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Who is your "god"?

I understand exactly where you are coming from. You said it all and to add to world hunger, poverty, homelessness, bloodshed. But...we are all still here. I wouldn't say he's sick... If there is a God watching over us he won't just come down here and snap his fingers and make the world a perfectly happy fairytale land. What he can do....is give each and every one of us an opportunity to help change this world and create it into something God and human beings were logically capable of creating.

The pope...yes....I know... :| Although, Religion is a MAN-Made thing. Which honestly, how do we really know what religion is right and what is wrong? Religion is made for people to have hope, and morals. Which I can understand why but we need to get past the religion and become spiritual which is still in a understanding of God but nothing compared to man-made religion/God. If people woke up and found truth...Money would no longer rule, Oil would no longer drive war. I know what I'm creating is something that sounds impossible, but only impossible is impossible.
 
HumbleYogi said:
I understand exactly where you are coming from. You said it all and to add to world hunger, poverty, homelessness, bloodshed. But...we are all still here. I wouldn't say he's sick... If there is a God watching over us he won't just come down here and snap his fingers and make the world a perfectly happy fairytale land. What he can do....is give each and every one of us an opportunity to help change this world and create it into something God and human beings were logically capable of creating.

The pope...yes....I know... :| Although, Religion is a MAN-Made thing. Which honestly, how do we really know what religion is right and what is wrong? Religion is made for people to have hope, and morals. Which I can understand why but we need to get past the religion and become spiritual which is still in a understanding of God but nothing compared to man-made religion/God. If people woke up and found truth...Money would no longer rule, Oil would no longer drive war. I know what I'm creating is something that sounds impossible, but only impossible is impossible.
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I just don't think god knows about us. And I can't even really say god is even conscious. I'm just saying the universe is built similar to an organism, and we are like small versions of the universe. We are not important in the mind or eyes of the organism, but that is not to say we aren't important at all. Without us it could stop existing, or at least be different than what it is when we ARE present as a piece of it.
 
God? He's in you. As Above, So Below? He's in you. As Within, So Without? He's in you. Man is a microcosm? God is within you. Christianity?, Buddhism? Taoism? etc.? Religions created based on the personalities of great prophets and enlightened ones.

God is up there somewhere, but I also believe God is within us, no matter the religion or culture. When I pray, I hope my words are sent up to an omnipotent and omnipresent being or essence, but I also hope those same words are echoing within myself, so anything I bring forth is from me. [God is within me] If I'm lonely, God will give me company. I'm not saying I'll all of a sudden feel the presence of the Holy Spirit (although for some it may happen), I'm saying he'll come to me through a friend, or maybe even a stranger. [God is within you]

Everything is God, but you must cultivate and exercise your divinity, because this approach to God is the same for the Devil. If God is intelligence, the Devil is deceitful intelligence. All men desire good things, for no man wishes harm or misfortune upon himself. If all men desire good things, then man must learn what is truly good, or else he'll be deceived by others and sometimes even himself. To be good is to know truth, and to know truth is to know God.

This is a basic explanation of my views on God. Some may say this lacks spirituality, but this way of approaching God makes YOU responsible for everything you do. The more you know of the good, the closer you get to God, and if you are in harmony with his will, you'll soon have an intuitive sense of him (meaning visions, prophetic dreams, etc.).
 
What Bill Hicks said always nails it for me:

"Today a young man on acid realised that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, and that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is just a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves".

I don't do hallucinogens much these days as I don't get the chance and I've mostly "Got the message". But I've been in a state of mind through various psychadelics where I've known the above to be true....I've felt it on a level that can't be expressed through crude human language. And I know that sometimes when I've indulged in psychadelics I've had that same sense of wonder at the ineffable marvel of consciousness without the visor of ego and humanity for a brief time. Where the senses extend beyond their normal remit and synesthesia happens, creating new perceptions and realisations. And all the time, in the background there's that profound sense of familiarity, of knowing that I've been to this place before perhaps between one life and the next.

I often wonder though, what the purpose of life is if indeed we are all one consciousness experiencing itself. Perhaps it is lonely or boring just being one big huge pure consciousness and our lives are some kind of diversion, like a vacation or a dream. Or maybe our lives give texture or flavour to an otherwise pure consciousness which somehow enriches it through the experiences we have throughout our lives. Or maybe it's just how consciousness grows and expands itself. I know that I can never know whilst I'm human, but for me, my god is consciousness and the consciousness within us all is godly. And beyond that, there's the entire spectrum of consciousness that our human experience is just a tiny part of which stretches out infinitely across time and space in ways we can't even fathom.

I think it's truly profound and miraculous.
 
LotsOfDogs said:
What Bill Hicks said always nails it for me:

"Today a young man on acid realised that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, and that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is just a dream, and we're the imagination of ourselves".
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Cool story Bill Hicks. But like, your grasp of mass/energy equivalence is extremely primitive and more or less, completely incorrect. Energy is an observable of any physical system, however, it is not what the system is made out of anymore than the system is made out of space or time or velocity. One can have non-matter with observable energy slowed down to a far slower "vibration" than the stuff which composes you. They're called radio-waves, and are decidedly not matter and not conscious.

This is why I do not like to try and think about the nature of the universe while tripping balls. It leads to one make silly comments that sound profound to other people who are tripping but which make no fucking sense to someone sober who has a background in whatever subject it is that one opined upon.

And beyond that, there's the entire spectrum of consciousness that our human experience is just a tiny part of which stretches out infinitely across time and space in ways we can't even fathom.
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The overwhelming fucking majority of the universe consists of an extremely cold and dark, near vacuum. (Think 3 atoms/cubic meter). The next largest amount (which utterly pales in comparison to the volume of the vacuum) consists of really hot plasma, soaring into the millions of degrees, at pressures going well past 4.7 TRILLION pounds per square inch. I.e. Stars. These are also not going to host anything that can be meaningfully called "life" or otherwise be conscious. Almost any point you pick in the universe is very, very, hostile to life and/or lacks the kind of highly ordered structure that would be required for it be conscious in any sense. Only about 1/2 of 1% of the volume of the Earth is hospitable to any sort of life. A good deal of that, only to bacteria and very simple eurkaryotes like roundworms.
 
rangrz said:
This is why I do not like to try and think about the nature of the universe while tripping balls. It leads to one make silly comments that sound profound to other people who are tripping but which make no fucking sense to someone sober who has a background in whatever subject it is that one opined upon.

The overwhelming fucking majority of the universe consists of an extremely cold and dark, near vacuum. (Think 3 atoms/cubic meter). The next largest amount (which utterly pales in comparison to the volume of the vacuum) consists of really hot plasma, soaring into the millions of degrees, at pressures going well past 4.7 TRILLION pounds per square inch. I.e. Stars. These are also not going to host anything that can be meaningfully called "life" or otherwise be conscious. Almost any point you pick in the universe is very, very, hostile to life and/or lacks the kind of highly ordered structure that would be required for it be conscious in any sense. Only about 1/2 of 1% of the volume of the Earth is hospitable to any sort of life. A good deal of that, only to bacteria and very simple eurkaryotes like roundworms.
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Thanks for your respectful, polite and informative response.

It seems you are privy to some sort of irrefutable scientific evidence (which thus far I have been unable to find) which settles the issue of the nature of consciousness and dictates that it can only be found within complex assemblies of physical matter. The zeal with which you attempt to trample on anything spiritual is reminiscent to me of Richard Dawkins.

I understand that for some, only a purely scientific explanation will do (incomplete as human science still is). For me, it's a somewhat sterile and inadequate picture which doesn't explain the spiritual elements of life which I have experienced and witnessed (many of which have been whilst sober). Why did I wake up bolt upright at 3am in the morning, at exactly the same time my father was having a fatal stroke three miles away? Why does a dear friend of mine (who is a salvationist) continue to defy doctors' expectations and live a normal life despite having cancer in his prostate and bladder? His own doctor has stated that he's observed that his patients who have a faith tend to do better than those who do not. Interestingly, what faith that is doesn't seem to matter.....It seems that it is faith itself that is the key here.

If you're willing to discuss whether or not there's anything to spirituality and faith without a mocking and arrogant tone with me, I'm quite happy to carry on. Otherwise, please put your cross-hairs elsewhere.
 
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Why do I suppose only complex, highly ordered structures have the potential to be life/conscious? It has to do with information storage and manipulation. A system with a very complex and highly ordered structure has a very large number of possible states it can exist it, and the subset of those possible states which are capable of holding unique information value is large. As an analogy, compare the language capabilities of a 3 year old vs someone who's finished high school or did an undergrad. Think about the breadth and depth of each one's vocabulary and grammatical structures. The one with more words and word structures to pick from has a greater number of possible states they can form a string with. Similarly, they can usually posit ideas significantly more complex than "I tire" or "no bed now!"

Why does this physician note that people with faith tend to better than those who do not? Probably the same reason a volunteer soldier is a better fighter than a draftee, or why a physics student does better in her calculus class than a humanities student, or why sex with a partner who gives you positive feedback and is enjoying and eager to be intimate with you and who you feel affection for is more satisfactory than some arbitrary stranger. Motivation to meet the challenges, acceptance of the pain/suffering/work involved, etc. Which leads to one getting up, out of bed (maintaining some sort of basic physical fitness), going to their Dr, compliance with the treatment, and otherwise not just sulking and resigning oneself to die. Or not being afraid of death, and thus not being very anxious and stressed, which is already known to be detrimental to ones health.

I'd argue that spirituality and faith are artifacts of the human brain, and in particular, it's unique adaptions for, and capabilities with abstract thought. It should be noted that animals can be shown to have "superstitious" type behaviours, and typically, these occur with increasing frequency and complexity as one goes to animals with more capability for abstract thought, long term memory, and learned behaviour.
 
It seems to be me that you're talking more about intellectual capacity and the ability to interpret one's place in the universe, rather than consciousness itself. I agree with your rationale from that perspective, of course an adult's intellect is generally superior to a child's. But to come at it from another angle....Is a new born baby or a five year old any less or more conscious than a fully grown adult? To qualify, I'm referring specifically to the pure state of being before intellect....That to me is pure consciousness which is ineffable and which many who practice meditation strive to experience....Consciousness without the noise of the mind if you will. Perhaps the difference between us here is that you equate intellect with consciousness whereas I do not.

As for faith....I doubt we will ever convince each other with our own arguments. Some people see love as a chemical reaction (which on a biological level it probably is) whereas others see it as something spiritual and mysterious. You can say that things like faith, love, spirituality and superstitious behaviours are evolutionary facets of higher level beings which most likely play some part in the survival of a species. But again to me, this focuses on the nuts and bolts whilst completely ignoring the broader elegance of the system in which we find ourselves and the role faith plays in that.

I don't go along with Intelligent Design, I completely accept Darwin's theory of evolution but I also find that science as it stands now only takes us so far. It explains some of the mechanisms biological organisms employ for survival and evolution, but it doesn't (and most likely never will) explain what the point of it is. If you ask a scientist what the meaning of life is, they will most likely say survival, procreation and ensuring the continuation of the species.....Fine, I accept that but surely the next question is "For what purpose?"
 
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Believing in god is like the tooth fairy/santa. Its beneficial in some way but nonsensical. People are full of shit. Period.
 
“Religion is like a blind man looking in a black room for a black cat that isn't there, and finding it.”

- Oscar Wilde
 
ooooooh truth eh? If we start talking about truth it can get very philosophical and go on for hours and get no where. I stick by my original post.
 
"What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms -- in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.
We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors - in moral terms, the obligation to lie according to fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all...
-Friedrich Nietzsche
 
panic in paradise said:
^Nietzsche was a follower of Christ, his intention was to awaken the christian majority.
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On the off chance that wasn't sarcasm...

"I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty - I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind." -Nietzsche, The Antichrist
 
If I haven't yet I will have lived your life through your body and mind, and will have read this sentence from your perspective. After I've lived out every possible host, I will be omniscient. I'm living in everyone, everywhere all throughout time right now. But there exists no before or after, or you. The time is always now, and self and other are reflexive.
 
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