The God Theory

[Speedyj1992]

I didn't think I'd say this today, but ... let's talk about the idea of pebble consciousness.

Brain waves can be associated with consciousness - when we are dead and have no consciousness, we have no brain waves. Organic material has brain waves, even plants, but let's stick with pebbles at least for now, because they don't have brain waves, and we do. If we have a pebble in a room, or heck, even in nature, and record it for a month (I only picked that because you used it), we would not see the pebble move on its own. Sure, if we're going with the in-nature observation, wind and rain and even other animals may move the pebble, but the pebble isn't going to move on its own will because it doesn't have one. The pebble's interactions wouldn't be complex because they would be one-way - something acts on the pebble and the pebble just kind of gets acted upon (worn down by rain, moved by heavy wind or an animal, etc.).

Contrary to that, in a few seconds just sitting here at the keyboard, I read this, my mind processed it (LIKE a computer, except computers tend to only process that which we tell them to - you sit a computer by itself with nothing open, no tabs or applications, nothing set to open automatically, it's going to sit there until it falls asleep after x amount of time), and I typed. I acted on the environment around me. Regarding free will, there is no evidence that we are being controlled, which would be the alternative to free will when actual legitimate consciousness is involved. If we are being controlled by a higher power (I'm not doing the "we're in the matrix" argument even if you want to, it's too silly to indulge), we would have no way to observe it (higher power meaning God or gods in this case, but most likely God). Btw, that's an argument within the Christian community that may be the most contentious of all arguments among us believers, so what I might say isn't necessarily representative of what others would say, and is too big a can of worms for even this forum. It's easier to say that free will makes more sense based on what we can observe scientifically, and even just with our own understanding of our mind (I chose to type up this sentence in parentheses as opposed to doing it outside the parentheses).

[LuckyR]

I see your point, and yes, I come from a fundamental point of faith in the God of the Bible, so the Bible, as God's Word, has authority in my life (and the Bible does claim to be the very word of God). There are historical AND SCIENTIFIC prophecies that have been mentioned in the Bible and then came true at later points - predictions that, by themselves are impressive and highly unlikely to be by chance alone, but together are downright impossible to have come from anything other than the supernatural. So when I use the Bible to "prove" God, that's where that comes from, and I apologize for not mentioning it earlier.

But there is no shame in not being able to prove there is a god, just as the atheist should have no shame in not being able to disprove there is a god. The supernatural exists outside the realm of proof, that is, within the realm of faith (or nonfaith, for that matter).

[Atreyu]

Pebbles interact with the environment. Pebbles can be worn down, kicked, dissolved and melted (not easily, though). I would say a pebble has as much awareness as a person. And maybe this will sound ignorant, but if you combine a pebble's interactions over the course of, say, a month, wouldn't that be as complex as at least a few human seconds? Even if there is free will (not that I see any evidence to support it) couldn't you argue that a pebble is just a very, very slow but conscious and intelligent being? After all, your brain is only a computer with reactions inside it. Much more complex reactions than a pebble, sure, but still only reactions.

That's contradictory.

Obviously, if there is any awareness associated with pebbles it would be infinitely simpler and smaller than the awareness of a human being.

But the general idea that there might be some awareness associated with all matter (panpsychism) is worth pursuing....

[Speedyj1992]

I see your point, and yes, I come from a fundamental point of faith in the God of the Bible, so the Bible, as God's Word, has authority in my life (and the Bible does claim to be the very word of God). There are historical AND SCIENTIFIC prophecies that have been mentioned in the Bible and then came true at later points - predictions that, by themselves are impressive and highly unlikely to be by chance alone, but together are downright impossible to have come from anything other than the supernatural. So when I use the Bible to "prove" God, that's where that comes from, and I apologize for not mentioning it earlier.

But there is no shame in not being able to prove there is a god, just as the atheist should have no shame in not being able to disprove there is a god. The supernatural exists outside the realm of proof, that is, within the realm of faith (or nonfaith, for that matter).

I apologize if anything I said came off as shaming atheists - I have nothing but sympathy for atheists, having once been one. I just want to present as many of the facts as I possibly can, because from where I stand, this is an extremely important question, and I am in a much better place with the answer that I have, which I 100% believe to be the truth (even if it isn't an easy truth to live with all of the time).

I also do YouTube, and if you go to youtube .com/ and then put [watch?v=jwoEqj2iv0M] afterwards (obviously without the brackets, you will get to a video where I talk about the issue of evil in God's creation, our universe. Of course, there are many more topics I want to talk about, some of which we're touching on here, so I hope you guys subscribe so you can be informed of them as I post them (plus, it'll help you to see me as a person and not just some voice that's saying things you don't agree with).

[LuckyR]

(Nested quote removed.)


But there is no shame in not being able to prove there is a god, just as the atheist should have no shame in not being able to disprove there is a god. The supernatural exists outside the realm of proof, that is, within the realm of faith (or nonfaith, for that matter).

I apologize if anything I said came off as shaming atheists - I have nothing but sympathy for atheists, having once been one. I just want to present as many of the facts as I possibly can, because from where I stand, this is an extremely important question, and I am in a much better place with the answer that I have, which I 100% believe to be the truth (even if it isn't an easy truth to live with all of the time).

I also do YouTube, and if you go to youtube .com/ and then put [watch?v=jwoEqj2iv0M] afterwards (obviously without the brackets, you will get to a video where I talk about the issue of evil in God's creation, our universe. Of course, there are many more topics I want to talk about, some of which we're touching on here, so I hope you guys subscribe so you can be informed of them as I post them (plus, it'll help you to see me as a person and not just some voice that's saying things you don't agree with).

As I mentioned, this topic is all about belief and very little to nothing to do with facts.

[Speedyj1992]

LuckyR, with all due respect, all you did was put in red the one time I used each of those words you mentioned in the entire thread that I wrote. That doesn't prove your point that this topic is "all about belief and very little to nothing to do with facts", it just proves I used those words - I didn't include all the research because of the issues posting links in here, and I wanted to encourage you guys to do your own research. I will say that belief does come up at a certain point, yes, but that's not to say that's what it's "all about".

[LuckyR]

LuckyR, with all due respect, all you did was put in red the one time I used each of those words you mentioned in the entire thread that I wrote. That doesn't prove your point that this topic is "all about belief and very little to nothing to do with facts", it just proves I used those words - I didn't include all the research because of the issues posting links in here, and I wanted to encourage you guys to do your own research. I will say that belief does come up at a certain point, yes, but that's not to say that's what it's "all about".

If I am reading you correctly, you seem to be asserting that the main currency in the religion/theism game is fact based (as opposed to faith based). Okay, that is not an unreasonable idea. Do you find the facts you allude to (which I would love to see, BTW) are equally applicable to the approximately 4200 religions/gods, or to just a few?

[Burning ghost]

People are willing to suffer for what they deem as 'right' or 'wrong'. That is a fact. It is a complicated fact as it seems clear enough to me that we don't like to suffer, but ironically understand in part that to suffer a little today will prevent a calamity of suffering in the future (be it for me, others or both.)

Some where amongst this human situation ideas present themselves with varying degrees of vigor that direct our rational thoughts and shape our emotional responses.

Blind faith is a reasonable strategy when faced with few, or hidden facts. Sometimes we have to simply throw caution to the wind and hope we come out of the situation stronger and wiser than before, or rather in a position to put the experience to practical use rather than simply curl up in a ball and wail at the futility of life and human existence.

If you assume religions are completely removed from all facts, then you deny all human experience and causality. Different attitudes about The World simply make more use of certain experiences and lay the foundation of understanding in various proportions toward ideas that encapsulate a polarity of varying abstractions. Meaning immediate experience is more satisfying and comfortable for some than for others, and certain psychological fixedness sways our values toward physical datum and/or ideological grounding (necessarily - because we all possess some kind of "touch stone" for our human existence, whether it is brought into direct conscious contemplation or not.)

[Speedyj1992]

LuckyR I wouldn't go so far as to say that the "main" currency of religion is fact-based, though pretty much every major historian will affirm the existence of Jesus and that we don't have a body. I do think faith is a part of it, but you could argue that people have to have faith in certain facts that they likely won't be able to super directly observe as well (i.e. the earth being spherical, since most of us won't be going into space or going from one end of the globe in one direction and back around the other end, as much fun as that would be and beneficial for the flat-earth "movement"). Where things get interesting is that, yes, there are occasional predictions and prophecies that make some interesting predictions, but the Bible makes way more, and more interesting ones, in my opinion. The "contradictions" of certain prophecies actually make sense when you put them in either the context of the passage, the greater context of the Bible, the author's message/intent of the particular book, the author's intended audience, and/or certain historical events/culture that's generally important to understanding how something is being presented. It's really complex, and often involves research, but there are satisfying answers.

Burning ghost are you a believer. You sound a little like one, and the way you refer to "The World" makes me think you are.

[Burning ghost]

Well, not EVERY historian. That is a fairly large perversion of the actual evidence we have for the existence of a guy called Jesus.

The myth is certainly global and in no particular way only attributed to Jesus, if he did or didn't exist. The Bible is undoubtedly a partially politically motivated work to increase the power of the Christian Institution. I have often thought that some of the words written in gospels, not included in The Bible, elude to some farsighted understanding of what would happen in regard to the evil's of the Church and how people would have to suffer at its hand all because of some misplaced attempt to imbue the masses with knowledge.

There are those that view Jesus as the actual anti-Christ. I think this is all more about a far deeper psychological metaphor that we're still struggling with to this very day, and perhaps are starting to resurface now we find ourselves living in a very linear time (meaning diversity is being threatened by communication, even though it is also fueling diversity!) I think the current safety of human society is going to have to run the gauntlet quite soon.

Am I a "believer"? I don't believe in conscious deities lording over my being, I believe/know that the term "god" (for me at least) is an expression of some unconscious manifestation of which I am both part and separate. I believe the ego is not an "evil", nor a "good". I am, as is every human being, constantly both "heaven and hell", "good and evil", and beyond these vague ideological approximations too!

When it comes to the materialist physical view of the world I tend toward some kind of phenomenological stance and that is why I said "The World", meaning the phenomena neither claimed by any polarized view of subject or object. It is a very difficult thing I am forever trying to express better with words. Simply put, I KNOW, like Socrates/Plato said, "The unexamined life is not worth living." Beyond that I appropriate my life to balancing between mindless exploration and reflection. Obviously still trying and I'll die in the process of doing so rather than surrender to some hedonistic vision of future reward or glory.

[Speedyj1992]

Ah, thank you for that elaborate answer. I will point out I did say "pretty much every MAJOR historian", and of course acknowledge that there are more minor historians, as well as some that are not taken seriously, who do not believe Jesus so much as existed, in addition to a minority over the years who have said they don't believe he existed who are taken seriously. So I apologize for the confusion, but I do stand by my statement.

"Undoubtedly" is a pretty big word - the Bible was written over the course of more than a thousand years, with various gaps (the biggest being around 400 years between the Old and New Testaments), over the course of which things obviously changed a lot. Having read the whole Bible, and still reading it a lot, I can say it is a challenging book that, while people today do use for political purposes, clearly isn't intended as such when you actually examine it. Regarding what you said about the stuff in the gospels not in the Bible, I would have to say that the four books in the Bible that are the gospels at the beginning of the NT (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) have more than 25,000 copies that are extremely consistent, and we know what's included/not included, and I can tell you from personal research that nearly everything is included because of the amazing consistency. And we know about the stuff that isn't.

The reason why so many people have such a difficult view of Christ is because he is so challenging, and challenged a lot of people during his time on this earth - read the gospels, the Roman government didn't care about him either way, it was the Jewish leaders (and the Jewish people were the ones the OT was largely "catered to", if you want to think of it that way, because they sure did) who wanted him dead. I would encourage you to watch my video on the message of the Gospel (search "FindingFaith Message of the Gospel" on YouTube) and do some research of your own. And I would also encourage you to be open to this kind of stuff, a lot of people are very closed off because of their own biases (which we all have, and it's okay to have them), but we need to be less dismissive overall. We would just have so many less problems if that was the case.

[Steve3007]

Speedyj1992:

I apologize if anything I said came off as shaming atheists - I have nothing but sympathy for atheists, having once been one.

Purely from the point of view of PR: In any kind of discussion, I suggest avoiding telling people that you have sympathy for them. Obviously, at face value, sympathy can't be seen as anything but positive. But in practice we all know that in this kind of context it is seen as condescending or dismissive. Having read some of your posts, I'm pretty sure you don't mean it like that. But that's how it might tend to come across because that is how many people mean it. Perversely, it's often used as a way to attack people when arguments don't work.

Expressing sympathy for someone because they've been hurt is fine and good. Expressing sympathy because of their point of view on some issue suggests simple dismissal of that point of view.

[Burning ghost]

Speedy -

I have no difficulty with understand the symbolic mythos of Jesus. Real or not it makes little difference to me. The mythos is prevalent around the globe in many different form predating his claimed existence. It bears current value to society (western especially) as being the main form through which people have access to the remnants of a pre-historic narrative.

Certain themes and myths span across time because they touch a human cord. Over the expanse of the human race these have inevitably been prone to a type of psychological selection. With the event of the written word I often wonder about the effect of this. Hence there is necessarily a political intent in the written word and the purposeful selection of particular parts of a body of work. It is naïve to think that The Bible was put together without any kind of political aim, because humans are very fickle and adhere to the cultural norms of the times.

Regardless I woulod never say that The Bible is important. It is a rich reservoir of human experiences. One day I will hopefully find time to study it more closely.

I need to be more dismissive if I am honest! haha! Sometimes it feels like I'll never get anything done

Good luck

[Albert Tatlock]

C. The closest I can get to imagine a perfection is a sphere

But that's not so perfect if you happen to need a cube.

-- Updated October 17th, 2017, 8:08 am to add the following --

couldn't you argue that a pebble is just a very, very slow but conscious and intelligent being?

I couldn't come up with such an argument but it would be interesting to see someone else's attempt at it.

[Speedyj1992]

Speedyj1992:

I apologize if anything I said came off as shaming atheists - I have nothing but sympathy for atheists, having once been one.

Purely from the point of view of PR: In any kind of discussion, I suggest avoiding telling people that you have sympathy for them. Obviously, at face value, sympathy can't be seen as anything but positive. But in practice we all know that in this kind of context it is seen as condescending or dismissive. Having read some of your posts, I'm pretty sure you don't mean it like that. But that's how it might tend to come across because that is how many people mean it. Perversely, it's often used as a way to attack people when arguments don't work.

Expressing sympathy for someone because they've been hurt is fine and good. Expressing sympathy because of their point of view on some issue suggests simple dismissal of that point of view.

Thank you for the positive feedback, I can see how what you're getting at and how it remarks like that can come off not as intended. How does "As a former atheist, I understand some of the thinking behind the general atheistic mentality" sound?

-- Updated October 19th, 2017, 1:50 pm to add the following --

Speedy -

I have no difficulty with understand the symbolic mythos of Jesus. Real or not it makes little difference to me. The mythos is prevalent around the globe in many different form predating his claimed existence. It bears current value to society (western especially) as being the main form through which people have access to the remnants of a pre-historic narrative.

Certain themes and myths span across time because they touch a human cord. Over the expanse of the human race these have inevitably been prone to a type of psychological selection. With the event of the written word I often wonder about the effect of this. Hence there is necessarily a political intent in the written word and the purposeful selection of particular parts of a body of work. It is naïve to think that The Bible was put together without any kind of political aim, because humans are very fickle and adhere to the cultural norms of the times.

Regardless I woulod never say that The Bible is important. It is a rich reservoir of human experiences. One day I will hopefully find time to study it more closely.

I need to be more dismissive if I am honest! haha! Sometimes it feels like I'll never get anything done

Good luck

I feel the need to understand some of your comments more - what do you mean when you say that you "need to be more dismissive"? And I'd like to know what you're getting at with the "symbolic mythos of Jesus", because while I think I know what you're getting at, I would rather hear it from you than assume. But I do want to address one comment that you made, which is that last sentence of the big paragraph in the middle - the Bible does not claim to be "put together" by people, but by God, because it was God who wrote it through different people over the years. Whether or not you agree with that, this is what the Bible claims.