my opinion, one saying that God does not exist is like a skin cell saying there is no such thing as a human.

In the end it’s a semantic argument, but true understanding inevitably comes down to a choice of semantics.

Something that happens to me a lot is that I decide I want something to happen, and then the people who also want to make it happen will come up with the idea independently of me, and suggest the idea to me and then we’ll make it happen. So either I am tapped into trends fairly well, or else I have some other force telling me what is going on, or else I am deciding what will happen in the future. Iny my opinion all are describing the same thing, all are a true description of what has occured.

People do market research in order to “predict” the future all the time, and it is not considered anything “magical”, but for some reason when people read it in the stars it is laughed at and derided.

I find most of the arguments against mysticism less than compelling because oftentimes the experience that people have with mysticism is neophyte crystalgazing hippies. The anti-skeptical attitude that causes one to assume a negative in a case of lack of evidence is not scientific in any way shape or form, and this is the way most atheist arguments are framed.

For the record, I do not have the same feeling about agnostics that I do about atheists, because atheism is a statement of faith, they are stating that a God definitively does not exist, and most do not even know what other people are defining as God as can be evidenced by the “Old Man in the sky” cliche. Whereas agnostics are merely saying “It has yet to be proven for me.”

Erek

Not denied, ignored. You can access the God mind at any point too, you are held back simply by your choice not to believe.

God IS the universe, God IS mathematics, God IS you, God IS your brain, God IS everything. That’s how it’s more fundamental than mathematics. Mathematics is mysticism btw, so is science. The argument about the basic injustice of the universe as evidence of God’s non-existence is based upon the flawed idea that God must by Gods nature be benevolent. Just because you allow skin cells to flake off and atrophy is that evidence of your own non-existence? There is no evidence that the universe developed without help. Please show me some evidence that it did.

I have yet to see a compelling argument from you. As I have said, all of Isaac Newton’s experiments were done from a place of divine alchemical pursuit, yet he is one of the great luminaries of science. You claim we’ve gained nothing from it. I claim we’ve gained the ability to read and write, we’ve gained the ability to trace our genealogical record from it, weve gained the Pythagorean theorem. Einstein’s Relativity is a form of understanding that combines western regimented mysticism with Eastern fluid holistic mysticism. How do you define sterile and empty? You clearly have a different definition for those words than I do.

Did you know that Pythagoras had a cult of mathematics? Did you know that he trained in Egypt and much of the way this cult was organized was based upon the Ancient Egyptian mystic tradition? Did you know that modern Masonry, which is a mystic tradition formed much of the government of the United States? The American Eagle is based upon the idea of ascension, and is a symbol of the heights of mastery. Washington DC is laid out like a temple. We have the all-seeing eye on the back of our money?

My impression is that you know very little about the mystic tradition that has formed probably most of the opinions that you hold. Just like the OP who compared 5 luminaries to Jesus, all of whom believed in God, and barring Edison wrote quite a lot about how it informed upon their studies.

Oftentimes ‘atheists’ will quote Descartes “I think therefore I am”, yet Descartes is the one who claimed that because of dreaming we cannot truly verify anything that our senses tell us, who believed that he proved the existence of a benevolent creator.

Erek

Let’s suppose for argument’s sake that it is horrible. Still, how significant is it? Aren’t materialists always the ones pointing out what irrelevant specks we humans are among the vastness of the universe? And if your death is insignificant, then the horror that accompanies it is insignificant as well, is it not?

What progress they made, they made in spite of their mystical tendencies; when people let those tendencies overwhelm them, they become incapable of accomplishment. Newton’s astrology and alchemy accomplished nothing, neither did Pythagorus’s numerical mysticism.

I don’t belive you get “most” of your knowledge from revelatory nowledge. First, I need hard evidence before I believe you are unique in human history. Second, you wouldn’t be able to function well enough to post here; you’d be drooling in a corner somewhere, uselessly waiting for knowledge to drop out of nowhere so you could learn speech, writing and so forth. Knowledge comes from other people or one’s own investigations/reasoning; not from nowhere.

People can have their guts and hearts removed or transplanted without changing into other people; making decisions “with their guts and their hearts” is a poetic turn of phrase, not reality. I don’t believe I actually had to explain that to someone. :rolleyes:

No I said his research into alchemy and astrology didn’t work out; I said not one word about currency manipulation, which is not a mystical subject. I seriously doubt that modern economics has much to do with alchemy.

Provide some evidence then, or even a plausible arguement.

Anti-skeptical = gullible/crazy. Absence of evidence is not hard evidence of absence, but it does mean you should presume abscence*. That’s the principle behind “innocent until proven guilty”.

:dubious: errr,no. Not really.

And there is no evidence of god.

Thank you for proving you know nothing about astronomy. Also, playing word games won’t make rocks conscious.

Size isn’t everything. A galaxy of dead matter is just a lump of mindlessness. If it gets sucked into a supermassive black hole, it won’t suffer. Significance is defined by us. We matter more than the dead universe, because life and life alone has purpose and function; dead matter just exists.

I agree with you, but it is an unusual viewpoint from a materialist — mainly because the brain, too, along with the suffering and significance found in it, is just more of the same matter, made of stellar vomit. It seems to me that either you must concede a gestalt metaphysical objective significance to your suffering, or else you must accept that the electrochemical discharges in your head and the random mutation and replication of the cells inside it are no more purposeful than supernovae.

Well the significance is all relative to one’s experience. I don’t want to experience physical death. As I believe in reincarnation, I would say that I have experienced it if not in my current incarnation. In my current incarnation I have had many near death experiences, and some have been hellish and awful. One I felt like all my internal organs were being crushed as if in a black hole and I was pretty close to losing what was contained in certain organs that expel things at the moment of death. The upshot was that when it was over a few minutes later I felt super powerful and at peace, the feeling that has lessened since, but never completely went away, diminishing my fear of death each time I have had such an experience. However it is one of my goals not to die in this incarnation, in any way other than the idea that we are constantly dying and being reborn as the pattern is ever evolving, and our old identities are shed as are the atoms we previously contained. However, I think death is not the absolute that most people seem to believe it is, or the absolute that I at one point believed it was.

Erek

Oops, I meant “life and life alone has or creates purpose and function; dead matter just exists.”

Prove it. There is no evidence you are right. Also, mathematics and science are not mysticism. Finally, there is no evidence that a god affects the universe at all. If my skin cells were sentient, they could easily deduce the existence of a reality beyond them; there is no such evidence in my case.

Evolution, astronomy, cosmology.

You have no clue what you’re talking about, do you ?

Yeah, and I’m a member fnord of the Illuminanti. My real purpose is to divert the poor fools on this board from our nefarious fnord plans.

How do you define materialist? I don’t belive in supernatural forces, but I do believe that information, that pattern has it’s own sort of existence. It needs a physical substrate, but it has it’s own existence.

Evolution created function; a claw or an enzyme has a function, while a rock or a star has none. Mind created purpose; the synapses firing in my brain have purpose because I give them purpose; I have purpose because I give myself purpose.

Der Trihs: There really isn’t much point in arguing point by point with you. You have some preconceptions about the mystical process, and have shown what I believe to be an extreme lack of knowledge as to what the mystical process is. You don’t even seem to know what you are talking about that you are denying as having validity. It’s like you have decided not to learn about it because it has no validity to you. This is fine, but please learn that it is neither skeptical nor scientific.

You are wrong, that is not the basis behind innocent til proven guilty. For instance, someone might be guilty, and everyone knows it, but if it can’t be proven we let them go free, because of the way the system has been designed.

A true skeptic would maintain neutrality. Most of your assumptions are based in a lack of evidence, and you are expecting a higher level of rigor from me than you are offering. One of the advantages faith has in arguments like this is that it doesn’t HAVE to prove anything, it is not the one arguing that something can only be true if it can be proven. (another very unscientific idea)

You have decided that certain things are conscious and others are not. You do not seem to realize that science and mysticism go hand in hand, that it is a false dichotomy to assume that they do not. The Revelatory process is not information in a vacuum, it is also known as ‘inspiration’ or ‘imagination’. Are you arguing that inspiration and imagination do not exist?

Redefinition does not equal disproof. In my opinion you are both a subset and superset of the Sun, as you are a part of it, and it is a part of you. If you are conscious, then it is conscious. I could attempt to ‘prove’ it all day long, and you would continue to dismiss everything I have said. You consider Newton’s Divine inspiration as a hindrance, without stopping to consider for a moment what a fundamental part of his being it was.

You clearly have never looked at any qabbalist text such as the Sefer Yetzirah which are filled with Geometry, Physics and Decoding of Language, highlighting the mathematical properties of the Hebraic characters. How can I possibly argue with you, if you know absolutely nothing about which you are speaking, and refuse to open your mind enough to even look at the subject you are talking about? We’ll continue this discussion after you have at the very least opened up a copy of the Sefer Yetzirah, or a text like it.

Absolutely nothing can be illuminated for the willfully ignorant.

Erek

I hesitate to get into this area because it always seems like I’m minimizing others tribulations. That’s not my intention. But to look at it in perspective.

If a life of say 70 years of struggle, or even illness is compared to eternal life, it isn’t so horrible. If we are indeed spirit first and physical temporarily then a lifetime is like a ride at the amusement park. While we’re on it we might be scared as hell, but when it’s over we don’t take it as seriously.

Also in this perspective when people rail against all the horrible things that happen that happen as evidence there’s no God, it’s like being pissed because the ride was too scary after chooseing to go on it.

Someone who believes, broadly speaking, that there is no reality beyond the physical universe.

That sounds like philosophy of mind dualism: “the theory that the mental and the physical — or mind and body or mind and brain — are, in some sense, radically different kinds of thing”.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/dualism/

Okay, maybe the function of a rock is a bit wiggly (at least from a modern human standpoint — a snake might find it to be a great shelter, and early man might have found it to be a great tool), but it seems to me that the function of stars is downright critical. Without them, there’d be nothing else, including brains. By what other means would you produce helium, iron, and other elements than by the process of stellar fusion?

Define Dead matter.

How can I ‘prove’ that the definition of a word is it’s definition?

All addressed by the mystic tradition.

Incorrect

Illuminati means “Illuminated one”. Misdirection is not a necessary property of the illuminated, in my experience is generally NOT a property of one.

Well, first off I didn’t self-identify as a materialist. I identify it as one who does not believe in anything beyond the material world, which I don’t, the spiritual and material world are one thing, it is illusory to think that they are different.

Well, first off you are claiming that rocks and stars do not evolve. Rocks being defined by their elemental composition only evolve in terms of shape, size and composition really. Stars most definitely have a lifecycle in which they change. The claim that stars and rocks have no purpose is pretty specious. How exactly is a brickhouse standing if rocks have no purpose? Purpose is relative to property. We eat minerals because they affect our bodies in a certain way, minerals are rocks, that is purpose, they make up the crust of the Earth, that is purpose. Stars warm you and generate electricity, that’s a purpose. How is the firing of synapses more purposeful than a solar flare? They both at their most basic state are just discharges of energy, both have impact upon your life. Solar flares can cause disruptions in cell phone service, whereas your synapses can decide to make a phone call, both affect your ability to make that phone call. So how can the processes that you go through be anything less than random if everything outside of your brain is random?

Erek