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[MEGA] God v.2

I used to have a huge problem with the idea of God, it conflicted too much with my scientific and (failed) religious programming. I had too many negative connotations associated with the word God.

I have now learned to accept that when people talk about a God, they are generally referencing their conception of a "higher power" or greater force in this universe.

To me, God is only a word we have created to symbolically represent our conception of the totality of the universe. It is a word symbolically used to represent the divine force that is penetrating and animating this universe, which is beyond all of us.

And in that respect, God is not God... God is a symbolic representation of our ability to conceptualize within the constructs of this universe. Our language has many words for this, and God has just one of them.

Now, that being said. I believe in God, and I have experienced God, and I will say this... God is much bigger than a word, because God can not be conceptualized. It is not meant to be conceptualized. The force that is driving this universe is infinite and completely transcendent of life itself, no mind can fathom the complexity of the infinite.

To me, God is Love, God is Infinity, God is the force that moves all things. God is everything and nothing. God is you, and god is me. I am God and so are you.

I prefer to use the word Spirit, because it doesn't have as many negative religious connotations, but that is just me, but by accepting the word "God" I am able to better understand other people who are operating from that paradigm when they are speaking to me.

If I am conversing with a Christian, it does me no good to deny his word for the divine absolute. I have to recognize that when he talks of God he is only talking about his conception of the highest power in the universe. Everyone has a conception of a higher power in this universe, even if they are an atheist. The higher power for an atheist is Death, and that is a force that we all must succumb to eventually.

Much Love and Many Blessings.
 
^ My understanding is that the esoteric conception of God is closest to what Buddhist thinkers call 'Buddha Nature', which is in all things and all people inherently, but that the Buddhists see no value in anthropomorphizing it, and find the word 'God' in general unhelpful to understanding the true nature of reality and of mind.
 
As an individualist, I tend to agree with the sentiment of the OP. However, it's important to remember, that people's beliefs are theirs for a reason. If someone believes they were powerless to get over their, let's say crack addiction, and they managed to get over it, is it wrong they give credit to God? Would you rather them have a bloated self-stroked egotistical person, or a humble one?

Another way someone might view this is that someone found god within themselves, and that's what helped them get over a drug addiction, and in this sense, giving credit to god is also giving credit to themselves. I don't think it's too far out to believe that god manifests itself within certain individuals.

With this being said, the OP's sentiment that the individual themselves quit drugs and God can't do that for you, is an agreeable one in my opinion. Some people will never give themselves enough credit, and will wield their idea of God as what should be the concept of god for everyone else; and that does make me rather sick.

Lastly, everyone's concept of god is different. I don't believe there is a god for everyone, nor is there god within everyone. That would be a flawed view IMO, but if someone wants to believe god is, somehow, in everyone, or if there is one god for everyone, I don't care to challenge their belief. I just think it's not their belief, but rather, what was forced upon them by their own society or their own parents, and they just happened to be gullible enough to believe what the first person told them was true regarding god.

Cornishman said:
God is the big bang.

God created everything.
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Pantheists would go so far as to say god is everything.

In this sense, praising god for an individual's feat would also be giving themselves partial or complete credit.

MynameisnotDeja said:
I'm glad a lot of people seem to understand faith. :) I find hardcore athiests to be just as obnoxious as hardcore Christians. Anyone who thinks their way is the only way is blind, period. I also think anyone who is 100% sure about the workings of the Universe and the meaning of this life is blocking themselves off to a greater truth. Spirituality is always flowing and growing and learning. To say "This is how things are" stops that flow. I do "know" a lot, but what I've found over the years is the big picture just keeps growing and growing and it's bigger and more beautiful than I ever could have imagined in the past.
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I find most atheists to be rather interesting and deep people. Some atheists are annoying, yes.

Not all atheists object to other people's ideas of god, they just mock them behind their back in their spare time. Just like you can make fun of atheists because you (may or may not) believe they are going to burn in hell for being a non-believer.

I respect most people who do not believe in God who use reason and logic to back up their beliefs. Ayn Rand's beliefs in religion, are just as valid as mine, IMO.

psychoblast said:
Anyway, what helps us overcome challenges is NOT faith
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Quoted for truth, and because it's the most rational and reasonable thing I've seen posted in this thread so far.

SececaRD said:
How can you talk for me??
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Did God flush the rest of your stash down the toilet, or did you?

Did you decide to stop going to the dope man, or did God kill the dope man for you?

We're not talking for you, we're just seriously doubting that God helped you quit heroin. Can you explain to me how this mysterious, emotion-based phenomenon happened, or are you just going to quote a bible verse and tell me that because of that, god intervenes in everyone's life, and he obviously must have in yours?

As far as I'm concerned, if god created everything, god made you and god made heroin. God made you into a heroin addict. If he got you clean, he's the one to blame for getting you addicted.

Stop blaming your problems on God and start being accountable for your own actions, and people might take your beliefs on god seriously, instead of scoffing at them.
 
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I think that when most people in the United States speak of a god, they are referring to a creator that has a personal interest in our lives. Many people on this board are more vague, citing a higher power that we somehow "join" after death. And yet here are others that speak of god as the physical laws of the universe, but I find that misleading, since it would be much simpler to refer to them as the laws that they are.

Ultimately, people believe in this because they are emotionally predisposed to such a belief. No one wants to die, so people cling to the idea that there is something more after death. Generally, people start with the classic religions of society. Once these religions are examined and found wanting, people will move on to a more vague interpretation such as a "higher consciousness" or a "universal consciousness". While it is much easier to find inconsistencies and problems with the Bible since there is so much text, the idea of a universal consciousness is equally unfounded. There is nothing to suggest any kind of god exists. People feel safer with the more liberal interpretations of god since there isn't much concrete stuff to attack, but it is all the same type of emotional needs being met.

To me, it is rather simple. There is a strong evolutionary incentive to believe in a higher power, and yet there is absolutely no empirical evidence to suggest such a higher power exists. So which is more likely, that a higher power exists or that we delude ourselves into thinking one does?
 
B9 said:
Telepathy does happen - not that I'm claiming to posses any of the virtues mentioned by MDAO it does occur tho.
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Really? Because countless experiments have determined it does not happen. There is no mechanistic explanation for how it could possibly happen, and everyone who has claimed this power turned out to be a fraud.

These facts would lead me to believe that telepathy most definitely does not occur.
 
^^Agreed.

People have a crippling inability to let go of the notion of a greater spirit or lifeforce (even if they reject traditional notions of god.)

Why can't people let go and just realize that the world around them is the result of billions of years of gradual development? Thats where the beauty in existence lies, the fact that you dear bl reader, the tree in your street, your pet, your grandma and the entire world you see is the result of billions of years of gradual evoloution.

Why does it need to be explained by a spiritual metaphysical being as opposed to reason and science, which does NOT detract in any way from its majesty and grandeur? Infact i've realized now once rejecting notions of a higher spirit the absolute awesomeness present in the smallest of things.

I for one would rather put my coins in the corner of science and evidence. Yes, I cannot deny there is the %0.1 chance of there being a higher spiritual being; but why not go for the %99.9 chance offered to us by rationality and science which is supported by (relative to spiritual belief) ENDLESS amounts of evidence?

ps. I know this may not be worded as well as it could but it took me long enough, i'm quite stoned :)

p.s.s Sorry I just had to add something. I read above someone commented about even athiests having a conceptionof a higher being, (being death.) The argument here is based around the notion of an afterlife (something I don't want to go into to deeply now unless I get a reply to this.) In My (abbreviated) opinion, death is simple. Blood stops flowing to the brain. Your ability to perceive the world and be conscious (facilitated by your brain) thus ends as there is no blood flowing to the brain to allow it run (like a car without petrol.) TA DA! Wonderful isn't it? You die, maggots eat your brains, and life continues. I'm sorry to burst your bubble; but you and I, nor anyone else, is special. Like a chicken, to a rat, to a human, we end up the same.

Someone tell me where doggy heaven is because i'd love to go when I die.
 
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infectedmushroom said:
^^Agreed.

People have a crippling inability to let go of the notion of a greater spirit or lifeforce (even if they reject traditional notions of god.)

Why can't people let go and just realize that the world around them is the result of billions of years of gradual development? Thats where the beauty in existence lies, the fact that you dear bl reader, the tree in your street, your pet, your grandma and the entire world you see is the result of billions of years of gradual evoloution.

Why does it need to be explained by a spiritual metaphysical being as opposed to reason and science, which does NOT detract in any way from its majesty and grandeur? Infact i've realized now once rejecting notions of a higher spirit the absolute awesomeness present in the smallest of things.
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Metaphysics isn't "magic". It's just another way of examining the phenomena around you, and noticing the little subtleties that normally don't attract attention. Things that turn out to be pretty fundamental in the functioning of this universe.

Emergence is a pet topic of mine. It is the phenomenon of complex behaviour arising from large networks of simple, interconnected nodes or cells. One example is the "group intelligence" of insect colonies - while individual insects are very simple creatures, the collective of them functioning together forms a hive-mind which appears to function as an individual. This pattern is observed in other things as well: organic molecules form cells, cells form individual organisms, organisms form societies (pack-hunting animals and humans are two good examples of this)... This concept is an observed phenomenon in the real world. It even happens with traffic on the Internet. Twitter is an amazing example of this, if you've ever used it. I find that the most amazing example of emergence, however, is our own consciousness.

Another favourite idea of mine is what I have blandly termed information transfer. This happens on many scales, the most well-known of which is within our own brains - neurons communicate to each other in a two-way fashion. However, structured communication is not the only way information is transferred. It happens when to rocks hit each other in space: information about the first rock's velocity is combined with that of the other rock. If information about the second's velocity can be observed, the first's can be determined. The information is transferred forward through time, and stored as a combination of velocity and rotational momentum.

Similarly, information about the state of Earth's environment at the beginnings of life is encoded in the world around us. Firstly in our own DNA (the evolutionary evidence of the shapes and chemical make-ups of different organs), as well as being archived in fossils and the occasional "mummified" creature from the ages, and of course the mineral structure of rocks, mountains and the like. Unlike neurons, however, the "basic" physical universe does not achieve much two-way communication. Evolution is somewhat of an outlier here, since it is both unidirectional like the physical universe, yet like a network of neurons relies on the sharing of information (DNA) to continue to function.

Since emergence relies on networks of communication, and information transfer happens literally everywhere, does this not suggest that it is at least possible that "mind" (which we have clearly seen exists within networks of a specific type of interconnected, stateful cells) can exist on large scales, using nodes of space rocks, stars/black holes, cells and even individual humans? What if your network goes from a gajillion interconnected cells to just another rock? All that has happened is that your lump of brain matter has transitioned from a fast-thinking, small-scale network to a slow-thinking, large-scale one.
 
Raw Evil said:
Since emergence relies on networks of communication, and information transfer happens literally everywhere, does this not suggest that it is at least possible that "mind" (which we have clearly seen exists within networks of a specific type of interconnected, stateful cells) can exist on large scales, using nodes of space rocks, stars/black holes, cells and even individual humans? What if your network goes from a gajillion interconnected cells to just another rock? All that has happened is that your lump of brain matter has transitioned from a fast-thinking, small-scale network to a slow-thinking, large-scale one.
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Possible? Sure. The probability of such a thing is another story. As far as we know the only thing that can produce consciousness is a highly evolved biological organism. Period. Nothing suggests that consciousness has been produced in any other way. Would you seriously consider the idea that pink unicorns run the weather from atop a mountain? I mean, it is possible. The difference is that you have no emotional investment in that improbable theory, but people have an emotional investment in the idea that there is more to come after death, or there is consciousness beyond our own. It is a matter of being candid with yourself and having the emotional fortitude to acknowledge the realities of the situation.

I do believe that there is consciousness somewhere else in the universe, since the probability of alien life is pretty high, but I don't believe in a larger or higher consciousness. It has taken long enough for our own consciousness to evolve.
 
I do not believe God as a "Being" or another form of "life".

As far as creator and ruler of the universe, I'd say the title goes to the universe. Or the two deities Hydrogen and Helium. I will admit there is room for a creator or some "Being". I just think he/she/it would have bigger better things to do than watch and judge us. Unless he/she/it likes the drama :)
 
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Maybe God is the present moment in-of-itself.
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Yet this 'moment' always is, but simultaneously can never come to be; we emerge of this 'moment' as a self-referential 'strange loop' (see Hofstadter)--we see our take on this moment, and our take on our take on the moment, however unable to capture the totality--a snake cannot complete devouring itself.
 
There has to be a reason why there is reality, as opposed to no reality. There must be some metaphysical structure which allows phenomenon to exist. Whether or not this thing that allows reality is judgmental, I am not sure, but I think no. But I cant deny the fact that I am thrown into this world, along with everyone else, not of my "own" doing. Even if we did this all to ourselves, (Hindu idea of reality as a play) just to forget, I still seem some force, allowing my experience to happen.
 
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