Why not deism?

[AniKoferBo]

christian theology is incoherent to the point of absurdity. god killing his son so he can forgive our future sin is like me breaking my son"s legs so i can forgive my neighbor in case she ever parks her car on my drive. it is quite ridiculous.

Right.

Biblical scholarship, biblical studies, biblical archaeology, and such like are legitimate areas of study. Theology? Not so much. Theology is simply a bunch of oddballs who simply know how to extract a salary on the basis of a bucket of crap. No theoligians actually believe their own crap.

biblical theology has got nothing to do with the study of the history of the time period in question circa 3rd millennium b.c.e. to 1st century c.e. through the collection of texts called the bible. neither is it the attempt to find what in these texts is historically accurate or not, that is what biblical criticism is about. theology itself is simply a mad attempt to find new metaphorical interpretations of texts that where not meant to be metaphorical, in order to maintain christianity as a relevant force in modern times. tremendous energy and effort is expended on the fruitless task of trying to salvage something meaningful, and relevant, from this highly inaccurate scientifically and historically, incoherent, poorly written and poorly compiled set of books.

[Porcupine]

Until extremely recently I was a deist in the sense that I believed in an impersonal deity or, in other words, a deity that is not part of a religion and that didn't directly intervene in the world.

People had problems with that definition, though. Because it sounded like I was talking about intervention. But I don't think it qualified as, at least, direct intervention.

But it turns out that 'pantheism' was perhaps a better description for what I believed. I believed that God was the universe and that the universe/God has a will and what it wills is what it wants and what it wants is just whatever happens.

But now I'm starting to doubt that the universe has a will ... and so it seems meaningless to still call the universe God. So that is where I'm at. That's why not deism, for me.

[The Grand Nudger]

What made you think that the universe had a will to begin with?

[AniKoferBo]

pantheism is too vague and can be easily taken to mean theism, deism or atheism.

[Porcupine]

What made you think that the universe had a will to begin with?

Because the universe is most likely a mind and minds tend to have wills.

But although I recognized that the universe's mind is not like ours it didn't, before, occur to me that its therefore not likely to have a will because wills seem to not just be innate properties of minds: wills seem to be evolved properties of complex minds.

I mean, to be fair to myself I saw the universe's mind in terms of its thoughts being basically our minds, and the minds of other beings, big and small, complex and simple .... that made up a bigger mind overall ... but, still, I'm not sure what it would mean to say that the universe has a unified will. But then even our wills are not always unified. So it's confusing.

I guess, one way of putting it is that if the universe has a will it may not have a will in addition to the wills of smaller beings that are part of it ... and if it does have a will in addition to those wills then its will may be so different that there isn't really any meaningful sense in which we can call it a will. I'm not sure if the universe wills anything because I'm not sure if the universe wants anything ... apart from the trivial fact that our wills, and the wills of other beings, are part of it. Although wills can be conflicted I think it's really one will per being. Many desires but one will. And for that reason I guess the universe either has a will completely unlike our own so as to make the word "will" meaningless in such a case or the universe, in and of itself, doesn't have a will at all.

---

pantheism is too vague and can be easily taken to mean theism, deism or atheism.

Yeah, I agree, and that was my eventual conclusion as well. And I only briefly used the term after realizing that some people didn't like my use of the words "deism" and "deist" because it was hard to explain why I didn't consider the god I believed in to qualify as interventionist.

If I knew of a term that meant pantheism + a cosmic mind then I would use that.

[Peebothuhlu]

What made you think that the universe had a will to begin with?

Because the universe is most likely a mind and minds tend to have wills.

Uhm... how does that follow/work?

What does 'Most likely a mind' even mean?



Cheers.

Not at work.

[Porcupine]

Because the universe is most likely a mind and minds tend to have wills.

Uhm... how does that follow/work?

What does 'Most likely a mind' even mean?



Cheers.

Not at work.

How does it follow from what? What do you mean "how does that work"? I'm confused what the nature of such a mind would be like or involve, as well, but it's one thing to have a sound argument for that something is the case and quite another thing to have a sound argument for what that thing, that is the case, is like. We can have reason to believe that X has, or is, Yness without needing to know how Y1 differs from Y2.

To say that X is "most likely a mind" is to say that X is probably an example of something that is a mind. In other words, the nature of the universe is probably mental rather than non-mental.

[Peebothuhlu]

Uhm... how does that follow/work?

What does 'Most likely a mind' even mean?



Cheers.

Not at work.

How does it follow from what? What do you mean "how does that work"? I'm confused what the nature of such a mind would be like or involve, as well, but it's one thing to have a sound argument for that something is the case and quite another thing to have a sound argument for what that thing, that is the case, is like. We can have reason to believe that X has, or is, Yness without needing to know how Y1 differs from Y2.

To say that X is "most likely a mind" is to say that X is probably an example of something that is a mind. In other words, the nature of the universe is probably mental rather than non-mental.

Okay.

When you type "Mind" you are thinking about a specific thing in relation to said wrod.

When I read "Mind" the concpet in my head is of about five pounds of toothpaste.

(Yes, I'm being a tad facetious, flippant and otherwise increadable imprescis with my language use at the moment.)

So... the concept in my mind is of a 'Brain in a jar' type of thing at its most base level.

What is the concept in your mind?

From establishing a mutual understanding of the conept we can work on from there.

Cheers.

Not at work.

[Porcupine]

To me, a mind is just a thing that has consciousness. Why? Because if you were to say that X has consciousness but X isn't a mind then that would seem to make no sense at all.

[Peebothuhlu]

To me, a mind is just a thing that has consciousness. Why? Because if you were to say that X has consciousness but X isn't a mind then that would seem to make no sense at all.

So... what has "Consciousness"?

Heck, what then is a "Mind"?

Is a mind always a collection of sufficient neurons?

Is it something else?

Just posting "X is simply 'X'." deosn't actually offer anything to some one else who's trying to parse the thoughts actually in your head.

(That's another side question. Do 'Minds' always reside within neurons within bodys?)

Cheers.

Not at work.