Just Curious

[Kinich Ahau]

But he does have nobility. Something we all lack apparently.

[Kate]

[Irreligious]

Egor wrote

Ban me whenever you want. It's your forum, and I'm sure I do upset the applecart a great deal.

Wouldn't it be a lot easier for you to just go without any assistance from us? I mean, nobody dragged you, kicking and screaming, into this forum where you knew from the outset that you would not like the participants.

We get it: You don't like atheists. So you took the time to sign up to become a member of this forum and prompty register that hatred here so we'd know about it. Mazel Tov. Now that that mission has been accomplished, what else is your loving god commanding you to do here?

[Smellyoldgit]

Egor wrote

I don't have a name for my religion, .....

..... a load of other crap .....


...... From this understanding of God, love makes sense, as does honor, courage and dignity.

What a load of complete blathering wank - and you wonder why nobody wants to engage or take you seriously!
Even if you could define this 'god' thing you go on about, the whole post would still be a heap of nonsensical horseshit.

[Professor Chaos]

Egor wrote

First off, I thought I was being accused of being Gordon, now it's Jerry?

I know, right? Aside from the fact that your message, language, syntax, etc is virtually indistinguishable, why would anyone think that you are Ed Gordon?

[Irreligious]

So, El Gordo, this was not you responding to the poster Lily back in 2008:

Gordon wrote

I myself am not a Catholic (First Baptist, actually), but as you now, I believe in a future unification of denominations. I believe Martin Luther will be reversed and the Body of Christ will be one again. So, I respect Catholics a great deal. My sister and her kids are all Catholic. She married a Mexican man a long time ago, and converted to his religion.

Anyway, I'm babbling. Keep fighting. Your strength inspires me.

Ed

[Kate]

[Sternwallow]

Egor wrote

First off, I thought I was being accused of being Gordon, now it's Jerry? Maybe intelligent theists all tend to sound alike. Second, I am not going to answer questions that are put to me in the form of hostile attacks. Ban me whenever you want. It's your forum, and I'm sure I do upset the applecart a great deal.

I don't have a name for my religion, but I can describe it. I am a monist. That means I believe that everything is God and nothing is not God. All that fundamentally exists is God. Everything was created by God and from God and therefore is of the substance of God. I agree in large part with Spinoza and his concepts of monism, attributes and modalities.

I believe human beings (and any other life forms like us in the universe, if there are any) are created to become God conscious of Himself from within His Creation. In other words, that's the point of our evolution. One of the attributes of God is consciousness and the human being is meant to be an expression of that attribute.

Where there is a lack of God-consciousness there is duality. A rock seems separate from God because a rock has no consciousness of God. Much like in a dream. Everything in a dream is really the mind of the dreamer, but because there is a lack of self-awareness in a dream, everything seems to be separate and individual.

From this understanding of God, love makes sense, as does honor, courage and dignity.

Jerry was a recent aberration whose unremitting hostility eventually pissed off even the mellow, forgiving Ghoul.

Well, that's a bit clearer. My assumption that you were Christian was incorrect, though I think reasonable in the current religious climate.

So, here we find ourselves with a thing, some 42 Billion light-years deep and likely even more than a hundred light-years deep according to some recent estimates. It is close to 13.7 Billion years old and it is undergoing accelerated expansion into an endless heat death where eventually even the black holes will evaporate to nothing. It is made of nothing but space down to some 8 decimal places or more, where the actual hearts of quarks reside. All of the material that makes up these consciousness, other than their Hydrogen and a bit of their Helium are the ashes of exploded stars, not part of the original big explosion. The tiny pocket of space where this key consciousness is found is destined to be literally eaten by its local star in about 5 Billion years and its ordinary sized galaxy will be completely disrupted by a neighboring galaxy collision (Andromeda) in some few 4.5 or 4.7 Billion years.

The density of the local space measured in units of consciousness per cubic megaparsec is laughably tiny, a number so very small that it approximates the degree by which the critical parameters of the universe are not tuned to be absolutely hostile to our form of life.

Can you explain how this object you seem to be calling god and we are comfortable simply calling the universe, managed to self-create and why you think this god has anything to do with our consciousness and especially why consciousness would be or could be any part of such a god's purpose, or, even deeper, why you think this god is capable of having its own conscious purpose without us?

[nkb]

Egor wrote

Maybe intelligent theists all tend to sound alike.

We'll let you know as soon as we encounter some.

Egor wrote

Second, I am not going to answer questions that are put to me in the form of hostile attacks.

Yes, because if they weren't hostile, you would be falling all over yourself to answer them.

Egor wrote

I don't have a name for my religion, but I can describe it. I am a monist. That means I believe that everything is God and nothing is not God. All that fundamentally exists is God. Everything was created by God and from God and therefore is of the substance of God. I agree in large part with Spinoza and his concepts of monism, attributes and modalities.

I believe human beings (and any other life forms like us in the universe, if there are any) are created to become God conscious of Himself from within His Creation. In other words, that's the point of our evolution. One of the attributes of God is consciousness and the human being is meant to be an expression of that attribute.

Where there is a lack of God-consciousness there is duality. A rock seems separate from God because a rock has no consciousness of God. Much like in a dream. Everything in a dream is really the mind of the dreamer, but because there is a lack of self-awareness in a dream, everything seems to be separate and individual.

From this understanding of God, love makes sense, as does honor, courage and dignity.

Egor,
You are adorable! Basing your entire worldview on Philosophy 101, and thinking it's so profound! Absolutely adorable, I tell you!

[Egor]

Sternwallow wrote

Can you explain how this object you seem to be calling god and we are comfortable simply calling the universe, managed to self-create...

First off, God is not an object. An object would have to be like a subset of a larger set. There is no larger set. There is only God. It's the only thing that exists. It wasn't created; it simply always has been, in one singular eternal moment.

Who created God is one of the biggest problems atheists have with the existence of God. But they don't realize that their question is nonsensical when they're talking about God, with a capital "G". To use the ontological argument, existence is an attribute of God.

Now you may not be able to picture that in your head; I only catch glimpses of it myself. But think about it this way: If anything exists outside of time, such as a mind existing before the Big Bang, it isn't affected by time. That means it cannot have a beginning. That means it simply is--eternally. It simply exists in an eternal present moment.

And that's not so hard to conceive of. Isn't it the way it is for us, too, even in the physical world? Isn't it true that the past is gone forever and the future has never happened? Don't we, as a mind, live in an eternal present moment?

nkb wrote

You are adorable! Basing your entire worldview on Philosophy 101, and thinking it's so profound! Absolutely adorable, I tell you!

So, what's wrong with that? And it's only profound because so many people don't get it, but it's really simple. What's insane is to build an entire belief system, such as atheism, around concepts of God that only a moron would believe. You think you're so smart, wearing geek-chic glasses, and proudly proclaiming there's no such thing as an old man with a white beard in a place called heaven with golden streets. Your like an intellectual rube shouting out with all the arrogance you can muster that 2 + 2 DOES NOT! = 5.

As for my worldview, it's a lot simpler than Philosophy 101.

[Philboid Studge]

Sternwallow wrote

So, here we find ourselves with a thing, some 42 Billion light-years deep and likely even more than a hundred light-years deep according to some recent estimates. It is close to 13.7 Billion years old and it is undergoing accelerated expansion into an endless heat death where eventually even the black holes will evaporate to nothing. It is made of nothing but space down to some 8 decimal places or more, where the actual hearts of quarks reside. All of the material that makes up these consciousness, other than their Hydrogen and a bit of their Helium are the ashes of exploded stars, not part of the original big explosion. The tiny pocket of space where this key consciousness is found is destined to be literally eaten by its local star in about 5 Billion years and its ordinary sized galaxy will be completely disrupted by a neighboring galaxy collision (Andromeda) in some few 4.5 or 4.7 Billion years.

The density of the local space measured in units of consciousness per cubic megaparsec is laughably tiny, a number so very small that it approximates the degree by which the critical parameters of the universe are not tuned to be absolutely hostile to our form of life.

Lovely. I feel your posts should be accompanied by music -- something operatic. Wagner, maybe ...[Dang, I have only some thin arias by Ema Destinova from Lohengrin and the Flying Dutchman in iTunes. That won't do.]

But what I want to ask you is this, re the measure of consciousness in proportion to the amount of hostile space surrounding it: Why is this laughably tiny amount important ? I'm not speaking for our Monist friend here, but I can imagine a theist will look at those forbidding odds as evidence* that a certain mutated ape is very special indeed.

*I mean "evidence" in the theist sense, i.e., as "a sign" from the Eternal Ground of Being or what-have-you.


P.S. In the end I put on Gounod's "Faust." Doesn't do your prose justice but it seemed appropriately diabolical. And check out Gounod -- he could be your older, less attractive sibling:

[West491]

Egor wrote

Who created God is one of the biggest problems atheists have with the existence of God. But they don't realize that their question is nonsensical when they're talking about God, with a capital "G". To use the ontological argument, existence is an attribute of God.

How are you aware of an event that took place outside of spacetime? Because, you see, if it is true that God exists outside of spacetime, there is no way for us to know it because we exist inside of spacetime.

[Sternwallow]

Egor wrote

First off, God is not an object. An object would have to be like a subset of a larger set. There is no larger set. There is only God. It's the only thing that exists. It wasn't created; it simply always has been, in one singular eternal moment.

The universe is the object that you say is god. It is a single set that is not part of a larger set of what we can only know (imperfectly) as reality.

The notion that the universe, having a starting point in time, must have been created is not the atheist view, it is the expected common theist view.

For several reasons, including but not limited to the fact that atheism is not a world view, atheism has no position on the question of whether the universe was created or not.

Who created God is one of the biggest problems atheists have with the existence of God. But they don't realize that their question is nonsensical when they're talking about God, with a capital "G". To use the ontological argument, existence is an attribute of God.

The ontological argument is not as strong as you seem to think. It has weakness in its areas of self-reference.

Now you may not be able to picture that in your head; I only catch glimpses of it myself. But think about it this way: If anything exists outside of time, such as a mind existing before the Big Bang, it isn't affected by time. That means it cannot have a beginning. That means it simply is--eternally. It simply exists in an eternal present moment.

How, do you suppose, the universe, has a companion realm, part of it outside, without the universe being exactly the subset that you said was not possible for god?

And that's not so hard to conceive of. Isn't it the way it is for us, too, even in the physical world? Isn't it true that the past is gone forever and the future has never happened? Don't we, as a mind, live in an eternal present moment?

No, we do not exist in an eternal present moment, we live in an instantaneous present moment, more's the pity sometimes.

In a deterministic universe, all of time from beginning to end, that is all of history, would have an equal existence even though, as you say, we can only perceive a tiny sliver at a time.

So, what's wrong with that? And it's only profound because so many people don't get it, but it's really simple. What's insane is to build an entire belief system, such as atheism,

Correction, atheism is not a belief system. It is a position on a single proposition.

... around concepts of God that only a moron would believe. You think you're so smart, wearing geek-chic glasses, and proudly proclaiming there's no such thing as an old man with a white beard in a place called heaven with golden streets.

That is not our idea, it is the crap from the Bible that is part of the Christian claims. I have rescinded my incorrect attachment of you to Christianity. Let us move on,

Your[sic] like an intellectual rube shouting out with all the arrogance you can muster that 2 + 2 DOES NOT! = 5.

That seems like the anger and insults that you claimed to be against earlier. Just sayin'.

As for my worldview, it's a lot simpler than Philosophy 101.

It looks like your worldview is kept simple by not considering some of the implications that I referenced above. And, remember that it does not simplify a point to say that it is a consequence of the single most complex item in the universe, that is, god.

"god did it" explains nothing, proves nothing, simplifies nothing.

[Sternwallow]

Sternwallow wrote

So, here we find ourselves with a thing, some 42 Billion light-years deep and likely even more than a hundred light-years deep according to some recent estimates. It is close to 13.7 Billion years old and it is undergoing accelerated expansion into an endless heat death where eventually even the black holes will evaporate to nothing. It is made of nothing but space down to some 8 decimal places or more, where the actual hearts of quarks reside. All of the material that makes up these consciousness, other than their Hydrogen and a bit of their Helium are the ashes of exploded stars, not part of the original big explosion. The tiny pocket of space where this key consciousness is found is destined to be literally eaten by its local star in about 5 Billion years and its ordinary sized galaxy will be completely disrupted by a neighboring galaxy collision (Andromeda) in some few 4.5 or 4.7 Billion years.

The density of the local space measured in units of consciousness per cubic megaparsec is laughably tiny, a number so very small that it approximates the degree by which the critical parameters of the universe are not tuned to be absolutely hostile to our form of life.

Philboid Studge wrote

Lovely. I feel your posts should be accompanied by music -- something operatic. Wagner, maybe ...[Dang, I have only some thin arias by Ema Destinova from Lohengrin and the Flying Dutchman in iTunes. That won't do.]

At least it probably won't wind up in the quotes thread.

But what I want to ask you is this, re the measure of consciousness in proportion to the amount of hostile space surrounding it: Why is this laughably tiny amount important ? I'm not speaking for our Monist friend here, but I can imagine a theist will look at those forbidding odds as evidence* that a certain mutated ape is very special indeed.

I meant it as a pre-emption of the whole idea that anything about us and the Earth was a purpose of some intentional conscious agency. God as a characterization of the universe would seem instead to have exerted nearly his entire power and skill to prevent life and consciousness from ever arising. Maybe the fact that we arose despite him is why god is angry enough to torment us somewhat constantly and nearly to extinction on more than one occasion.

*I mean "evidence" in the theist sense, i.e., as "a sign" from the Eternal Ground of Being or what-have-you.

OK

P.S. In the end I put on Gounod's "Faust."

My taste is very pedestrian; I would more likely have put on B's "Ode to Joy" #9, especially the part where it goes "ta, tata, ta, thump, ta, ta, tatata, long pause"

Doesn't do your prose justice but it seemed appropriately diabolical. And check out Gounod -- he could be your older, less attractive sibling:

You may be a bit reversed on that in these late days of lust, licentious debauchery and chemo but thanks for what I think was an intended compliment.

[nkb]

Egor wrote

First off, God is not an object.

Before you go on vacating your bowels, please share with us how you know anything about God, other than what you got from a Dummies' Guide to Philosophy.

Egor wrote

So, what's wrong with that? And it's only profound because so many people don't get it, but it's really simple.

See, that's why I think you're adorable. You actually think it's profound, and that it's something that people don't get! I bet you have big round cheeks that I could pinch.

Egor wrote

What's insane is to build an entire belief system, such as atheism, around concepts of God that only a moron would believe.

Wow, what an epic fail! It takes effort to be this dense.

Atheism, which is the absence of belief in a God, is a belief system, which uses a concept of God. Brilliant!

Egor wrote

You think you're so smart, wearing geek-chic glasses, and proudly proclaiming there's no such thing as an old man with a white beard in a place called heaven with golden streets.

I don't wear glasses (geek-chic or otherwise), and I only seem smart when I compare myself to a mental midget such as yourself.

Egor wrote

Your like an intellectual rube shouting out with all the arrogance you can muster that 2 + 2 DOES NOT! = 5.

I love when analogies backfire (self-pwnge at its best).
So, according to you, we are actually right, but you just don't like the fact that we are arrogant about it?

Egor wrote

As for my worldview, it's a lot simpler than Philosophy 101.

No shit! I was trying to be nice.