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Journeys to God
Eddy
Gengar the BittersweetRegistered User regular
Gengar the BittersweetRegistered User regular
I guess this is a religion thread of sorts.
While I was raised in an agnostic/buddhist household, my grandmother had me go to church on Sundays. A bit of a strange thing, being an outside observer to (Methodist) Christianity. But what fascinated me, and continues to fascinate me, is the idea of God as a concept.
What is God? Perhaps more importantly, what is God to you? And how can that concept be enunciated? Can, as Kant so fervently argued, God's non-existence be disproved?
My own personal concept of God is an entity who [that?] is omnipotent and omnipresent. I feel that this can be argued in a sense. It does admittedly rely on some linguistic voodoo. I start by the ubiquitous equation e=mc^2. Omnipotence could be argued as unlimited energy, right? As the Einstein equation posits, matter can be converted to energy. You can see where I'm trying to go with this.
Everything in the universe is contained in this structure of space and time which is essentially energy and the manipulation thereof. To me, God is this infinite, immeasurable assembly of energy. God, in short, is everything. This version of omnipotence must also then include omniscience. The Bible says that the Kingdom of God can be found within you. Is this what they meant? That we are all these strange, miniscule energy quarks of God?
What is God, to you?
While I was raised in an agnostic/buddhist household, my grandmother had me go to church on Sundays. A bit of a strange thing, being an outside observer to (Methodist) Christianity. But what fascinated me, and continues to fascinate me, is the idea of God as a concept.
What is God? Perhaps more importantly, what is God to you? And how can that concept be enunciated? Can, as Kant so fervently argued, God's non-existence be disproved?
My own personal concept of God is an entity who [that?] is omnipotent and omnipresent. I feel that this can be argued in a sense. It does admittedly rely on some linguistic voodoo. I start by the ubiquitous equation e=mc^2. Omnipotence could be argued as unlimited energy, right? As the Einstein equation posits, matter can be converted to energy. You can see where I'm trying to go with this.
Everything in the universe is contained in this structure of space and time which is essentially energy and the manipulation thereof. To me, God is this infinite, immeasurable assembly of energy. God, in short, is everything. This version of omnipotence must also then include omniscience. The Bible says that the Kingdom of God can be found within you. Is this what they meant? That we are all these strange, miniscule energy quarks of God?
What is God, to you?
"and the morning stars I have seen
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
Eddy on
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To me, it doesn't really get you anything to say, "Let's call everything that exists -- all matter and energy and space-time -- God!" Why not just call this the universe, like astrophysicists do? That seems to be a more accurate term. After all, usually people use the word God to describe something very different.
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
Therefore I am as well on a "Journey to God" as well. Although in my own case that represents more specifically my own striving to get a firmer grasp on everything that happens in my life, the world and to acquire powerful awareness/understanding of as much as I am capable with the time and resources that I have. It is as much spiritual and yet scientific as well. I try to be open to everything, no matter how crazy it sounds at first, and then try to determine ways I can test the falsifiability of what I know. I don't have all the time and equipment of a lab so I don't purport to know the ineffable truth of the universe, nor to say that my ideas about things do not contain a level of personal bias, but I do believe quite firmly that it is extremely irresponsible for me to delegate my own duty to find things out to any authority no matter what their track record. I give credit where it's due and always look at who can provide the most rational, and comprehensive explanation for everything around us. But nothing to me, is gospel.
I can get behind this as well - it's just that, in my opinion, there's always be a hard line of What We Don't Know. Not in really a scientific sense, but what in our existence seem to be empirically unprovable things like What happens after we die? and Do we have souls? and so on.
If we can measure these things, then perhaps the classic definition of God will finally die. Or will we just find new things?
and the gengars who are guiding me" -- W.S. Merwin
So for me, I'm trying to learn the programming language C#, but I don't fully understand it yet. Does that mean that C# is god?
Well there are some things we won't know until we've experienced them for a fact. Like what happens after death, we won't know until we get there. Maybe we wake up in another universe that can't ever affect this one? Maybe we go black forever? Maybe we wake up in a holodeck on board a starship? Maybe we wake up in a barren Japanese Apartment with a group of twelve other people and are forced to put on spandex super-suits and hunt aliens by a giant black ball? We will find that out eventually, but not just yet. ;p
So in that case you could say "God" is who determines what happens when you die...but once you die, and you find out where you go and why? It ceases to be God because now you understand some, perhaps finer mechanic of the universe we as our current human selves were not able to perceive.
Can C# produce strange immeasurable effects on the world around you? Can you write a C# program that causes your toaster to turn into a fridge and your coworker to change genders? ;p
I should qualify that perhaps a bit more. God is the label to describe anything we as a species do not yet firmly know, understand or can nail down. When you see odd patterns that seem too perfect to be real, too coincidental, something that makes too much sense and doesn't feel random. I think that lack of randomness would perhaps represent something we do not yet understand. God in this case can be a useful temporary identifier for when we have "gaps" like that, and spurn us to find them out, as best we can.
I don't understand why you've used the word God to describe things you don't understand. Why not simply call it what it is: something you don't understand?
I don't assume any such overarching nature of the universe or our existence. I can only declare that I am uncertain and explore new information, hoping that our species does so in ever greater numbers. "This is what we know now" is sort of how I see this. Though even 'now' is open to perception or interpretation in terms of how we view time. A lot of people are still stuck in 'tensed' time or presentism.
So, in fear and confusion (with perhaps a little ambition thrown in), we made some shit up that sounded good at the time and started trying to convince each other that it was all true.
No, not really.
No, not really.
I'm going to stop you right here. At what point did "infinite" enter into our discussion of the universe?
What part of any of this is "immeasurable"? If we couldn't experimentally verify the conversion of energy to matter (and vice-versa) I can guarantee you that equation you mentioned wouldn't be nearly as famous.
This is a totally meaningless statement.
I know these are English words, but I don't think they mean anything when arranged in this manner.
I don't mean to sound sarcastic (well, maybe a touch); it's just that this kind of thing bugs me. I can't stand seeing people misappropriate (and subsequently mangle beyond recognition) scientific concepts to support their religious convictions. It always results in people getting these crazy ideas about those aforementioned scientific concepts and walking away with a fundamental misunderstanding of what they mean. You can't just talk about some kind of nebulous "energy" composing the universe, or remark offhand that the universe (or maybe this "energy"; it's hard to tell which you're referring to) is "infinite". These words all have very specific meanings in different branches of science! The topology of the universe, for example, is currently the subject of a lot of investigation--whether it wraps back in on itself (and if so what shape it takes) is not at all certain, and stating that it is "infinite" in the sense I think you're trying for is not supported by the currently available evidence.
Also yes gods non-existence is disprovable. Proving things exist is pretty trivial, unless you are talking to pedantic philosophy majors. Unfortunately for many believers, proving things does require evidence, not a whole bunch of anecdotes.
God of the gaps, and anthropic principle based god, both on a first page. Break out the Religion thread bingo cards!
Man if the physicist ever figure out a GUF and simultaneously use it to predict a gamma-ray-burst about to wipe out earth you 2 are gonna have egg on your faces.
Also god is what saved us from lives frigid enslavement.
It provides a pantheistic sense of awe and wonder. Plus I really do think there's got to be some greater truth to a spiritual approach to life. (Even if it may not be anything like what anyone is actually saying right now.) It's my attempt to find the best way to meld hard science with a spiritual and ethical worldview and get a personal balance to it. I think that when you get too caught up in data and materialistic outlooks you lose a greater perspective and can't see the forest for the trees.
edit:
Key difference being that I'm not a dogmatic fundamentalist insisting on some ridiculous and unprovable argument for the existence of a specific God that, if you read the "bible" does actually have falsifiable claims that can be disproven. Nor am I making falsifiable claims actually based on a logical fallacy. I'm actually applying a general label to what I don't know to inspire me to find out. I would consider that a much healthier way to look at things. Yes the "text" is "God of the Gaps" but God of the Gaps as a fallacy exists when you insist that a specific deity is responsible for something we don't yet understand. I am making no such claims, just insisting that there seem to be these wonderful unknown things I want to find out and using a spiritual label to inspire the pursuit of greater knowledge.
But to extend that metaphor, the forest is nothing but the trees. It's when you start seeing it as something more than what it is that you lose perspective.
so to summarize:
I think that when statements like this are made, it shows that some further exploration of the idea of 'truth' could be necessary. 'Greater Truth' is sort of vacuous as an implication.
The fastest way to be proven wrong is to insist that you know everything. Remember when everyone thought the world was flat? Or that the sun revolved around the Earth? Funny, the Europeans did! Yet the Mayans and meso-american civilizations had much more advanced astronomy despite lacking devices we have today that now confirm gravitation. It's interesting how a greater science at times emerges from spirituality in history. It would show I think that there is a level of shared purpose or shared connection between the two.
edit:
Greater truth in that there was some principle that having a worldview of the unknowable enabled us to understand and develop ourselves in far greater ways. As above regarding how Mayans and Aztecs somehow managed to develop in incredibly advanced ways of knowing the stars despite lacking much of our modern technology. Somehow they did it, we don't know for a fact all of how, yet they did. Just like if you consider the building of the pyramids and the Sphinx. We theorize about how the Egyptians made them, but we don't really know for a fact. We have really good guesses but there are always some things out there that just don't quite match up and would show that perhaps there are grander things we as a species cannot even begin to comprehend that may somehow be responsible for certain things.
Greater truth means evidence of perhaps a greater scientific principle or mechanic behind certain events in the universe we are utterly in the dark about.
That was a joke, if you notice I contradict myself in the next sentence. ;p
This isn't a crypto-religious thread, it is a religion thread. If it bothers you, don't read it?
There was ancient Mesopotamia and other ancient cultures.
Also, you remind me somewhat of ACSIS with your egyptian/Mayan stuff.
Um..people knew the earth was round for a long time. Like Pythagoras, was saying the earth was round. The whole "people though Columbus would fall off" thing is a myth.
Repression of the helio-centric view point was a task actively undertaken by the Catholic Church. Are you picking your examples while drunk? Also the Aztecs believed there were demons called Tzitzimimeh that attacked the suns during eclipses. Its amazing how accurate religions predict things when you ignore how they all contradict each other, and then pick a few things some of they got right while ignoring all the nonsense that went along with those items.
Greater in that perhaps there is another explanation that covers far more of the data and can more elegantly describe the full extent of all things we are observing.
Like this really interesting idea regarding gravitation. It may not be right, and I'm by no means someone to judge whether or not it is. Still it at least purports to solve problems people are currently trying to solve in physics in an entirely new way. Even if it turns out to be faulty by exploring another potential avenue and testing it there's usually some nugget of knowledge to be gained from trying.
secret-religious thread??? Like free masons and shit? Even so how wouldn't they be included in a religion thread?
Or are you referring to my Odin picture?
In which case: "I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours." - Stephen Roberts
Then I just dropped the whole god thing altogether
Do I need to make more smilies to denote when I'm joking? -_-;; I over-use them as is I'd thought. The point is to say that religions in a sense did get CERTAIN things right, and certain things horrifically wrong. So it's important to listen to them, observe them and see what you can take from it that really makes sense in the world. Not to blindly follow them or worship with them. If you just let yourself be convinced you're right all the time you'll miss something important. We gained a lot of what we know today out of beliefs in the unknown and not being afraid to try and figure out what the hell is going on even if what we thought at first sounded (or was) totally crazy.
If you try to do that you'll end up being more wrong then right for some time. But if you keep looking, testing and trying to figure it all out with what you've got you'll eventually come to finally reveal what it really was. Getting lost entirely in a materialistic worldview blinds you at times to things you might mistakenly ascribe to randomness because you refuse to accept that something you can't see or measure currently; which could in fact exist in some form. Just not some bearded white dude in the sky who gets his jollies sentencing people to eternal torture for enjoying sex. I wonder if we'd ever have gravitation if we insisted there was no such thing as an invisible force field that pulls us towards something. "No, ridiculous! Invisible things can't exist! I only believe in things I can see with my eyes, smell with my nose, taste with my tongue, or hear with my ears!" See what I mean?
I was referring to the "break out the religion bingo cards."
As if the fact that you can categorize and apply labels to people's expressed religious views in a thread in which the OP asks people to express exactly those views is some sort of clever achievement on your part.
ts;du~ It's a religion thread, don't be surprised that there is religion inside.
Not that I want to appeal to authority or something here, but I can't find any verifiable information about the fellow who made that video you linked. All I could find of note was a discussion on David Icke's forums where they posted a translated spanish wikipedia entry(his english wiki was taken down);
Doesn't look all that promising. Needless to say there's also a lot of conspiracy theorizing going on about the reasons for him not being recognized.
Just that, perhaps, with what we have now it doesn't do us much better to believe he is any more correct than an existing physicist.
tl:dr; be open to consider everything as possible at first and then test to see if it's real. Especially things that seem crazy, because if they really are they should be really easy to rule out.
Less coming up with some terrible spirit to explain why you ran away from the well near the cave, more you were at the well by the cave and not only had a lot of bad things happened near there, you felt that something constantly out of sight was watching you, so you ran away from it. You're the product of the people who ran away when they thought they saw tigers even when there were none there, not the people who only thought they might have seen one but weren't sure or the ones who didn't recognise any of the signs at all.
To do it the first way does a disservice to how fundamental this is to how our minds work, and also as shown in the first post just doesn't mesh with how people see religion and the supernatural. It's not uncles making up stories to entertain children and get them to stop asking questions you don't know the answer to, it's something you genuinely experience.
Russell's teapot. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
Its the burden of the claimer to prove their idea, not everyone else to disprove it.
Try to disprove my invisible friend from when I was 2 existed.
I don't think it's wrong to have reverence of things that we understand; the universe does not get less fucking awesome as we unravel more bits and pieces of it. If anything I have more reverence for things as I learn more about them.
But then, I did watch a lot of Carl Sagan as a kid.
[edit]
Talking about pantheism in general, not the 'stuff I dont understand is god' from the quote tree necessarily.
like, when your kid/sibling/spouse dies under tragic circumstances, you really want to believe their soul went to heaven/a better place (and didn't just stop existing), no? Of course, we all know that already. For the record, I'm terribly afraid of death.
It took me some time to process that, thank you Dawkins
Your post doesn't make much sense to me. You use the word God to describe what you don't understand, and you do it because it gives you feelings of awe and wonder, and makes you feel like you're balanced between a spiritual, ethical, and scientific worldview. But you can have an ethical and scientific worldview while being open to feelings of awe and wonder without professing a belief in God -- listen to any talk from Carl Sagan as an example of that. He was a man who was thoroughly rational, whose beliefs about the nature of the world were limited to what he knew by science, and he was still an awe-filled, connected human being.