God, Energy and Matter

[LadyForCamus]

The only difference being, obviously, FSM is real

FSM is a wimp. I saw him on the kids menu last time I went to Olive Garden.

Well, at least you can actually see the FSM, lol. I would have expected you to convert on the spot. 😏

[Nay_Sayer]

Yes, and the FSM came to Olive Garden and sacrificed himself so you might become fed and diabetic.  How can you not believe in him?

I really want to believe,  but it still hasn't been proven that he he was on the menu.  Others have claimed to have visions of pink spaghetti on their menu.  Maybe I just wanted FSM to be there and I imagined it.

Really,  there is a spaghetti monster, but he's not God. God is real and FSM is made up.  When someone gives up their life for FSM I'll pay more attention.

The fabled prophet Raygu gave his life and life of his followers for FSM.  -Doughorotomy 1-8-

 I'm sorry your imagined diety has let you down so.

But I must ask, Is the only qualifying feature for a god to exist is that someone will or is willing to die for it?  Seems very lackluster.
Thoughts and prayers.  RAmen

[Lek]

At work.

That's a whole lot of trouble in a post right there Lek.

So.... the generations of Norse, Scandinavians, Norwegians etc who passed onto Valhalla sword in hand is good enough for you to believe in the All Father?

The Buddhist Monks who peacefully self immolated in protest against thd atrocities of Vietnam are good enough for you to belive in the teatchings of the Buddha?

I'm sure other folks will be along to give lots of other examples of people dying for their beliefs.

Are you going to believe in them all? Or cherry pick the one that feels most right to you?

Cheers.

There is only one God. It's the same God they had.

[mordant]

"Mystical" and "supernatural" are terms to describe things we don't understand, things that don't fall into the parameters of how things should be, or how events should occur. They need not hold any greater power than that, and God hardly seems like a reasonable conclusion given enough reflection on the idea. Think about it: how many things did cultures decide to deify, or worship, because they didn't understand what the hell was going on? Thunderstorms were once unexplainable, so a society decided that the gods were mad, and took steps to appease this god so there would be sunny skies. We know why thunderstorms happen now. We no longer need to defer to mystics to know why it rains.

Let me tell you why I scoff at human experiences being evidence, beyond what I already said; we have an EXTRAORDINARILY narrow view of reality. Even high school physics tells you there are things going around us all the time that we can't see, like electro-magnetic waves. Our brains evolved just enough to lead us to become king of the planet, but stopped woefully short of letting us see the true nature of things. At the end of the day, what we experience with our five senses is just our brain's best guess as to what is happening around us. We can't say that it actually is reality...just that it's a pretty good idea of it, since things generally react the way we expect them to. We have the highest consciousness on Earth and yet our perception just scratches the surface. Your perception is wrong CONSTANTLY - when you see something out of the corner of your eye that isn't there, or hear somebody say your name but they were actually saying something completely different - we have these tiny yet vivid hallucinations rather regularly.

We don't actually see everything for what it is, only what makes sense for us to see. Science has taught us, against all intuition, that apparently solid things, like crystals and rocks, are really almost entirely composed of empty space. And the familiar illustration is the nucleus of an atom is a fly in the middle of a sports stadium, and the next atom is in the next sports stadium. So it would seem the hardest, solidest, densest rock is really almost entirely empty space, broken only by tiny particles so widely spaced they shouldn't count. Why, then, do rocks look and feel solid and hard and impenetrable? Our brains have evolved to help us survive within the orders of magnitude, of size and speed which our bodies operate at. We never evolved to navigate in the world of atoms. If we had, our brains probably would perceive rocks as full of empty space. Rocks feel hard and impenetrable to our hands, precisely because objects like rocks and hands cannot penetrate each other. It's therefore useful for our brains to construct notions like "solidity" and "impenetrability," because such notions help us to navigate our bodies through the middle-sized world in which we have to navigate. Moving to the other end of the scale, our ancestors never had to navigate through the cosmos at speeds close to the speed of light. If they had, our brains would be much better at understanding things at that level.

From there, I also contend that "I", your sense of ego, is an illusion, and an incorrect inflation of the human experience in context of the larger cosmos. The same way "solidity" and "impenetrability" are notions we constructed to explain things, countless other ideas we have of our existence fall in the same boat, including ourselves. It's a byproduct of higher consciousness. It very obviously has its place and purpose, and that is why we experience it.

Here is a passage from Alan Watts that summarizes my POV:

"[The ego] is a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that “I myself” is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body — a center which “confronts” an “external” world of people and things. This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated “egos” inside bags of skin."

So now you see, roughly, where I'm coming from philosophically. Reality is so insane and far from simplistic enough for comfortable comprehension, and you're coming at me with God and the Bible? I feel like Christianity is on Level 5 or 6, and the actual truth of reality, whatever that may be, is at Level 50,000. I don't believe in God because God seems fairly obviously man-made. The conception that we have of God, particularly in Judeo-Christian thought, is a reflection of ourselves - well, more specifically it's a reflection of a Jew from the 14th century B.C. God, Jesus, Satan... these are archetypes, stories that man has created not only to explain the unexplainable but also, unconsciously, as a way of expressing our nature and what we think the world and civilization ought to be like.

Books like the Bible are incredible, and have their place in our history, collective psychology, and philosophy. There is a reason Nietzsche was concerned with God's "death." But I have absolutely no reason to think of it as the truth. God, our place, what we should do, what this all means - I mean, you see how I see this as ridiculous? To contend that Christianity is true reeks of egomania on a frankly shocking scale, going so far as to say that: not only does the self exist as a tangible thing, but it is permanent, timeless, and extends beyond your physical death. And that self's path depends on our actions and how well we worship a deity? Wow. We're really that important? Roughly 13 billion years in and our words, our morality, everything we've constructed is really that important? I can't even create something myself that feels further from the truth than that! It is egomania in the truest sense of the word.

There's undeniable beauty in our existence, and the breadth of it is literally unimaginable. There is a great feeling of unity with the nature of reality that can be obtained without a single supernatural claim. And you're not satisfied with that? You still want to shoehorn God in there? I don't get it. The archetype has value, surely. But I just don't see how somebody can really think about this stuff and conclude that there is a God. I just don't get it.

Hope that made sense. May have just been a nonsensical rant.

I am not sure I'd be quoting Alan Watts to support my views, but I nevertheless find myself in substantial agreement with you just the same, given your careful disavowal of the supernatural (which I see as an utterly illogical and useless concept) and your clear statement that God is neither a necessary nor sufficient explanation for anything unknown. I also very much like your understanding of monotheism as essentially an ego inflation issue. I tend to approach it more as founded on a failed epistemology (religious faith) but the popularity of embracing such an unsupportable belief-system IS fundamentally grounded in arrogance -- in other words, a failed epistemology combined with an utter lack of epistemological humility.

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

That's a whole lot of trouble in a post right there Lek.

So.... the generations of Norse, Scandinavians, Norwegians etc who passed onto Valhalla sword in hand is good enough for you to believe in the All Father?

The Buddhist Monks who peacefully self immolated in protest against thd atrocities of Vietnam are good enough for you to belive in the teatchings of the Buddha?

I'm sure other folks will be along to give lots of other examples of people dying for their beliefs.

Are you going to believe in them all? Or cherry pick the one that feels most right to you?

Cheers.

There is only one God. It's the same God they had.

Uhm... no.

Odin is in no way related to Yahweh. The Bhudda is in no way related to or connected with Yahweh. The Rainbow Serpent is in no way connected to Yahweh. The dieties of the Aztec, Incas and other native societies etc, etc. The list goes on and preceeds backwards through time.

Then, as has been pointed out previously, there are the societies which have no dieties.

Pretty sure there've been oodles of dieties talked about over the ages. Yours is just one of the relative 'New kids on the block'.

Cheers.

Not at work.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

There is only one God. It's the same God they had.

Uhm... no.

Odin is in no way related to Yahweh. The Bhudda is in no way related to or connected with Yahweh. The Rainbow Serpent is in no way connected to Yahweh. The dieties of the Aztec, Incas and other native societies etc, etc. The list goes on and preceeds backwards through time.

Then, as has been pointed out previously, there are the societies which have no dieties.

Pretty sure there've been oodles of dieties talked about over the ages. Yours is just one of the relative 'New kids on the block'.

Cheers.

Not at work.

Aztecs and Incas had the same trouble with their gods that the Maori had with theirs: most of the names are so bloody long that it takes forever to get through a decent prayer, and people got tired of the whole religion thing.  I think this may be one reason why monotheism caught on.  Yahweh.  Allah.  Jesus.  Nice, short names, easy to pronounce (and fewer to keep track of).

Some Maori gods:

-Urutengangana

-Tama-nui-te-ra

-Auahituroa

-Makeatutara

-Hine-nui-tai-po

-Io Matua Kore

Who's got time for THAT kind of nonsense?

Boru

[polymath257]

There is only one God. It's the same God they had.

It always amazes me that theists want people to believe in *some* higher power, but often don't seem to care about the specific properties that are believed in.

As long as the term 'God' is used and it is 'higher', then they can accept the belief as legit. Why? Well, I guess it's because they accept that nobody knows.

It's sort of like my wanting everyone to believe in something that can't be detected and I don't care what properties are assigned to it. I just want people to believe in it and call it by the same name I do.

You may believe there is only one God. Someone else may believe there is only one God. But if you disagree what the characteristics are of that 'one God', then you believe in *different* Gods and at most one of you is correct in your belief.

[Anomalocaris]

There is only one God. It's the same God they had.

It always amazes me that theists want people to believe in *some* higher power, but often don't seem to care about the specific properties that are believed in.

As long as the term 'God' is used and it is 'higher', then they can accept the belief as legit. Why? Well, I guess it's because they accept that nobody knows.

It's sort of like my wanting everyone to believe in something that can't be detected and I don't care what properties are assigned to it. I just want people to believe in it and call it by the same name I do.

You may believe there is only one God. Someone else may believe there is only one God. But if you disagree what the characteristics are of that 'one God', then you believe in *different* Gods and at most one of you is correct in your belief.

It’s called argument by assertion:  I am right because I am right, not because what is meant by being right is clear and is demonstrably applicable to what I say. 


God don’t need to be able to exist, he just does because Christians say so.  That kind of humility is the true miracle of Christianity.

[Rahn127]

Lek, let us pretend and use our imaginations for a brief moment.

I am going to erase the universe from existence.
Now in this scenario I don't know what this "nothing" would look like or if it even has any properties.

Next, I'm going to put a god in this "nothing".
So, I want you to imagine a god suspended in "nothing".
What is this god made of ?

What do you imagine it's made of ?
Is it also nothing, but simply has attributes stapled and duct taped to it ?
What did I add to the nothing ?

You have this unknown thing that was added and yet you proclaim to know that this unknown thing is all powerful, all knowing, all wise.....etc.

Now imagine for a minute that you are this unknown thing that is suddenly now conscious for the first time.
How does this god explain to himself, how he exists or why he exists or where he came from ?

He can't see anything.
Can't touch or feeling anything.

All he can do is think.
All he can do is hear his own thoughts.

This sounds a lot like a patient in a coma who is conscious only of his own thoughts.

So now we have this god of yours in this nothing.
Does he know what a motorcycle is ?
How would he know this ?
What could he possibly know ?

And I'm using the word he, but really I should be using the term it.
We use the word he, not because we discovered some god genitalia, but because we choose to.
We choose to imagine this god like being as being like us.

Us, is all we know when it comes to higher thinking mammals on this planet.
Its unlikely that we would ever imagine this god as a lion or maybe a silverback gorilla.

What language is he speaking when hears his own thoughts ?
Would this being question anything ? Would it wonder ?
Could it wonder ?

Why does it have power ? What does it need power for ? Where did this power come from ?

In the end it all comes down to what we IMAGINE this god to be like.
You want it to be all powerful.
You want it to be all knowing.
You want it to exist.

Why do you want it to exist ?

[Aegon]

"Mystical" and "supernatural" are terms to describe things we don't understand, things that don't fall into the parameters of how things should be, or how events should occur. They need not hold any greater power than that, and God hardly seems like a reasonable conclusion given enough reflection on the idea. Think about it: how many things did cultures decide to deify, or worship, because they didn't understand what the hell was going on? Thunderstorms were once unexplainable, so a society decided that the gods were mad, and took steps to appease this god so there would be sunny skies. We know why thunderstorms happen now. We no longer need to defer to mystics to know why it rains.

Let me tell you why I scoff at human experiences being evidence, beyond what I already said; we have an EXTRAORDINARILY narrow view of reality. Even high school physics tells you there are things going around us all the time that we can't see, like electro-magnetic waves. Our brains evolved just enough to lead us to become king of the planet, but stopped woefully short of letting us see the true nature of things. At the end of the day, what we experience with our five senses is just our brain's best guess as to what is happening around us. We can't say that it actually is reality...just that it's a pretty good idea of it, since things generally react the way we expect them to. We have the highest consciousness on Earth and yet our perception just scratches the surface. Your perception is wrong CONSTANTLY - when you see something out of the corner of your eye that isn't there, or hear somebody say your name but they were actually saying something completely different - we have these tiny yet vivid hallucinations rather regularly.

We don't actually see everything for what it is, only what makes sense for us to see. Science has taught us, against all intuition, that apparently solid things, like crystals and rocks, are really almost entirely composed of empty space. And the familiar illustration is the nucleus of an atom is a fly in the middle of a sports stadium, and the next atom is in the next sports stadium. So it would seem the hardest, solidest, densest rock is really almost entirely empty space, broken only by tiny particles so widely spaced they shouldn't count. Why, then, do rocks look and feel solid and hard and impenetrable? Our brains have evolved to help us survive within the orders of magnitude, of size and speed which our bodies operate at. We never evolved to navigate in the world of atoms. If we had, our brains probably would perceive rocks as full of empty space. Rocks feel hard and impenetrable to our hands, precisely because objects like rocks and hands cannot penetrate each other. It's therefore useful for our brains to construct notions like "solidity" and "impenetrability," because such notions help us to navigate our bodies through the middle-sized world in which we have to navigate. Moving to the other end of the scale, our ancestors never had to navigate through the cosmos at speeds close to the speed of light. If they had, our brains would be much better at understanding things at that level.

From there, I also contend that "I", your sense of ego, is an illusion, and an incorrect inflation of the human experience in context of the larger cosmos. The same way "solidity" and "impenetrability" are notions we constructed to explain things, countless other ideas we have of our existence fall in the same boat, including ourselves. It's a byproduct of higher consciousness. It very obviously has its place and purpose, and that is why we experience it.

Here is a passage from Alan Watts that summarizes my POV:

"[The ego] is a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as living organisms. Most of us have the sensation that “I myself” is a separate center of feeling and action, living inside and bounded by the physical body — a center which “confronts” an “external” world of people and things. This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known about man (and all other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.” Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated “egos” inside bags of skin."

So now you see, roughly, where I'm coming from philosophically. Reality is so insane and far from simplistic enough for comfortable comprehension, and you're coming at me with God and the Bible? I feel like Christianity is on Level 5 or 6, and the actual truth of reality, whatever that may be, is at Level 50,000. I don't believe in God because God seems fairly obviously man-made. The conception that we have of God, particularly in Judeo-Christian thought, is a reflection of ourselves - well, more specifically it's a reflection of a Jew from the 14th century B.C. God, Jesus, Satan... these are archetypes, stories that man has created not only to explain the unexplainable but also, unconsciously, as a way of expressing our nature and what we think the world and civilization ought to be like.

Books like the Bible are incredible, and have their place in our history, collective psychology, and philosophy. There is a reason Nietzsche was concerned with God's "death." But I have absolutely no reason to think of it as the truth. God, our place, what we should do, what this all means - I mean, you see how I see this as ridiculous? To contend that Christianity is true reeks of egomania on a frankly shocking scale, going so far as to say that: not only does the self exist as a tangible thing, but it is permanent, timeless, and extends beyond your physical death. And that self's path depends on our actions and how well we worship a deity? Wow. We're really that important? Roughly 13 billion years in and our words, our morality, everything we've constructed is really that important? I can't even create something myself that feels further from the truth than that! It is egomania in the truest sense of the word.

There's undeniable beauty in our existence, and the breadth of it is literally unimaginable. There is a great feeling of unity with the nature of reality that can be obtained without a single supernatural claim. And you're not satisfied with that? You still want to shoehorn God in there? I don't get it. The archetype has value, surely. But I just don't see how somebody can really think about this stuff and conclude that there is a God. I just don't get it.

Hope that made sense. May have just been a nonsensical rant.

I am not sure I'd be quoting Alan Watts to support my views, but I nevertheless find myself in substantial agreement with you just the same, given your careful disavowal of the supernatural (which I see as an utterly illogical and useless concept) and your clear statement that God is neither a necessary nor sufficient explanation for anything unknown. I also very much like your understanding of monotheism as essentially an ego inflation issue. I tend to approach it more as founded on a failed epistemology (religious faith) but the popularity of embracing such an unsupportable belief-system IS fundamentally grounded in arrogance -- in other words, a failed epistemology combined with an utter lack of epistemological humility.

Watts is very hit-or-miss, I respect that.

Lek straight-up ignored my wall of text, so thanks for reading and ensuring it wasn't a waste of time.