Belief in god or not?

[murphythecat]

god?

you are everything, but empty as fuck. you are what you put in you.

yes they are gods, but no different then you really, just purer but can and will go back to being impure.

sadly, theres no heaven but the one you will find in your own mind

 

[swilow]

This is called the "inbreath" of the Creator where everything gets assimilated into its source. We're now on the "outbreath". Then the Universe will be re-created on a higher level.

Its also called 'heat death'. It doesn't really say that our universe will end, just that it will exist as a homogenous, formless, undifferentiated cluster of matter equally dispersed through the cosmos.

What do you mean, a "higher level"?

 

[Ninae]

I believe it means it will take on a higher manifestation. All consciousness forms will be reborn at a higher level of consciousness than they were before and everything will be upgraded. So rocks might be reborn as plants and plants might be reborn as animals.

Or I think the prime creator will use what he learned from the previous creation to create something superior.

 

[Samulson]

My thoughts for what they are worth.

A singularity, in order to experience itself in all it's aspects, becomes.
It immerses itself into creation. It starts time, and begins space.
Time as a measure of the duration of it's consciousness.
Space to create within.
The goal being complete and total harmony.

As creation proceeds, the density of material becomes greater and greater, until it can only be affected by direct interaction.
This is necessary in order to give form stability and substance.
Stability and substance are required in order to experience the totality of all.
The totality of all must be experienced in order to re-integrate in harmony.

On this level of creation, within this density of matter, all that is not in harmony will be examined, integrated, or ultimately discarded.
Just as we do, so does creation.
Just as we purify ourselves through time, so does creation.

The immersion into existence, dispersed singular consciousness throughout existence, of which all consciousness is a part.
The singularity is no longer aware of itself, nor will it be until time ends, re-incorporation takes place, and all consciousness is reunited.
However, the core of harmony remains, a perfect singing light, drawing us back home.

The suffering of this world, of us, is necessary as part of the experience of existence.
Once we are done with it, once it is understood, it is over.
It is not harmonious and will be discarded.

And don't forget to have some fun, all creation enjoys laughter .

 

[Ninae]

I think part of it is also that God needs to rest at some point. One of the best spiritual teachers said God makes the greatest sacrifice, as he's in constant activity, otherwise the whole of creation would just collapse. I imagine this would be experienced as a form of ecstacy, though.

But I think he goes into a form of hibernation period (after billions of years).

 

[ebola?]

Okay...being a...'whatever' spirituality (agnostic with atheist and pantheist sympathies), I should elaborate on a concept I find philosophically useful that my Christian friend tends to identify as "god" (I even hold a type of reverence for it):

There is some body of conditions of possibility for all existence, both empirically and in terms of those conditions allowing for logic, concepts, etc. to emerge. In some sense, this body of conditions of possibility is 'logically prior'* to all that exists, all concepts it leads to, logic (and the space of possible axioms underlying any system of logic), and even the distinction between existence and nonexistence (for this relies on conceptual distinction in some sense)

*(I say 'logically prior' in irony-quotes because these conditions of possibility are not subject to logic or any other conceptual distinction, for they are what allow them to emerge).

My friend calls this "god", but it doesn't really resemble other gods people have described to me. It might be all-encompassing in terms of conditioning everything that emerges, and it might be 'eternal' and radically free in not being contingent on any empirical phenomenon or constraint of logic. It can be considered mystical, as use of our concepts cannot capture these conditions of possibility fully (so yes, all of my above description is clumsy pointing at something which is inherently inexplicable). Consequently, extra-symbolic mystical states (including psychedelics), meditations on logical contradiction, and other attempts to punch at the limits of conceptualization facilitate engagement with 'the conditions', but they always elude our analytical ability in some sense.
Hence the use of allegory so common in religious myth, the focus on contradiction and blankness in zen, the centrality of contradiction in the Holy Trinity, etc.

I personally like to think of these conditions of possibility as an indeterminate flux generative of an arbitrarily extendable set of actual phenomena but limited to and exhausted by no set of them. I guess this sort of idea may be extracted from Pragmatist philosophy (particularly James and Dewey), but I haven't yet seen it in explicitly theological writings.

This seems pretty different from a lot of "gods", as it is precludes anything even vaguely anthropomorphic. It's not even intelligible to speak of these conditions as having a will, desires, judgements, etc. If 'the conditions' had any such attributes, it would entail that they lack those characteristics which lead to their function in conditioning existence; an anthropomorphic god would be too small and even petty. And 'the conditions' certainly wouldn't hold normative opinions about how humans should relate socially.**
...
How is this pantheist? One could say that these conditions of possibility are 'inherent' in every actual phenomenon in existence, as all existence emerges per the possible avenues of development conditioned by them; in some sense, all existence is latent in those conditions. And we are the result of 'the conditions', a culmination of many latent possibilities coming to realization, where the universe writ whole begins to examine and act upon itself. How is my position atheist then? 'The conditions' I describe do not 'exist' (as we usually conceive of existence), because as was mentioned, they function to cultivate existence (and the division between it an nonexistence) in the first place. And because these conditions are beyond description, they don't truly exist even as an idea, nor can they in principle. This not only points to an atheist moment but also perhaps to the concept of "void" common in Eastern spirituality.
...
So you tell me: is this a "god"? If not, what is a god?

ebola
**well, one could argue that normative guidelines emerge in that one may submit to and evenly actively cultivate the development of those latent possibilities, but judgment of what constitutes "development" and what qualifies as stagnation or devolution rests on our personal (and social) judgments (and desires, goals, ethical commitments, etc.), not any property of the universe as a whole.

 

[Flickering]

Without having yet read through all the pages so far, here's my view.

As some have already mentioned, "God did it" is less of an answer and more of a dodge. Who created God? Children ask that question all the time (and usually they get told to just shut up) so it's obviously a natural follow-up. If the universe is so complex that it clearly needed to be created by something infinitely powerful and infinitely intelligent... okay, then where did THAT being that's so damn sopisticated come from?

The Big Bang? Not as uncontended as some people believe in the field of astrophysics. But as far as I understand it's the best theory we have. I won't doubt it until I have cause to.

However, I'm quite unconvinced this needs to be an either/or thing.

* The Big Bang Theory and the idea of God are not incompatible. The Big Bang could have been simply where the creator started.
* The Big Bang as the start of everything is an assumption. A massive assumption. All we can say is that it was the beginning of this universe as we know it.
* If there's a creative force behind our universe (and I'm not saying it's anything like the Abrahamic religions' conception of such a being / thing), that would imply our universe is part of some greater whole. I have no problem believing this.
* There is a lot of talk these days in both scientific and philosophical circles that our universe is some kind of hologram and/or computer simulation / virtual reality, apparently with some compelling evidence.
* The Big Bang also does not really answer the question. It answers how not why. Physicists themselves say that once you track the timeline back to a certain point, physics breaks down because physics relies on dimensional spacetime as we know it. We can say we were caused by the Big Bang but we don't yet know why the Big Bang happened to begin with. "Why do we exist?" "God!" is about as informative as "Why do we exist?" "Explosion!" (Well, a tad more to be fair; it tells us a great deal about physics and outer space. Just, not about the actual, for lack of a better word, cause of (this) reality.)

 

[Journyman16]

Proof the basis of Big Bang is wrong...

That's a high Redshift object linked physically with a low RS object.

Cosmology says that is impossible - IIRC the galaxy is supposed to be 80 million LY away and the Quasar is more than a billion LY away.

And there are many more...

 

[Erikmen]

I think part of it is also that God needs to rest at some point. One of the best spiritual teachers said God makes the greatest sacrifice, as he's in constant activity, otherwise the whole of creation would just collapse. I imagine this would be experienced as a form of ecstacy, though.

But I think he goes into a form of hibernation period (after billions of years).

Well, somehow in the end I believe it is up to us to make things go well and ethical within our communities. Influence our own families with education, kindness and self protection.

 

[swilow]

^Googling, wikipedia, provided...

The matter was effectively settled when observations using the Hubble Space Telescope showed that the light from Markarian 205 was passing through the disk and halo of NGC 4319 to reach the observer, placing Markarian 205 behind this galaxy and thus further away

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/doi/10.1086/171872

But who knows, I certainly don't know or understand enough to make definitive claims.

So you tell me: is this a "god"?

In a way, yes. You are sort of describing infinite potentiality (which I guess contains both existence and non-existence as possible attributes for expression). That sort of quality is much closer to what I would imagine god or the creative/energetic spark to be.

Very well written too ebola

 

[Erikmen]

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/doi/10.1086/171872

But who knows, I certainly don't know or understand enough to make definitive claims.

Absolutely

 

[Journyman16]

^Googling, wikipedia, provided...
http://adsabs.harvard.edu/doi/10.1086/171872
But who knows, I certainly don't know or understand enough to make definitive claims.

Probably not the place for an extensive discussion but there is far more evidence than can be removed by seeing a mix of spectral lines. If interested you could have a read here - http://www.astr.ua.edu/keel/galaxies/arp.html

re: the God issue. @Ebola? - reading that I was strongly reminded of a description from Paul laViolette's book, "Genesis of the Cosmos" where, in trying to describe the idea of a universe with no Big Bang, he uses the Belousov-Zhabotinsky Oscillating Reaction as an analogy for how a 'substrate' of perhaps only 2 parts, might give rise to matter and energy with no 'cause.'

Here's an example in a lab -



There is much more he goes into such as the specifics of the reactions that would give rise to the Universe we see and interestingly the theory has the large-scale structure we see at billion light year scales as a natural consequence - something the Standard Model has issues explaining. The theory seems to me to provide another explanation - is the rise of order in a universe that is apparently governed by entropy, meaning order should decay into chaos, and yet it is quite apparent it doesn't.

It seemed to me, reading your post, you could be describing something like his substrate, where mere random fluctuations along the lines of the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction can produce a lasting effect that would be under conditions totally different to those of the substrate. The 'substrate' would be the origin, but it would have neither goals nor perhaps, intention.

 

[casualcause]

I believe in somthing, but I dont know if I would describe it as "god" at least not in the sense most people use the word.

I do think someone or somthing, a higher power if you will, had a hand in creating life and the universe as we know it. There is just to much order in the universe and not enough "real" answers provided by science for me to believe otherwise.

That said, I dont consider myself to be dogmatic when it comes to this belief and I am always ready and willing to assess new thoughts and ideas as they are presented.

 

[Ninae]

My friend calls this "god", but it doesn't really resemble other gods people have described to me.

Both could be used to describe God. You could see God as an energy-source, the director of all things, and a consciousness that gives birth to other consciousnesses.

The human form doesn't really come into it. Obviously, God doesn't reside on Earth so there's no reason for him to be in a human form.

 

[Ninae]

I believe in somthing, but I dont know if I would describe it as "god" at least not in the sense most people use the word.

I do think someone or somthing, a higher power if you will, had a hand in creating life and the universe as we know it. There is just to much order in the universe and not enough "real" answers provided by science for me to believe otherwise.

That said, I dont consider myself to be dogmatic when it comes to this belief and I am always ready and willing to assess new thoughts and ideas as they are presented.

You're hedging all your bets there.

 

[casualcause]

You're hedging all your bets there.

Call it what you will. I dont look at it that way however.
I think its sheer arrogance and stupidity for anyone to take an absolute stance on this issue without being willing to examine any evidence, be it scientific or supernatural that might shed new light on the origin of our universe and life itself.

Truth is an amazing thing, one I think far to many people push to the side in order to maintain a system of belief that allows them to hang onto their world view. I consider myself a seeker, I dont have any answers. I just long for the truth.

If I have offended anybody with anything I have said here I will offer an apology in advance. Its not what I am trying to do.

 

[Ninae]

It wasn't offensive. You were just so careful about expressing your views.

 

[Erikmen]

Call it what you will. I dont look at it that way however.
I think its sheer arrogance and stupidity for anyone to take an absolute stance on this issue without being willing to examine any evidence, be it scientific or supernatural that might shed new light on the origin of our universe and life itself.

Truth is an amazing thing, one I think far to many people push to the side in order to maintain a system of belief that allows them to hang onto their world view. I consider myself a seeker, I dont have any answers. I just long for the truth.

If I have offended anybody with anything I have said here I will offer an apology in advance. Its not what I am trying to do.

There were no offenses whatsoever. You've expressed yourself and that has to be more than fine. I wouldn't worry about it��

 

[casualcause]

It wasn't offensive. You were just so careful about expressing your views.

I was more worried that somebody might think I was aiming the terms stupid and arrogant at them and take offense.

I dont mean to come across as wishy washy, or as somebody who is hedging my bets and sitting on the fence. And I know that I can be careful about expressing my views. But this comes about because I take great care when dealing with absolutes. Especially in a discussion of this nature where you have individuals and groups at either end of the scale (and often in the middle) directly opposing one another and in many cases using absolute statements to support and argue their view point.

How much do we, humanity, really know? I just think its dangerous for anybody, be it richard dawkins or chuck misler to approach such a fundamental question with their mind already set in stone, no willingness to learn to grow to seek or question. This is where extremists come into play on both sides of the field.

I begrudge nobody having faith, be it a religous faith or faith in the wonders of science. But where that faith blinds us, where we refuse to even peer over the the edge of the absolutes that have become the pillars of our lives. That is where I see the end beginning.

I dont know enough to take a stand one way or the other, I dont think anybody does, and Idont think anybody ever will. Believe what you will, have a faith, or dont. But dont let it blind you.

Ok, sorry for the bit of a ramble. Getting towards the end of bender and the brain struggles to function the way it probably should. Hope you can make some sense out of it. Ill check back another time and edit if need be.

 

[deaf eye]

why not ...