1=0 or God is Everything and Nothingness

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PuristLove

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I've been trying to reconcile the concept of God as Nothingness (a Zen sort of concept) with God as Everything that exists (otherwise known as pantheism). The following theory hit me like a two by four at work, while ringing up a customer. The lady standing there asked me if I was alright. I must have gone very far away mentally for a while. I dont even know how long I was in a daze.

Anyways, this theory is probably nothing special or new, but I need to put it into words and get feedback, so that I can absorb it better.

Ok I suppose the first place to start is with this concept. Being cannot be, unless there is other.

That may at first seem silly, but lets try a few examples and see where they lead us.

Consider someone who has lived their entire life in a place like Alaska... Do they consider the weather there cold? I know I would be freezing there, at any time of the year. They, however, without experience of any other kind of weather, consider that weather normal. Cold would be farther north for them. It works vice-versa as well. I from Texas, do not consider the weather here that hot, but bring someone from Alaska here and they would probably get sick from the heat.

After you have that concept firmly in your mind consider a person in a white room. Completely and flawlessly white, and that person is suspended in the air so they cannot touch the floor or walls or ceiling. There is no sensory information coming in at all, just white. Now suppose that person was also white, all over, the exact same shade as the room, and they are the consistency of the air. There is nothing in that room for them to compare themselves to at all.

Can they even know they exist? By what means? Are they the room? Where do the boundaries of theirself begin and the rest of the room begin? there is no way for them to know themselves without information about other to compare themselves too.
Did you grasp what I was trying to say? God words are so limiting sometimes.

Lets move on, I can answer questions posed.

There is one being in the universe. God or whatever. It is one being. There is nothing besides that being, not even empty space. Simply being. That being is nothingness, taken even farther than the person in the white room. That person doesnt even have the boundaries of self to compare to. There is absolutely no otherness.

That being divides itself into an infinite number of things, creating the universe we know. The universe doesnt exist seperately from the Being, except as illusion.

Within the illusion Being is everything, because there is other. Outside of the illusion being is nothingness.

I'm not even sure if I have said exactly what I wanted to say. Let me know what you think.

Love,
Pure www.literaryclearinghouse.com/ericwest.htm
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Intelligence is not best measured by the answers you have but by the questions that you ask
 
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This is quite a well thought-out post, so I will try to respond in kind.
"Being cannot be, unless there is other."
I think the problem with this statement is that you are confusing "being" with "perceiveing." Things can exist without perceiving (dirt, etc.), but you are almost certainly right that consciouness and perception cannot arise without something to perceive or be conscious of (your white room example).
As for the Alaska/Texas example, I'm not really sure how that furthers your point. Yes, perception is subjective. But objectively the temperature in Alaska is X and the temperature in Texas in Y. I.E. the conditions exist regardless of how and if they are perceived.
I'm not quite sure, though, how you get from recognizing that consciousness is based on something existing to be conscious of, to the notion that God is the only thing. I don't think that leap is logically justified. But perhaps if you explain it a bit more I'll understand.
Are you in college? If so, take a course in Analytic Philosophy, and make sure you read Wittgenstein's private language argument. It deals with much of what you've been pondering.
Good luck in your Phuture Philosophizing.
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Trance and Dance: the enlightened path to Trancendence.
 
Thanks for your response. I think I started with a premise that I didnt state clearly enough. a pre-existing belief in a panthiestic view of God.
I think what i was trying to say, was that existence stems from conciousness and thus perception. Basically the old tree falling in the woods without anyone to hear it deal.
It wasnt so much an attempt to prove anything... in fact it proved nothing. It was just an attempt of mine to wrap my head around a theory.
The alaska/texas thing, was really just to help someone flow into the idea of perception, to really understand it. It didn't support anything i was saying.
This requires further thought. I am not currently in college, but my goal is to start this fall as a philo major. I want to teach this stuff.
A job as a proffessor would give me lots of time to write, which is what i really do. That link in my previous email is to my first novel.
let me know if you need any more clarification.
Love,
Pure
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Intelligence is not best measured by the answers you have but by the questions that you ask
 
A good choice of study area! I majored in Philosophy as an undergrad, and I'm now pursuing a Masters and eventually a Ph.D. Yes, it will be a great thing to teach.
I see, so you're saying the essential component of our existence is our percerption, or our consciousness (which is arguably the sum total of our perceptions + genetic coding). You'll enjoy readin the works of the Empiricists (Locke, Hume, and especially Berkeley).
If you'd be up for it, I'm curious to know why you believe in a pantheistic form of God.
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Trance and Dance: the enlightened path to Trancendence.
 
I'm up for it, but god we should be sitting somewhere with coffee and a joint. Someday when voice software is better, this internet thing will be so much more powerful.
I think that the question most often asked about god is... If there is a loving god why is there so much suffering in the world?
As I see it, there are basically three answers to this question.
The first is God is not loving, he is either indifferent or sadistic.
This answer did not mesh with my experience of god. My experience of god, is one of love.
The second is that God has a plan and we do not know what that is.
I could never blindly accept, we dont and cant know. It just doesnt work for me.
The third, is that God is everything, and allows us to suffer because we choose it for ourselves as Him. (Oh the wording gets so tricky doesnt it)
Basically, (I,we,god) choose to experience pain so we can know happiness through contrast. This one worked the best for me. Of course it is much more complex than that, there are a million more reasons, but like i said, coffee and weed and a couch to conversate on would be much better suited to this type of discussion.
The other reason i believe in a panthiestic god view is my "All is One" experiences. Moments in life (both on and off drugs) when I "was the universe".
Of course personal mystical experiences will never be accepted as philosophical arguement.
I hope that explained my view. Oh there is a Fourth answer to that question about a loving God allowing suffering. God not existing. I see far too much evidence of God's existence to ever believe that, however, lets not go there: )
Love,
Pure
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Intelligence is not best measured by the answers you have but by the questions that you ask
 
I agree with what you say Puristlove, its kind of what I believe in too. I've heard a similar theory be presented before. A guy has a website based around it, maybe i can dig up the link.
God gives us free will. We experience suffering because we create suffering in the world. Look around, even though love peace freedom and so forth is preached, it is not practiced. There are certain forces in the world that profit from suffering, they exist because people need them to bring hope. But if they did allow that hope to manifest into a perfect world, then people would no longer need them, so they would not allow such a thing to happen. Its like a Doctor teating a patient with a broken leg, as soon as that leg heals, the doctor gets worried coz his out of a job. So the doctor simply puts on a mask to conceal his identity and breaks the patients other leg.
"Being cannot be, unless there is other."
Exactly. Unless you step out of a situation, you cannot behold it totally and unless you have something to compare something against, you really dont know how it measures up.
Many people believes God created us to be, so that in all our differences, we would each learn a different perspective of life then return to the sourse with our experiences. In that light there is no good or bad, duality is only something to compare with rather then a lifestyle. I mean, even in the darkest of nights there is some light, and even in the brightest of days there are some shadows. There is no 'pure' good or bad, just mixtures and differences and from them we are able to comprahend and understand the world and ourselves.
But i do feel that god is in everything, and as god to me is energy, then this is not so hard to understand.
 
That view of God is clearly the one that best fits both of your personal experiences of the world, but is it the one that's best supported by evidence outside of yourself? Or does that kind of evidence not matter as much to you?
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Trance and Dance: the enlightened path to Trancendence.
 
1 = 0
My father is a mathematician, and almost proved this to be true a few years ago. He was trying to prove something else, and kinda stumbled on it. He didn't sleep for about a week while trying to find the tiny flaw in his proof.
 
Can you perhaps point me to any piece of evidence that proves any type of view about God? Anything at all? I dont think so. From personal experiences the physical world is but one layer of existance, and the further you go beyond that, the more energy orientated everything becomes. Now combine that with the fact that many religious documents claim that God is within all of us, and all around us. What else but energy? Even the bible states that heaven/god existed before the world was created, before the universe was created for that matter. So I dont see how people can believe that God is a man sitting on some throne somewhere looking down upon us and judging us. The body of man is a creation of the physical world, it was created when the universe was created. So do u think God would then have a physical body? Why? We may be made in the image of god, but that doesnt necessarily mean God has a body like ours now does it?
 
Your statement contains a contradiction:
"Can you perhaps point me to any piece of evidence that proves any type of view about God? Anything at all? I dont think so."
And:
"So I dont see how people can believe that God is a man sitting on some throne somewhere looking down upon us and judging us."
So do you or don't you think there's evidence that proves a type of view about God?
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Trance and Dance: the enlightened path to Trancendence.
 
flux: ask your dad if .9 repeating equals 1. And ask him to explain it also. it's pretty neat
smile.gif

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The music never stops...
 
I dont believe there is hard evidence. I do however feel that u can get a reflection of God by looking at the work God has done. I mean, in essence, every single religion and belief about God could be correct. Even two completely contradictory views on God could both be correct, but we just fail to understand the hidden meaning or the complexity of the subject.
 
the nothingness is filled by our perception of everything. it grows as we do.
the nothing was obleterated in the first moment of life.
what we have not percieved is owned by the memory of nothing.
 
So perhaps that belief in a certain type of God validates that belief system and makes it true, thus religion & belief is purely internal, or something like that?
I would agree that through some toying around, just about any view COULD be true, but shouldn't we believe what's MOST LIKELY true? If not, then what standard should be used?
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Trance and Dance: the enlightened path to Trancendence.
 
What is Occam's Razor?
Occam's (or Ockham's) razor is a principle attributed to the 14th century logician and Franciscan friar; William of Occam. Ockham was the village in the English county of Surrey where he was born.
The principle states that "Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily." Sometimes it is quoted in one of its original Latin forms to give it an air of authenticity.
"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate"
"Frustra fit per plura quod potest fieri per pauciora"
"Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem"
In fact, only the first two of these forms appear in his surviving works and the third was written by a later scholar. William used the principle to justify many conclusions including the statement that "God's existence can not be deduced by reason alone." That one didn't make him very popular with the Pope.
Many scientists have adopted or reinvented Occam's Razor as in Leibniz' "identity of observables" and Isaac Newton stated the rule: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances."
The most useful statement of the principle for scientists is,
"when you have two competing theories which make exactly the same predictions, the one that is simpler is the better."
In physics we use the razor to cut away metaphysical concepts. The canonical example is Einstein's theory of special relativity compared with Lorentz's theory that ruler's contract and clocks slow down when in motion through the Ether. Einstein's equations for transforming space-time are the same as Lorentz's equations for transforming rulers and clocks, but Einstein and Poincaré recognised that the Ether could not be detected according to the equations of Lorentz and Maxwell. By Occam's razor it had to be eliminated.
Click to expand...
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Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate.-William of Occam
 
Pinkerton,
That's something we did in my 6th grade math class, not something you need to ask a mathematician to find out.
 
I had just written a beautiful reply, with lots of detail explaining why I feel the evidence the world has provided me with really says to me that God is Everything. But AOL decided I had been on long enough and logged me off. I'm too frustrated to try to rewrite so let me just say that I see a pattern in all that happens that is best explained by a pantheistic view. On top of this I have my personal spiritual experience that also suggests this to me.
I, like everyone else, knows nothing for certain and can only go on what appears probable. The sun has always risen so it should probably rise in the morning.
Wish you had gotten to read the rest of it, maybe I will try again in the morning.
Love,
Pure www.literaryclearinghouse.com/ericwest.htm
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Intelligence is not best measured by the answers you have but by the questions that you ask
 
If there is/was a god. It is my belief that it would be energy in it's purest form, also keeping in mid that as far as man knows, energy cannot be created or destroied, it can only change.
 
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