A question to theists . . . . . . .

[Straybow]

Originally posted by BeBro
I don't understand this thread. Why would a omnipotent being be bound by the rules of our logic? Why couldn't God contradict himself as long as he want if he is indeed omnipotent?

God doesn't run afoul of logic, it is our assumptions that run afoul of logic.

[CrONoS]

Wow! I forget about the time cube guy... he is a genius of propaghanda:

You've been educated stupid
and are too dumb to know it,
or maybe just too evil to care.

YOU are the lowest form.
YOU can't procreate alone.
YOU destroyed the village.
YOU destroyed the family.
YOU destroyed childhood.
YOU destroyed naturalism.
YOU don't know the Truth.
YOU pitiful mindless fools,
YOU are educated stupid.
YOU worship cubeless word.
YOU are your own poison.
YOU create your own hell.



......
YOU must seek Time Cube.

Oh my MY!! I need to seek the TIME CUBE!

As seen on: http://www.timecube.com/timecube2.html

[Flip McWho]

God doesn't run afoul of logic, it is our assumptions that run afoul of logic.

That either makes no sense or you're saying we can't hope to understand God

[Flip McWho]

Why would a omnipotent being be bound by the rules of our logic?

I suppose an answer would go because being all powerful doesn't mean being able to do things that can't actually be done.

But now you have a problem with how can an infinite being be confined by a set of rules [logic].

God doesn't really make a lotta sense logically, especially with all the characteristics that are attributed to it by the various religions but then the usual answer to this is some mystical crap about how we can't understand God, we should just live our lives the way he says too through this book.

Being infinite is not at all the same thing as being all inclusive.

How can something that is infinite not include everything?

For example, there are infinite integer numbers, but integers do not encompass real numbers.

There are also infinite numbers which consists of both integers and real numbers. God is the Infinite in the sense that God is all encompasing.

A God that is a separate and distinct being is too human like really.


Beingofone:

I am curious whether your beliefs contain an opinion on the afterlife?

[beingofone]

BeBro:

I don't understand this thread. Why would a omnipotent being be bound by the rules of our logic? Why couldn't God contradict himself as long as he want if he is indeed omnipotent?

Good question.

You cannot define that which is infinite. it is beyond all systems of logic. What we can do is use logic to see if we are in delusion; sound reason would expose any flaw.

Every conceptual belief system is limited because it is based in changing perceptions of identity and comparison. If the experience begins to change and not meet the projected expectations of the mind seeking release OR SATISFACTION, then the mind rejects what it has created and seeks to create something different. It is the hypnotic effect of being attached to some creation out from the mind.

Once one understands the heart of truth one does not stand in a personal belief system. True fulfillment is based in the stability of acceptance and surrender rather than the fleeting changes of the impermanent illusions created by the idea of a stable belief system no matter what it is.

The constant surrender to what is greater than the present belief system leaves the awareness open to experience less limitations and restrictions as we become void of anticipating a preset concept and begin to allow every possibilty for expansion of experience and understanding.

Logic is the tool we use to see if we are grounded in what is the reality of our experience and exposes all attachment to a belief system.


Straybow:

Being infinite is not at all the same thing as being all inclusive. For example, there are infinite integer numbers, but integers do not encompass real numbers. God is infinite and distinct from His creation.

Could you tell me what infinite would exclude?

Um, no. Zero is not a symbol of the infinite, it is the opposite of the infinite. It is the symbol of nothing. The null set. Zip, zilch, nada.

Could you point out where the null set is?

The null set and the singular set are one and the same.


Flip McWho:

I am curious whether your beliefs contain an opinion on the afterlife?

Another good question.

A fractal is a whole in itself.
If you put a line through a triangle, you have a 'whole' triangle.

Are you experiencing a whole reality or a partial reality?

How does *X* and *-X* appear without perception? What is the source of the appearance?
Logic defines all perceptions through comparisons, what is the source of logic and comparisons?

Experience is the thing you have left when everything else is gone.


1- Who you are would be the only experience of what is as you cannot separate the observer or experiencer of reality from reality in and of itself. That is to say the full set of the universe must be the perceiver not what is being perceived.

This is the tricksey part of perception, it is to easy to project what is being perceived as distinct from the one perceiving. This is the beginning and not the conclusion as when the logic goes full circle it ends up where it began, with the observer.

2- Any fractal you conceive is still a construct of the mind and so it is a model at its best. The model cannot take the place of reality, reality can only be experienced not duplicated.

3- There is no inherent existence apart from experience and as the Buddhists say "the perceiver". So we see the experience in and of itself and we also see the perceiver of the experience. This has been called the activity and the stillness. Eternal flux being perceived by eternal stillness.

To enjoin these two great truths is to see the whole picture. Usually most will focus on one or the other and become imbalanced. True balance is to know that the eternal constant is change and so lacking inherent existence. Equally true is the perceiver of the eternal change that remains a constant (from every memory) without change. It has no beginning and no end and so trandscends existence

0 is the observation of God. 1 is the ativity of God.

Unless we see behind the appearance and go to the root cause and effect. The resolving of the enigma is in the understanding that there is no being, not even a supremely great being, there is being in and of itself.

This means there is experience in a state of flux and a perceiver that has no memory, experience, or objective observation of beginning or end. Therefore, it is beyond appearances including in the mind.

We could say it begins at birth, conception, or at some point but this is a projection as it is beyond any logical construct. None has ever witnessed the beginning or entry of consciousness.

The perceiver has never an end and continues ever present. It has no memory, experience, or objective observation of an end. Therefore, it is beyond appearances including in the mind. It transmutates itself into perpetual consciousness. None has ever witnessed the end or cessation of consciousness.

It`s not an optical illusion. It just looks like one. - Joke

The singularity of the universe is not multiple consciousness, it is singular in experience, observation, and logic.

The totality is Meta-consciousness that is expanding to manifest into matter, and is succeeding to greater and greater degrees as life pushes forward through time.

It is the folly of science, philosophers, preachers, and gurus to exclude their very own experience to create theories of what is the Totality. How can that be done?

When did you first become?
When were you not?
What was your first moment of awareness?
what was your last?

If [man] thinks of the totality as constituted of independent fragments, then that is how his mind will tend to operate, but if he can include everything coherently and harmoniously in an overall whole that is undivided, unbroken, and without a border then his mind will tend to move in a similar way, and from this will flow an orderly action within the whole.

-- D. Bohm, _Wholeness and the Implicate Order_, p. xi

The attachment to a physical body keeps most trapped in the idea that they are what their body is. This is another delusion that must be shed as a snake sheds its skin. The blind faith in the brain as the source of life will keep some from expanding beyond the physical into the eternal realm of the infinite.

To believe that I am only just a brain is to be chained to the material. I am the master of my body and brain. It does what I will it to do. It is the effect of the consciousness which is the prime mover and potential for existence. Cause and effect is not limited to what is material; it transcends that which can be perceived by and through the five senses.

The resurrection is a good example.

[Flip McWho]

Next question is:

Are people exluded from attaining this transcendence and if so why?

One thing:

None has ever witnessed the end or cessation of consciousness.

Plenty of people have witnessed it, they just don't live to tell the tale. Just as everybody has witnessed the beginning of their consciousness, they just cannot remember it.

[beingofone]

Flip McWho:

Are people exluded from attaining this transcendence and if so why?

If you are infinite there is no boundaries to explore. God used finite splitting to fragment himself into individual 'bits' or 'sets' of himself.

Think about it; you can only have one single consciousness because that is all the reality that there is or ever will be. Consciousness is always singular as is all life-force. It is what God is - absolute.

If you ask yourself "when did I begin?". You would answer "I cannot remember".

When God asks himself "when did I begin"? He answers "I cannot remeber".

~ = ~ or C = dA + A ^ A

Experience is never repeated and therefore; infinite potential of development.

God hid himself from himself to rediscover his essence in a brand new way. God himself or the Meta consciousness is still in a mild state of shock by the experiment.

It is limitation through arbitrary choice and yet the infinite is not in the least degraded by being you. It is charged by the potential as the infinite now has your experience as a point to transcend ie: God is learning and expanding by being you with your self imposed limits.

BO1: None has ever witnessed the end or cessation of consciousness.

Flip: Plenty of people have witnessed it, they just don't live to tell the tale. Just as everybody has witnessed the beginning of their consciousness, they just cannot remember it.

You are making an assumption. Let me use an analogy:

Your television is receiving the radio wave signals that we cannot see, smell, touch, hear, or taste. Yet they are 'real' radio waves. You can smash your TV and make the assumption that because you no longer see a picture or hear any sound that you made the radio waves go away.

Your consciousness is the radio waves and your brain is a receptor and a resistor. Remember energy is equivalent to mass or E=MC2.

The brain is actually being used by us as a resistor and capacitor. It has been thought to be the source of consciousness because you could interfer with its function.

Energy is in such a high state of flux, we need a resistor to slow it down to perceive mass. We need a capacitor to have a point of divergance and store then release the energy ie. right and left hemispheres.

Check into David Bohm - brilliant.

Seemingly isolated or separate particles may be intimately connected with one another and must be seen as parts of a higher unity.

The modern worldview is based on Western science which, in terms of its goals of prediction, control, and generation of manipulative technologies, is amazingly successful. Nevertheless, it is an artifact of Western culture and it does have its limitations. The core of the current challenge to the scientific worldview can be taken to be "consciousness," which has come to be a code word for a wide range of human experience, including conscious awareness or subjectivity, intentionality, selective attention, intuition, creativity, relationship of mind to healing, spiritual sensibility, and a range of anomalous experience and phenomena.

The fundamental reason for this difficulty appears to be that Western science has been caught in a basic dualistic trap - that of considering the subject doing the mapping as separate from the map. Getting a more accurate map (more based on modern physics, more "holistic", more "systems") will not solve this problem. Rather, we must realize that thoughts are not merely a reflection on reality, but are also a movement of that reality itself. The mapmaker, the self, the thinking and knowing subject, is actually a product and a performance of that which it seeks to know and represent.

A hologram is a three- dimensional photograph made with the aid of a laser. To make a hologram, the object to be photographed is first bathed in the light of a laser beam. Then a second laser beam is bounced off the reflected light of the first and the resulting interference pattern (the area where the two laser beams commingle) is captured on film. When the film is developed, it looks like a meaningless swirl of light and dark lines. But as soon as the developed film is illuminated by another laser beam, a three-dimensional image of the original object appears.

The three-dimensionality of such images is not the only remarkable characteristic of holograms. If a hologram of a rose is cut in half and then illuminated by a laser, each half will still be found to contain the entire image of the rose. Indeed, even if the halves are divided again, each snippet of film will always be found to contain a smaller but intact version of the original image. Unlike normal photographs, every part of a hologram contains all the information possessed by the whole.

The "whole in every part" nature of a hologram provides us with an entirely new way of understanding organization and order.

For most of its history, Western science has labored under the bias that the best way to understand a physical phenomenon, whether a frog or an atom, is to dissect it and study its respective parts. A hologram teaches us that some things in the universe may not lend themselves to this approach.

If we try to take apart something constructed holographically, we will not get the pieces of which it is made, we will only get smaller wholes.

This insight suggested to Bohm another way of understanding Aspect's discovery. Bohm believes the reason subatomic particles are able to remain in contact with one another regardless of the distance separating them is not because they are sending some sort of mysterious signal back and forth, but because their separateness is an illusion. He argues that at some deeper level of reality such particles are not individual entities, but are actually extensions of the same fundamental something.

To enable people to better visualize what he means, Bohm offers the following illustration. Imagine an aquarium containing a fish. Imagine also that you are unable to see the aquarium directly and your knowledge about it and what it contains comes from two television cameras, one directed at the aquarium's front and the other directed at its side. As you stare at the two television monitors, you might assume that the fish on each of the screens are separate entities.

After all, because the cameras are set at different angles, each of the images will be slightly different. But as you continue to watch the two fish, you will eventually become aware that there is a certain relationship between them. When one turns, the other also makes a slightly different but corresponding turn; when one faces the front, the other always faces toward the side.

If you remain unaware of the full scope of the situation, you might even conclude that the fish must be instantaneously communicating with one another, but this is clearly not the case.

If the apparent separateness of subatomic particles is illusory, it means that at a deeper level of reality all things in the universe are infinitely interconnected. The electrons in a carbon atom in the human brain are connected to the subatomic particles that comprise every salmon that swims, every heart that beats, and every star that shimmers in the sky.

Everything interpenetrates everything, and although human nature may seek to categorize and pigeonhole and subdivide, the various phenomena of the universe, all apportionments are of necessity artificial and all of nature is ultimately a seamless web.

-- Uknown explanation of David Bohm`s 'Implicate Order'.

He that believes in me will never die.

-- Jesus

[Flip McWho]

Thank you for replying to my questions, this is most interesting

I have a reply coming but I must think for a bit.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Flip McWho
God doesn't really make a lotta sense logically, especially with all the characteristics that are attributed to it by the various religions...

Well, you can't play mix 'n' match and expect to make sense.

How can something that is infinite not include everything?

There are also infinite numbers which consists of both integers and real numbers. God is the Infinite in the sense that God is all encompasing.

Asked and answered. Your assertion that God is all encompassing is unsupported.

A God that is a separate and distinct being is too human like really.

Ummmm, first there is something in there about God creating man in His image. Again, your implication that God can't be like man in this aspect is unsupported.

Heck, you are free to believe what you want, but you're the one talking about logic and then offering none.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by beingofone
You cannot define that which is infinite. it is beyond all systems of logic. What we can do is use logic to see if we are in delusion; sound reason would expose any flaw.

Except that logic encompasses many forms of the infinite. Either you don't know much about logic, or don't know much about infinites, or both.

Straybow:
Could you tell me what infinite would exclude?

Asked and answered. Infinity and inclusion are separate characteristics.

Could you point out where the null set is?

The null set and the singular set are one and the same.

Ummmm, no. Again it seems you need to brush up on the basics of sets and set operations.

http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/SingularSet.html

Maybe you mean "singularity?" Singularities are undefined, not null.

[Flip McWho]

Well, you can't play mix 'n' match and expect to make sense.

I was talking about God in the context of a particular religion. God across religions obviously doesn't make sense.

Asked and answered. Your assertion that God is all encompassing is unsupported.

Firstly, it's not my assertion.

And the assertion that God isn't all encompasing is supported by a Book. Admittedly a very old book but still it's a book thats based on nothing more than 'God' saying, 'behold, this is my word'.

Ummmm, first there is something in there about God creating man in His image. Again, your implication that God can't be like man in this aspect is unsupported.

See, I think of it this way, God was created in our image, because God is a creation of our mind as a way to understand the world and define our place within it.

I'm the first to admit that religions make sense within themselves (largely), for example scientology makes sense if you accept the assumptions that scientology requires, yet it's obviously not true.

All monotheistic religions are based on these three assumptions.
1) God exists as a being distinct from Gods creation.
2) God intervenes in said creation.
3) God's will is revealed in whatever your choice of revelation is.
And the proof for the first two is the third one.

[beingofone]

Straybow:

BO1: You cannot define that which is infinite. it is beyond all systems of logic. What we can do is use logic to see if we are in delusion; sound reason would expose any flaw.

Straybow: Except that logic encompasses many forms of the infinite. Either you don't know much about logic, or don't know much about infinites, or both.

Uh huh - could you define infinite then and demonstrate your superior grasp of this concept that I am not seeing?

I know that infinite can be identified, I said defined, go ahead.

Asked and answered. Infinity and inclusion are separate characteristics.

Infinity - unboundedness.

inclusion - (set theory), the binary relation of one set being a subset of another.

What is not a subset of unboundedness?

BO1: Could you point out where the null set is?

The null set and the singular set are one and the same.

Straybow: Ummmm, no. Again it seems you need to brush up on the basics of sets and set operations.

Could you give the measure for a null set?

I did mean singularity, bust me for spittin on the side walk will ya?


Could you give the measure of singularity?

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by Straybow

God doesn't run afoul of logic, it is our assumptions that run afoul of logic.

Well, esp. those in the OP. And I didn't mean he'd run "afoul of logic", I say a really omnipotent being would be above logic. Otherwise it wouldn't be omnipotent.

Omnipotence however is hardly a scientific category.

[Flip McWho]

Beingofone,

You are making an assumption.

Are you not also making an assumption that consciousness is energy, afterall it cannot be empricially proven.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by Flip McWho
I was talking about God in the context of a particular religion. God across religions obviously doesn't make sense.

Except that historically the Christian religion has been a mix 'n' match of OT and NT, which doesn't work too well. Most criticisms of Christianity come down to the same mixture.

Originally posted by Flip McWho
How can something that is infinite not include everything?

There are also infinite numbers which consists of both integers and real numbers. God is the Infinite in the sense that God is all encompasing.

Asked and answered. Your assertion that God is all encompassing is unsupported.

Firstly, it's not my assertion.

Let's see: "God is all encompasing" vs "it's not my assertion." So you assert that God is all encompassing, then claim you don't... maybe a grammer problem, or something?

This is how logic works: you say infinte = encompassing, I show a valid counter-example, assertion fails.

I'm the first to admit that religions make sense within themselves (largely), for example scientology makes sense if you accept the assumptions that scientology requires, yet it's obviously not true.

Not true at all. Scientology is demonstrably false. The "e-meter" is a meaningless gimmick at best, or outright fraudulent at worst.