I am not your enemy. But I do not have your faith. There’s an apple tree in my yard. I can send you a picture of it. I can bring you to my tree, let you see it, touch it, hell sniff if it we wanna let Biden come too. It’s provable.
Claiming to know personally the creator of all things and then have no concrete proof to show anyone who’s not a die hard member of your particular club/sect/cult/weekend get together is not particularly inspiring.
Many religions have come and gone. Many are active today. All like to say they have the real answer and if one actually did the others would fold overnight.
One does not need to have an invisible friend to be a good person to others. One can merely want to do good and be beneficial to society as a whole and bring joy to those around them. Even your Jesus met the Good Samaritan on the road and he was doing kind deeds without having met and received such teachings that apparently good men need.
No, none of this has anything to do with being enemies, at least not for me.
Yes, BiXin might like to sniff that tree of yours. :D Me, I believe you on simple 'faith' that your tree is there for the sniffing. LOL.
I would also agree that doing good for good's sake is a fine endeavor. And if that is where you live, know that I support it and would only help. I only wish more would do this for the sake of just doing it.
What if I don't want everlasting life? What if half a million hours or so is enough for me? I'm not greedy. What would I do with an infinite amount of hours? The unlimited hours cheat isn't as attractive as it sounds.
Problem with a god having created our universe would be the implications of an emotion having invoked a response thereby diminishing this omnipotent being to the wings of want and self satisfaction.
After much introspection and honest evaluation, it is impossible to know one way or another as to the manner in which we were created. Claims of a god are just as hasty as atheistic living. We can’t and will never know the origins of the infinite.
From my experiences, evolution in itself is not a predicate to life without the existence of a god, but all things known and unknown are only part of our humanism. The unknowable is above our pay grade and pretending one way or another to be aware is simply self righteousness and a mistake.
Meh, to each his own. Nothing at all having to do with self-righteousness. Since when are questions a mistake?
You are clearly well pleased to believe all that is presented to you and wish to leave it be. That's great, good for you.
So let's take history for example, we are told that Western or modern civilization is some 6,000 years old, give or take some time. If so, and you are happy with that, awesome. According to you, full stop, YOU are done.
The fact remains that ruins keep coming up that are 10K or 12K or more old which therefore negates everything we read about in the prescribed history books.
Nope, nothing having to do with self-anything, and everything to do will fulfilling a promise made millennia ago.
Period, for you maybe, and that is simply great. I support it because free will gives you that right. I have no issues with anyone sitting on a fence or disagreeing to whatever extent.
That aside, others, myself included have and will continue to have experiences, continue to ask questions, and debate this very interesting topic.
Again, nothing to do with self righteousness or any other pretense.
I think a lot of the ideations of a God figure are bad. They're unworkable.
A lot of people will say God knows everything. Even that which is impossible to know. You immediately hit logical and moral conflict such that particular definition of a god doesn't make sense. It's overpowered almost to the point of undermining its own power.
If you make a modification that it knows the most or all that can be known then it starts to be more workable.
A God as a big computer is also a bit suspect. Though I don't believe in it, made in the image of man or likeness doesn't refer to what people think it does. I would assume it refers not literally to the visual appearance of humans but more fundamental properties including the qualities that we have most internally to us such as emotion or the underlying components of it.
There's a kind of anti-emotion movement and I believe this is wrong. I'm a man from the times of yore where we see Vulcan's as amputated and mentally weak. They eschew all emotion because they cannot handle it.
Traditional men master both logic and emotion. It is not emotion that is bad. It is we that are bad at emotion. Funnily enough most people who think themselves logical are bad at that as well.
Evolution can occur with or without a God. It does need some properties in a universe but not that. When it comes to the known and unknown, there is a class that thinks themselves some kind of God and refuse to be humble and accepts the unknown.
I think those people are a threat to people with brains like ours that can acknowledge a broader reality with many things beyond our knowing.
I think the concept isn’t just the “broader reality,” rather an unknowable reality. That which does not change is the only thing that could be real. From our human, finite standpoint of the universe and existence the only thing that appears permanent is change itself. This raises a problem, an inability, in grasping what it means to be infinite. For example, evolution and the Big Bang can be a simple factor of a cyclically expanding and contracting universe, yet still be completely dissociated with the concept of god. This is why I’ve always been drawn toward our entire existence as being mental in nature. The universe is mind.
I also believe it’s important to find balance between the quest for the unknown and simply living life as it comes. Don’t push, don’t pull. This raises the necessity to put aside constant introspection of god because wanting what can’t be attained will leave one torn asunder, like waves beating on rocks. The opposite side of the spectrum is complete denial of an omnipotent being and affixing the impossibility to all things. From what I’ve gathered, it’s of no use to make a hard choice as the proof will never be revealed.
The mental reality of all things seems most likely, however. It serves the ability to have this permanent, infinite universe where no physical things exist and never have existed. The basis for this stems from a single mind that is so still it can never be moved, not by emotion nor persuasion. In this unchanging mind, all things can exist as impermanent, ever changing and constantly trading energy that is never separate from the mental universe. Whether or not that mind is god will never be known, but it does appear our existence is mental in nature and would thereby be infinite.
Broad includes unknowable reality or partially knowable reality. Many people are stuck with only what they know and unaware of how much they don't know.
When it comes to these voids I don't like to always fill them in but leave them empty as possible. Then you can see the edge and follow it or advance it.
I don't have to resort to an omnipotent being (which reasons further questions). However it's still unexplained how anything exists. There's a tendency of many to think they have the answer but each answer leads to another question and you never reach the bottom. The concept of god suffers the same fate, a link in a chain.
There comes a point where you just have to say we know things exist and don't have a clue why. The concept of an all knowing god seems like a substitute for accepting the unknown.
The problem of the universe as pure perception or for all I know I could be the only thing that exists and reality is my own reflection if that once you go down that path anything is possible, most of it just cancels each other out and you can't really make any sense of anything. It's all up in the air.
The only fundamental truth thar raises real questions is hat we're aware of our existence and they're not explanation for that nor any reason why the universe should only become capable of producing that now. We fundamentally do not really know what we are. Only that we are. We can explain half of it (the external material part) but not the other half (the internal experience part).
If we're conscious and don't know why we cannot exclude the possibility of some conscious direction elsewhere in the universe. It would be arrogant to assume we're the only conscious thing.
I generally don't believe in God. However there is a major problem in science. They say that the universe is nothing but physics.
That is not true. I can directly observe being conscious. That is for example that I feel pain for real. Then phenomena does not exist in physics. Yet it does exist.
If that phenomena exists in the brain then you cannot rule out it being found else where in the universe. After all when you look at the brain you don't find any material that couldn't be elsewhere in the universe.
The state of the universe prior to the big bang is completely unknown. We cannot rule out some conscious phenomena having effect the physical universe we see today. That could also pertain to having influenced the rules of the universe.
Such a notion is really challenging and most scientists not only abandon it but ignore it through hubris because they don't like the idea of there being something they can never know or figure out.
If such a force did exist the possibilities are endless. I would not assume automatically the common anthropomorphic entity, nor one that still exists not whose intentions match the reality we experience. Some of the possibilities are quite disturbing.
Consciousness does not have to exist in a state that matches reality. You can dream or hallucinate. There is a theoretically valid theory for the brain to have evolved around exploiting the potential for consciousness in things that exist and for that conscious effect to match reality.
If at the beginning of the universe you have consciousness all entwined with matter and energy (in some ways the same thing) it wouldn't be evolved like we. We have no basis to assume it has what we have. Instead you could have something existing in terminal and complete detachment from reality dreaming while also influencing the early evolution of the universe. Exactly what that would look like and be like could be almost insanity inducing.
There is a very real subjective as well as objective universe. We exist as a subjective component of the universe which experiences it objectively. Why would these two components not have existed from the beginning? What's particularly disturbing is the dehumanisation of science saying that only the objective universe exists.
Down the line that's going to be a growing threat. The irony is their hubris has denied them the opportunity to figure out that conscious almost certainly heavily interplays with evolution and is not a passive component. They focus only on intelligence. I seem to be the only one who has presented that particular theory of evolution.
Consciousness is very easily demonstrably physical. We've done these lovely little experiments called "wars" that demonstrate that people who have their brains destroyed or unable to be adequately supplied by the body tend to lose consciousness pretty fucking fast. There's also the rare cases of people taking brain damage in non-critical areas and not dying but having their psyches altered. Consciousness is also manipulatable chemically and electrically. None of those involve anything supernatural, so it's reasonable that even though we don't fully understand how consciousness arises yet, there's no reason it should be supernaturally derived.
External consciousness is impossible to prove. That's why scientists hate it. Blood flow isn't consciousness. You obviously haven't read it all to understand what consciousness truly is. You're treating it like a lamp that you can turn on or off and see it turned on and off. But can you see the lamp seeing you see it turned on or off (or I guess only off in this case)?
You don't understand consciousness at all. Most people don't. It's not externally observed phenomena. It's that which observes. It's things like why are you you and not someone else? You're right that it's clearly not entirely detached from physical material which is my point from the start but completely wrong when you say it can be demonstrably physical. It being tied with the physical is not the same as it being the physical. In science physical does not refer to properties of material such as what it feels. What you're saying is they can measure how much pain a photon is feeling or something. Either you've got the terminology wrong or you don't know what it is I'm referring to.
You might understand more if you start to think about it in relation to its evolution:
The process of evolution is not conscious itself or at least need not be, it's natural. In its blindness it will walk into anything and everything. Ironically even into a pair of eyes. It will exploit all the properties of a material it can. If that includes inducing the potential for that material to experience things for real then it won't hold back.
What I directly observe in evolution is an interface. The information is very specific. If you create software you create an interface for the human. It shows them only what they need. You do no show all the underlying data or the code. The computer does that out of sight. The same phenomena exists in the brain. What we consciously experience is extremely specific and user friendly. It's high level processed data and filtered for us. We're unconscious of much of that processing or underlying data despite the fact that it resides in the brain.
That we're only privy to the end result of very specific processing and data, though at varying levels from raw to processed in a way that's highly utilitarian, like being in the cockpit of the jet with all the readouts, that suggests a selective process of what and what not to load consciousness with or what to display on the HUD. We have evidence for this when people with head injuries or intoxication consciously access part of their brain they usually can't when it malfunctions. This evolutionary process is unlikely to have happened in a leap given the enormous complexity of the brain but instead evolved through animals and some hundred million or more years.
Our brain touches our consciousness but what would be the point of evolution if there's no benefit? There's no plausible explanation for feeling pain for real like whipping an animal if not to motivate the conscious part of us to actuate and serve the brain some benefit. Vision could be explained as an accident but the realism and accuracy of discomfort cannot be explained. Though it does not guarantee it, this strongly hints at free will. Another question is why would it need pain to do its bidding? If it could control the phenomena of consciousness entirely and directly it would not be needed. It's very hard to explain the realism of pain and so specifically in association with a functional purpose without a process to select specifically for that so in evolutionary terms it must achieve something.
There are many benefits to tapping consciousness. As a survival machine, being only physical isn't as strong a driver as experiencing existing and surviving for real. The ability to also incorporate all of the data from your nerves and to feel like you are your entire being for real (holistic experience of your material self) is also a boon.
Science not only ignores God but also the human soul which you should be even more concerned with than people no longer believing in God. The philosophical challenge of why we experience existing for real is at the centre and origin of most religions. That is the likely original meaning of the soul in most, that we experience things for real. As opposed to for example when I program a computer simulation of a person to say ouch I don't expect it to feel pain for real. Consciousness is at the very basis of our existence and existential inquiry. It's also very puzzling. Most people don't realise that's what the soul refers to and the philosophical basis for religion. It's really the basis for the first questions. The observation that you exist. Many people miss it. People didn't know how to explain these things more precisely. I'll read a religious text that'll casually mention a flaming apricot flying by and it's obvious that probably referred to a meteorite.
The soul is not only compatible with the theory of evolution but highly consistent with it and in many respects shaped by it. In a way almost trapped and imprisoned by it, forced to drive its vehicles around. Evolution of the optimal pilot the material makes available.
If you think about the evidence pointing to a hundred million years of evolution, it's been there, the potential, in any material for that long and probably all the way back to the beginning. There is the question of course what excites it and scientists are no where near this.
You know what's scary? If you don't fully understand consciousness it might be because you're not fully conscious. Perhaps there are too many humans and not enough souls or it's just a manufacturing defect, an invisible birth defect. Why would it be supernatural? Are you saying you don't exist? Are you calling my sense of consciousness supernatural? Are you calling me a spirit? It would be a natural quality of the material. For example, what's it like to be an electron? Would it be supernatural to be an electron?
Another scary progression is science denying the human soul while Hollywood anthropomorphises cars and the average leftist especially just gobbles it up. I can't say I believe in Satan but that sure does look like Satan's work.
Ultimately, you can observe nobody's consciousness but your own directly. However, it's a very reasonable assumption that other people have a similar consciousness. You're biologically similar, you can hold conversations, you can read what they write, we react to physical and emotional stimuli in similar ways. The same can't be said for a lamp. Consciousness is a thing that something has, to some degree, or doesn't have. If it's not physical, why's cutting a living human brain in half result in two lumps of unconscious flesh? If the lamp is conscious, where? What part of the lamp gives it consciousness? Pain is an indicator that something's wrong, and is definitively physical as well. It's reasonably understood, which is how local anesthetics were developed. It also has an obvious evolutionary advantage, in that it's a strong deterrent from doing things that harm your body, like holding your hand in a fire. Human brains are also much better at prediction and problem solving than others. If you have convincing proof of a "soul" outside the electrical impulses in our brains, go claim your Nobel Prize and get your name put down in history forever.
It's by definition not physical. That doesn't mean when you see a physical thing it's not a part of the same thing. A physical thing isn't necessarily the whole thing. Consciousness is not a physical quality. Physical is what we can observe in common objectively. It's not the observer itself (which also observes itself).
If you take a physical entity it's physical because that's the only part of it you can consciously perceive through external stimuli and measure scientifically. It's not the whole and the only quality it possesses only that which it expresses to you internally. So it's not purely physical as we mean it. Obviously physical matter is not entirely physical matter but physical matter with the potential to internally experience consciousness. The physical part refers to its outside. It doesn't know about the inside.
It might not do that all the time and it might not be physical all the time. The thing is science really has very little comprehension of what physical matter actually is other than something it can measure from an external perspective. It can find out how gravity behaves but it cannot tell you fundamentally what it is or why it is. You're going down the road of the measurement of the thing is the thing itself.
Pain is an indicator that something's wrong, and is definitively physical as well. It's reasonably understood, which is how local anesthetics were developed.
I don't think you have the capacity to comprehend based on that. An indication to what? Define wrong. Why does it need to be indicated that something is wrong?
I can program stuff that sends signals that something is wrong but why would it need to feel pain for real, as a real phenomena? It's completely unnecessary for a physical system. Why would it actually hurt?
Consciousness is undeniably derived physically. Again, if you have any proof to the contrary, that it's from some supernatural soul, your name would go down in history forever. But you don't.
If you are telling the truth, then you have no consciousness that is able to act through you. You are purely a physical entity. Like a rock. Simply a bunch of atoms but arranged differently. You are saying you have no soul. You are saying that you feel nothing, no pain, no experience at all. You are saying that you're a biological chat bot and nothing more.
Yes, I've seen no convincing evidence of the existence of a soul or anything else supernatural. You're also a purely physical entity, physical like a rock, a bunch of atoms arranged in a matter to make you.
A "cosmic beginning" doesn't point to a god whatsoever, the "Goldilocks universe" shit is incoherent- life as we know it is a result of these conditions, and where's the evidence that the universe could exist any other way? If your probability is 1/? then it's not improbable, it's undefined, and that's ignoring that pretty much the entire universe save for a couple meters or so above the surface of the Earth would kill you nearly instantly- and nothing about DNA suggests a creator either.
Here's how I put it...there's no way everything we see could just pop out of a pinpoint in space. That's absurd.
If you were walking in the woods and saw a computer out there, would wouldn't say "oh well that just developed right there over time from a primordial ooze". No...clearly a more intelligent being is involved with that computer sitting on the forest floor.
This earth and humanity is that computer on the forest floor.
There's no way a god could just exist. That's absurd.
If I was walking in the woods and saw a computer, my past experiences with computers would tell me that it's overwhelmingly likely that this was made by a human, and if I desired to verify that I could even look at the serial numbers of the parts and check their authenticity. Can't really do that with people.
Given the complexity of nature as we know it, there's no way a god can't exist. Prove to me such complex things can exist without being created.
I'm not claiming to understand what god is...or even claiming to have the ability to understand what god is....I just know there is some form of a god...some sort of life force
Look at crystals, for example. They're beautifully ordered and structured, but even sitting down with some water and salt is enough to demonstrate they appear naturally. And your incredulity isn't proof of a god. If your god tried to make a universe suitable for humans he failed REALLY hard. If you were teleported to a random place in the universe, the probability is basically 1 that you're dumped in a vacuum and die quickly. Pretty much the only place in the universe where you wouldn't die is maybe a couple meters or so above the surface of the areas of this rock that aren't covered in ocean or too hot or cold. That's it. An infinitesimally small area of the universe supports human life. You just believe with zero hard proof.
Sure, if that were feasible, why not. But maybe it wasn't all that easy based on conditions, materials and a slew of other factors.
It may have been such that like a great meal, or dish, specific things needed to be manipulated or made to happen in order to achieve the ideal end result. In essence, the cook or chef is key to delivering a great product, or not.
Funny how many argue for evolution, yet we have yet to find the missing link. In essence, where is the half man, half ape, at least if you follow Darwin's bullshit.
The thing is most atheists think they're Darwin and Einstein just because they've heard of it and some of the basics.
Evolution is incredibly complex and while it might preclude Genesis being literal (which it obviously isn't nor does it make much sense for it to go into brutal detail explaining all the complex mathematics and processes of evolution to get the point across) it doesn't preclude a God. Why wouldn't a God that is so intelligent and powerful use evolution? There's far too much presumption.
Evolution is a fact. I use it myself and work with algorithms. It's perceivable everywhere. I would argue that if you believe in God you're denying his work by denying evolution. As someone who enjoys intellectual pursuits, it's not something that I would find entirely unintelligent. When I intelligently design, I use evolutionary processes sometimes. People pay me for it sometimes.
There's no sufficient deficit in the fossil record to disqualify it. That argument is like saying there isn't a galaxy because of the gaps between the stars. There's a good progression showing evolutionary steps.
Similar if people are treating Genesis literally and they believe in God I think that's said because Genesis has some interesting things to say and consider so if he is trying to speak to them they're struggling to translate.
I agree that taking the extreme positions is plain stupid. Those pushing evolution all too often are extreme beyond compare. I have my faith, and my religion but that does not mean that nothing else much matters. Logic, common sense, etc., come in quite handy very often.
A super being or God would obviously use everything and anything it, He, or they could to get the job done, as such, like a great chef, prepare the brew, know that it is complete and let it run its course. Sure, why not? Call it what you will.
All of it is quite engrossing, I agree, and all of it requires full open debate as compared to simply adhering to just religion, or just science, and or whatever dogma one may adhere to.
This aside, science which is all about the evidence, has yet to provide the remains of that half-man, half-monkey confirming all that Darwin and Wallace wrote about. Hummm, I wonder why? LOL
What if I said that Darwin was fully funded by some very wealthy banking interests in the old continent so long ago? There is just so much and of course, any time anyone is over the target, the prompt response is CT. LMAO.
Well because they're right about evolution, it's an extremely strongly supported process and explanation for us taking shape. It's a bit like having people who believe all the celestial bodies orbit the earth. I start to observe a pattern when you have people like that a lot of the kind of people they attract aren't just people who understand evolution and care about sharing that to the best of their ability but that really only care about trashing the people with the weaker position to bolster their own sense of superiority.
To them it is not a class of people to share understanding with but to attack and they they feel they are allowed to, that they deserve it for being wrong as some twisted sense of justice that they are punishing people so it's alright to attack them.
What Darwin saw isn't just what he saw I see the same all around me. I've come to realise most people worshipping him don't see that.
The big reveals that most people are fake is when for example atheists suddenly wont touch Islam or completely ignore evolution, even biology or reality staring them right in the face as it applies to humans when it comes to sexual dimorphism or racial differences. Suddenly then nature isn't nature. Funnily suddenly then it's almost as if they do believe in intelligent design and boy is their non-existent God politically correct.
In reality nature is neither politically correct nor theologically correct.
And nature has no time or interest in BLM, or MSNBS, etc. Hey, do keep in mind that if life were free of humans, it would be all too boring. :D
Instead of fighting about Red or Blue, Dem or Rep, one religion v another, one nation v. another, humanity would be better off trying to figure out how to survive a massive meteor when it hits our planet, terra forming other planets, etc., etc., etc. And, that does not even include the current human impacting problems on this very planet.
If you don't believe in evolution, you're a retarded asshole. We use the principles of evolution all the time, and they demonstrably work, are highly logical, and have far better predictive power than intelligent design (that is, they have more than none).
Evolution is, put simply, the combination of the two observations that an offspring is not always (in sexually reproducing species, never) identical to its parents, and that things that are better at surviving will tend to reproduce more successfully. It's hardly a view of all of nature.
God is not "something" to be proved, He is either a part of your life or He is not , and i believe He makes the choice.
I would agree but there are very many that of course require or desperately need 'proof'.
Only those that lack faith
100%! Faith is a most wonderful, powerful and inspiring asset!
It is a gift
'Tis indeed!
A gift unlike any other, and one most hated by the Enemy.
I am not your enemy. But I do not have your faith. There’s an apple tree in my yard. I can send you a picture of it. I can bring you to my tree, let you see it, touch it, hell sniff if it we wanna let Biden come too. It’s provable. Claiming to know personally the creator of all things and then have no concrete proof to show anyone who’s not a die hard member of your particular club/sect/cult/weekend get together is not particularly inspiring. Many religions have come and gone. Many are active today. All like to say they have the real answer and if one actually did the others would fold overnight. One does not need to have an invisible friend to be a good person to others. One can merely want to do good and be beneficial to society as a whole and bring joy to those around them. Even your Jesus met the Good Samaritan on the road and he was doing kind deeds without having met and received such teachings that apparently good men need.
No, none of this has anything to do with being enemies, at least not for me.
Yes, BiXin might like to sniff that tree of yours. :D Me, I believe you on simple 'faith' that your tree is there for the sniffing. LOL.
I would also agree that doing good for good's sake is a fine endeavor. And if that is where you live, know that I support it and would only help. I only wish more would do this for the sake of just doing it.
He made His choice, but we still have to make our own.
You have to receive what, or more appropriately who, has been given.
What if I don't want everlasting life? What if half a million hours or so is enough for me? I'm not greedy. What would I do with an infinite amount of hours? The unlimited hours cheat isn't as attractive as it sounds.
God made you free to do as you want.
That would impede on the whole free will thing, wouldn't it?
i made a conscious choice to follow His Spirit
But if he's there or not, and he makes the choice, then...
If He is there: then i have a friend in Jesus, if not i lived my life as i chose and i am happy with that
Thank you for sharing this!
Fully my pleasure. :D
Problem with a god having created our universe would be the implications of an emotion having invoked a response thereby diminishing this omnipotent being to the wings of want and self satisfaction.
After much introspection and honest evaluation, it is impossible to know one way or another as to the manner in which we were created. Claims of a god are just as hasty as atheistic living. We can’t and will never know the origins of the infinite.
From my experiences, evolution in itself is not a predicate to life without the existence of a god, but all things known and unknown are only part of our humanism. The unknowable is above our pay grade and pretending one way or another to be aware is simply self righteousness and a mistake.
We will never know because it can’t be known.
Meh, to each his own. Nothing at all having to do with self-righteousness. Since when are questions a mistake?
You are clearly well pleased to believe all that is presented to you and wish to leave it be. That's great, good for you.
So let's take history for example, we are told that Western or modern civilization is some 6,000 years old, give or take some time. If so, and you are happy with that, awesome. According to you, full stop, YOU are done.
The fact remains that ruins keep coming up that are 10K or 12K or more old which therefore negates everything we read about in the prescribed history books.
Nope, nothing having to do with self-anything, and everything to do will fulfilling a promise made millennia ago.
Make sense. Your comment is incomprehensible. Reevaluate what I wrote and come back.
No need. Is it incomprehensible or do you refuse to open you mind?
Good luck with your introspection and honest but INCOMPLETE evaluation.
What part of accepting there could be a god is not having an open mind? There may not be, as well. Period.
Period, for you maybe, and that is simply great. I support it because free will gives you that right. I have no issues with anyone sitting on a fence or disagreeing to whatever extent.
That aside, others, myself included have and will continue to have experiences, continue to ask questions, and debate this very interesting topic.
Again, nothing to do with self righteousness or any other pretense.
I think a lot of the ideations of a God figure are bad. They're unworkable.
A lot of people will say God knows everything. Even that which is impossible to know. You immediately hit logical and moral conflict such that particular definition of a god doesn't make sense. It's overpowered almost to the point of undermining its own power.
If you make a modification that it knows the most or all that can be known then it starts to be more workable.
A God as a big computer is also a bit suspect. Though I don't believe in it, made in the image of man or likeness doesn't refer to what people think it does. I would assume it refers not literally to the visual appearance of humans but more fundamental properties including the qualities that we have most internally to us such as emotion or the underlying components of it.
There's a kind of anti-emotion movement and I believe this is wrong. I'm a man from the times of yore where we see Vulcan's as amputated and mentally weak. They eschew all emotion because they cannot handle it.
Traditional men master both logic and emotion. It is not emotion that is bad. It is we that are bad at emotion. Funnily enough most people who think themselves logical are bad at that as well.
Evolution can occur with or without a God. It does need some properties in a universe but not that. When it comes to the known and unknown, there is a class that thinks themselves some kind of God and refuse to be humble and accepts the unknown.
I think those people are a threat to people with brains like ours that can acknowledge a broader reality with many things beyond our knowing.
I think the concept isn’t just the “broader reality,” rather an unknowable reality. That which does not change is the only thing that could be real. From our human, finite standpoint of the universe and existence the only thing that appears permanent is change itself. This raises a problem, an inability, in grasping what it means to be infinite. For example, evolution and the Big Bang can be a simple factor of a cyclically expanding and contracting universe, yet still be completely dissociated with the concept of god. This is why I’ve always been drawn toward our entire existence as being mental in nature. The universe is mind.
I also believe it’s important to find balance between the quest for the unknown and simply living life as it comes. Don’t push, don’t pull. This raises the necessity to put aside constant introspection of god because wanting what can’t be attained will leave one torn asunder, like waves beating on rocks. The opposite side of the spectrum is complete denial of an omnipotent being and affixing the impossibility to all things. From what I’ve gathered, it’s of no use to make a hard choice as the proof will never be revealed.
The mental reality of all things seems most likely, however. It serves the ability to have this permanent, infinite universe where no physical things exist and never have existed. The basis for this stems from a single mind that is so still it can never be moved, not by emotion nor persuasion. In this unchanging mind, all things can exist as impermanent, ever changing and constantly trading energy that is never separate from the mental universe. Whether or not that mind is god will never be known, but it does appear our existence is mental in nature and would thereby be infinite.
Broad includes unknowable reality or partially knowable reality. Many people are stuck with only what they know and unaware of how much they don't know.
When it comes to these voids I don't like to always fill them in but leave them empty as possible. Then you can see the edge and follow it or advance it.
I don't have to resort to an omnipotent being (which reasons further questions). However it's still unexplained how anything exists. There's a tendency of many to think they have the answer but each answer leads to another question and you never reach the bottom. The concept of god suffers the same fate, a link in a chain.
There comes a point where you just have to say we know things exist and don't have a clue why. The concept of an all knowing god seems like a substitute for accepting the unknown.
The problem of the universe as pure perception or for all I know I could be the only thing that exists and reality is my own reflection if that once you go down that path anything is possible, most of it just cancels each other out and you can't really make any sense of anything. It's all up in the air.
The only fundamental truth thar raises real questions is hat we're aware of our existence and they're not explanation for that nor any reason why the universe should only become capable of producing that now. We fundamentally do not really know what we are. Only that we are. We can explain half of it (the external material part) but not the other half (the internal experience part).
If we're conscious and don't know why we cannot exclude the possibility of some conscious direction elsewhere in the universe. It would be arrogant to assume we're the only conscious thing.
I generally don't believe in God. However there is a major problem in science. They say that the universe is nothing but physics.
That is not true. I can directly observe being conscious. That is for example that I feel pain for real. Then phenomena does not exist in physics. Yet it does exist.
If that phenomena exists in the brain then you cannot rule out it being found else where in the universe. After all when you look at the brain you don't find any material that couldn't be elsewhere in the universe.
The state of the universe prior to the big bang is completely unknown. We cannot rule out some conscious phenomena having effect the physical universe we see today. That could also pertain to having influenced the rules of the universe.
Such a notion is really challenging and most scientists not only abandon it but ignore it through hubris because they don't like the idea of there being something they can never know or figure out.
If such a force did exist the possibilities are endless. I would not assume automatically the common anthropomorphic entity, nor one that still exists not whose intentions match the reality we experience. Some of the possibilities are quite disturbing.
Consciousness does not have to exist in a state that matches reality. You can dream or hallucinate. There is a theoretically valid theory for the brain to have evolved around exploiting the potential for consciousness in things that exist and for that conscious effect to match reality.
If at the beginning of the universe you have consciousness all entwined with matter and energy (in some ways the same thing) it wouldn't be evolved like we. We have no basis to assume it has what we have. Instead you could have something existing in terminal and complete detachment from reality dreaming while also influencing the early evolution of the universe. Exactly what that would look like and be like could be almost insanity inducing.
There is a very real subjective as well as objective universe. We exist as a subjective component of the universe which experiences it objectively. Why would these two components not have existed from the beginning? What's particularly disturbing is the dehumanisation of science saying that only the objective universe exists.
Down the line that's going to be a growing threat. The irony is their hubris has denied them the opportunity to figure out that conscious almost certainly heavily interplays with evolution and is not a passive component. They focus only on intelligence. I seem to be the only one who has presented that particular theory of evolution.
Consciousness is very easily demonstrably physical. We've done these lovely little experiments called "wars" that demonstrate that people who have their brains destroyed or unable to be adequately supplied by the body tend to lose consciousness pretty fucking fast. There's also the rare cases of people taking brain damage in non-critical areas and not dying but having their psyches altered. Consciousness is also manipulatable chemically and electrically. None of those involve anything supernatural, so it's reasonable that even though we don't fully understand how consciousness arises yet, there's no reason it should be supernaturally derived.
External consciousness is impossible to prove. That's why scientists hate it. Blood flow isn't consciousness. You obviously haven't read it all to understand what consciousness truly is. You're treating it like a lamp that you can turn on or off and see it turned on and off. But can you see the lamp seeing you see it turned on or off (or I guess only off in this case)?
You don't understand consciousness at all. Most people don't. It's not externally observed phenomena. It's that which observes. It's things like why are you you and not someone else? You're right that it's clearly not entirely detached from physical material which is my point from the start but completely wrong when you say it can be demonstrably physical. It being tied with the physical is not the same as it being the physical. In science physical does not refer to properties of material such as what it feels. What you're saying is they can measure how much pain a photon is feeling or something. Either you've got the terminology wrong or you don't know what it is I'm referring to.
You might understand more if you start to think about it in relation to its evolution:
The process of evolution is not conscious itself or at least need not be, it's natural. In its blindness it will walk into anything and everything. Ironically even into a pair of eyes. It will exploit all the properties of a material it can. If that includes inducing the potential for that material to experience things for real then it won't hold back.
What I directly observe in evolution is an interface. The information is very specific. If you create software you create an interface for the human. It shows them only what they need. You do no show all the underlying data or the code. The computer does that out of sight. The same phenomena exists in the brain. What we consciously experience is extremely specific and user friendly. It's high level processed data and filtered for us. We're unconscious of much of that processing or underlying data despite the fact that it resides in the brain.
That we're only privy to the end result of very specific processing and data, though at varying levels from raw to processed in a way that's highly utilitarian, like being in the cockpit of the jet with all the readouts, that suggests a selective process of what and what not to load consciousness with or what to display on the HUD. We have evidence for this when people with head injuries or intoxication consciously access part of their brain they usually can't when it malfunctions. This evolutionary process is unlikely to have happened in a leap given the enormous complexity of the brain but instead evolved through animals and some hundred million or more years.
Our brain touches our consciousness but what would be the point of evolution if there's no benefit? There's no plausible explanation for feeling pain for real like whipping an animal if not to motivate the conscious part of us to actuate and serve the brain some benefit. Vision could be explained as an accident but the realism and accuracy of discomfort cannot be explained. Though it does not guarantee it, this strongly hints at free will. Another question is why would it need pain to do its bidding? If it could control the phenomena of consciousness entirely and directly it would not be needed. It's very hard to explain the realism of pain and so specifically in association with a functional purpose without a process to select specifically for that so in evolutionary terms it must achieve something.
There are many benefits to tapping consciousness. As a survival machine, being only physical isn't as strong a driver as experiencing existing and surviving for real. The ability to also incorporate all of the data from your nerves and to feel like you are your entire being for real (holistic experience of your material self) is also a boon.
Science not only ignores God but also the human soul which you should be even more concerned with than people no longer believing in God. The philosophical challenge of why we experience existing for real is at the centre and origin of most religions. That is the likely original meaning of the soul in most, that we experience things for real. As opposed to for example when I program a computer simulation of a person to say ouch I don't expect it to feel pain for real. Consciousness is at the very basis of our existence and existential inquiry. It's also very puzzling. Most people don't realise that's what the soul refers to and the philosophical basis for religion. It's really the basis for the first questions. The observation that you exist. Many people miss it. People didn't know how to explain these things more precisely. I'll read a religious text that'll casually mention a flaming apricot flying by and it's obvious that probably referred to a meteorite.
The soul is not only compatible with the theory of evolution but highly consistent with it and in many respects shaped by it. In a way almost trapped and imprisoned by it, forced to drive its vehicles around. Evolution of the optimal pilot the material makes available.
If you think about the evidence pointing to a hundred million years of evolution, it's been there, the potential, in any material for that long and probably all the way back to the beginning. There is the question of course what excites it and scientists are no where near this.
You know what's scary? If you don't fully understand consciousness it might be because you're not fully conscious. Perhaps there are too many humans and not enough souls or it's just a manufacturing defect, an invisible birth defect. Why would it be supernatural? Are you saying you don't exist? Are you calling my sense of consciousness supernatural? Are you calling me a spirit? It would be a natural quality of the material. For example, what's it like to be an electron? Would it be supernatural to be an electron?
Another scary progression is science denying the human soul while Hollywood anthropomorphises cars and the average leftist especially just gobbles it up. I can't say I believe in Satan but that sure does look like Satan's work.
Ultimately, you can observe nobody's consciousness but your own directly. However, it's a very reasonable assumption that other people have a similar consciousness. You're biologically similar, you can hold conversations, you can read what they write, we react to physical and emotional stimuli in similar ways. The same can't be said for a lamp. Consciousness is a thing that something has, to some degree, or doesn't have. If it's not physical, why's cutting a living human brain in half result in two lumps of unconscious flesh? If the lamp is conscious, where? What part of the lamp gives it consciousness? Pain is an indicator that something's wrong, and is definitively physical as well. It's reasonably understood, which is how local anesthetics were developed. It also has an obvious evolutionary advantage, in that it's a strong deterrent from doing things that harm your body, like holding your hand in a fire. Human brains are also much better at prediction and problem solving than others. If you have convincing proof of a "soul" outside the electrical impulses in our brains, go claim your Nobel Prize and get your name put down in history forever.
It's by definition not physical. That doesn't mean when you see a physical thing it's not a part of the same thing. A physical thing isn't necessarily the whole thing. Consciousness is not a physical quality. Physical is what we can observe in common objectively. It's not the observer itself (which also observes itself).
If you take a physical entity it's physical because that's the only part of it you can consciously perceive through external stimuli and measure scientifically. It's not the whole and the only quality it possesses only that which it expresses to you internally. So it's not purely physical as we mean it. Obviously physical matter is not entirely physical matter but physical matter with the potential to internally experience consciousness. The physical part refers to its outside. It doesn't know about the inside.
It might not do that all the time and it might not be physical all the time. The thing is science really has very little comprehension of what physical matter actually is other than something it can measure from an external perspective. It can find out how gravity behaves but it cannot tell you fundamentally what it is or why it is. You're going down the road of the measurement of the thing is the thing itself.
I don't think you have the capacity to comprehend based on that. An indication to what? Define wrong. Why does it need to be indicated that something is wrong?
I can program stuff that sends signals that something is wrong but why would it need to feel pain for real, as a real phenomena? It's completely unnecessary for a physical system. Why would it actually hurt?
Consciousness is undeniably derived physically. Again, if you have any proof to the contrary, that it's from some supernatural soul, your name would go down in history forever. But you don't.
If you are telling the truth, then you have no consciousness that is able to act through you. You are purely a physical entity. Like a rock. Simply a bunch of atoms but arranged differently. You are saying you have no soul. You are saying that you feel nothing, no pain, no experience at all. You are saying that you're a biological chat bot and nothing more.
Yes, I've seen no convincing evidence of the existence of a soul or anything else supernatural. You're also a purely physical entity, physical like a rock, a bunch of atoms arranged in a matter to make you.
Nope.
Ok, sure, believe what you will.
A "cosmic beginning" doesn't point to a god whatsoever, the "Goldilocks universe" shit is incoherent- life as we know it is a result of these conditions, and where's the evidence that the universe could exist any other way? If your probability is 1/? then it's not improbable, it's undefined, and that's ignoring that pretty much the entire universe save for a couple meters or so above the surface of the Earth would kill you nearly instantly- and nothing about DNA suggests a creator either.
As I stated before, believe whatever "shit" you want to believe. Enjoy!
If you don't believe in intelligent design. You are a retarded asshole. End of story.
Here's how I put it...there's no way everything we see could just pop out of a pinpoint in space. That's absurd.
If you were walking in the woods and saw a computer out there, would wouldn't say "oh well that just developed right there over time from a primordial ooze". No...clearly a more intelligent being is involved with that computer sitting on the forest floor.
This earth and humanity is that computer on the forest floor.
There's no way a god could just exist. That's absurd.
If I was walking in the woods and saw a computer, my past experiences with computers would tell me that it's overwhelmingly likely that this was made by a human, and if I desired to verify that I could even look at the serial numbers of the parts and check their authenticity. Can't really do that with people.
No shit. It's metaphor, assclown.
Given the complexity of nature as we know it, there's no way a god can't exist. Prove to me such complex things can exist without being created.
I'm not claiming to understand what god is...or even claiming to have the ability to understand what god is....I just know there is some form of a god...some sort of life force
Look at crystals, for example. They're beautifully ordered and structured, but even sitting down with some water and salt is enough to demonstrate they appear naturally. And your incredulity isn't proof of a god. If your god tried to make a universe suitable for humans he failed REALLY hard. If you were teleported to a random place in the universe, the probability is basically 1 that you're dumped in a vacuum and die quickly. Pretty much the only place in the universe where you wouldn't die is maybe a couple meters or so above the surface of the areas of this rock that aren't covered in ocean or too hot or cold. That's it. An infinitesimally small area of the universe supports human life. You just believe with zero hard proof.
Agree, that intelligent design only points a finger at some energy, power or entity that directed natural processes.
Why direct a process when you can make one that directs itself?
Sure, if that were feasible, why not. But maybe it wasn't all that easy based on conditions, materials and a slew of other factors.
It may have been such that like a great meal, or dish, specific things needed to be manipulated or made to happen in order to achieve the ideal end result. In essence, the cook or chef is key to delivering a great product, or not.
Funny how many argue for evolution, yet we have yet to find the missing link. In essence, where is the half man, half ape, at least if you follow Darwin's bullshit.
The thing is most atheists think they're Darwin and Einstein just because they've heard of it and some of the basics.
Evolution is incredibly complex and while it might preclude Genesis being literal (which it obviously isn't nor does it make much sense for it to go into brutal detail explaining all the complex mathematics and processes of evolution to get the point across) it doesn't preclude a God. Why wouldn't a God that is so intelligent and powerful use evolution? There's far too much presumption.
Evolution is a fact. I use it myself and work with algorithms. It's perceivable everywhere. I would argue that if you believe in God you're denying his work by denying evolution. As someone who enjoys intellectual pursuits, it's not something that I would find entirely unintelligent. When I intelligently design, I use evolutionary processes sometimes. People pay me for it sometimes.
There's no sufficient deficit in the fossil record to disqualify it. That argument is like saying there isn't a galaxy because of the gaps between the stars. There's a good progression showing evolutionary steps.
Similar if people are treating Genesis literally and they believe in God I think that's said because Genesis has some interesting things to say and consider so if he is trying to speak to them they're struggling to translate.
I agree that taking the extreme positions is plain stupid. Those pushing evolution all too often are extreme beyond compare. I have my faith, and my religion but that does not mean that nothing else much matters. Logic, common sense, etc., come in quite handy very often.
A super being or God would obviously use everything and anything it, He, or they could to get the job done, as such, like a great chef, prepare the brew, know that it is complete and let it run its course. Sure, why not? Call it what you will.
All of it is quite engrossing, I agree, and all of it requires full open debate as compared to simply adhering to just religion, or just science, and or whatever dogma one may adhere to.
This aside, science which is all about the evidence, has yet to provide the remains of that half-man, half-monkey confirming all that Darwin and Wallace wrote about. Hummm, I wonder why? LOL
What if I said that Darwin was fully funded by some very wealthy banking interests in the old continent so long ago? There is just so much and of course, any time anyone is over the target, the prompt response is CT. LMAO.
Well because they're right about evolution, it's an extremely strongly supported process and explanation for us taking shape. It's a bit like having people who believe all the celestial bodies orbit the earth. I start to observe a pattern when you have people like that a lot of the kind of people they attract aren't just people who understand evolution and care about sharing that to the best of their ability but that really only care about trashing the people with the weaker position to bolster their own sense of superiority.
To them it is not a class of people to share understanding with but to attack and they they feel they are allowed to, that they deserve it for being wrong as some twisted sense of justice that they are punishing people so it's alright to attack them.
What Darwin saw isn't just what he saw I see the same all around me. I've come to realise most people worshipping him don't see that.
The big reveals that most people are fake is when for example atheists suddenly wont touch Islam or completely ignore evolution, even biology or reality staring them right in the face as it applies to humans when it comes to sexual dimorphism or racial differences. Suddenly then nature isn't nature. Funnily suddenly then it's almost as if they do believe in intelligent design and boy is their non-existent God politically correct.
In reality nature is neither politically correct nor theologically correct.
And nature has no time or interest in BLM, or MSNBS, etc. Hey, do keep in mind that if life were free of humans, it would be all too boring. :D
Instead of fighting about Red or Blue, Dem or Rep, one religion v another, one nation v. another, humanity would be better off trying to figure out how to survive a massive meteor when it hits our planet, terra forming other planets, etc., etc., etc. And, that does not even include the current human impacting problems on this very planet.
If you don't believe in evolution, you're a retarded asshole. We use the principles of evolution all the time, and they demonstrably work, are highly logical, and have far better predictive power than intelligent design (that is, they have more than none).
"Evolution" is just a rudimentary understanding of how nature works...nature being basically gods creation.
Evolution is, put simply, the combination of the two observations that an offspring is not always (in sexually reproducing species, never) identical to its parents, and that things that are better at surviving will tend to reproduce more successfully. It's hardly a view of all of nature.