What is God? - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

An atheist-free area for those of religious belief to discuss religious topics.

Moderator: PoFo Agora Mods

Forum rules: No one line posts please. Religious topics may be discussed here or in The Agora. However, this forum is intended specifically as an area for those with religious belief to discuss religion without threads being derailed by atheist arguments. Please respect that. Political topics regarding religion belong in the Religion forum in the Political Issues section.
User avatar
By Wellsy
#15140880
Oxymoron wrote:And your cell that makes up your skin is also not Wellsy, yet it is part of Wellsy.

Something can be part of something yet inessential/accidential in one sense while essential in another.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch02-s08.html
One and the same event may be necessary in one relation and accidental in another. For example, a baby girl is born. Is this a case of necessity? In relation to the final result of the development of the embryo, yes. But from the standpoint of development of the given nation or of world history it is a chance event. Sex mutation is still one of nature's secrets. A single mutation is the expression of necessity of certain physico-chemical processes in the organism. But in relation to the organism and even more to the species, it is a matter of chance. In reality, therefore, any phenomenon at one and the same time but in different relations may be either necessary or accidental.

What needs to be clarified is the relationship of the part to the whole, to which the identity of a person such as 'Wellsy' is more than the sum of the analytical parts unless one subscribes to a kind of Buddhist anatta or Humean bundle view of self, where things are nothing but the attributes and hence the illusion of the self/subject which refers to nothing once one abstracts away those attributes.


How this analogy translates to a concept of God is unclear left unstated, but it seems to be a point that I myself, among others, are parts of the whole which is God. Which sounds like the Hindu sense of the Brahman which is the eternal and unchanging grounding of reality which is sometimes interpreted as finding itself in individuated form of the self (Atman).

Detour: But I would take a different approach in emphasizing my identity as derived from the social whole and need not yet appeal to the metaphysical. It's just that humans have long been quite confused about the nature of ideality, where language can refer to something real but which isn't immediately empirical yet constitutes the essence of things based on their relations to one another. There is no reason to speculate beyond the appearance of things because there are only appearances mediated by their relation o other appearances. The confusion arises when one tries to investigate a thing in abstraction from its relationships and developmental origins. Hence the difficulty in discerning my consciousness as a unique individual known as Wellsy when my being isn't simply embodied by developed out of the relationships I have and had and flows in a continuous narrative that is my life.

All of this is more a brief excursion into the self than an inference upon God though. I guess it is critical as the self is often made synonymous with consciousness which is often treated as the modern term for the soul. I resort to naturalist means to explain the origins of the self not explicated in crudely materialist/objective scientific terms as it still has no place for humans in their conception. Where as someone else would perhaps consider the impossible with out God the creator in an intervening sense.
User avatar
By Julian658
#15140882
Wellsy wrote:My initial thought is I am not God.


You could be God if we assume God is every atom and subatomic particle in the universe. One of the electrons in your body was likely created during the big bang. OTOH, God could be your consciousness.

And indeed everyone believes in something even if it is as mundane as money.


Some atheists can be angry, intolerant, and fundamentalists.
User avatar
By Wellsy
#15140891
Julian658 wrote:You could be God if we assume God is every atom and subatomic particle in the universe. One of the electrons in your body was likely created during the big bang. OTOH, God could be your consciousness.

Just to make a distinction explicit by going a bit further, this doesn’t seem to be God inferred as the ultimate ground to reality as God I think should be something more than what we know exists in the universe. Even with Spinoza in which God is some sort of infinite of attributes rightly posits God as greater than all of our reality which is constituted by two fundamental attributes of extension and thought. Which are but two among the infinite derived from God, the substance of our reality yet not reducible to all of it as it/they are something greater. This is about as close as I can get to inferring a kind of God as a logical necessity as a way to explain the existence of reality.
Some atheists can be angry, intolerant, and fundamentalists.

Indeed, atheism doesn’t inherently do anything better for people and is often its own theology. In fact, this is something I didn’t emphasize strongly enough in an earlier lengthy post about how Marx wasn’t an atheist as commonly thought as they simply replaced God with other seemingly abstract entities. So they didn’t escape religion even though they thought themselves to.
By Pants-of-dog
#15140894
I think all leptons, including electrons, were created during the first few instants of the universe.

Anyway, I think god is:

1. so far outside the realm of human experience that we are unable to really understand what god is, and....
2. so far outside our ken that we do not really matter to god in any useful sense.
User avatar
By Oxymoron
#15140896
Pants-of-dog wrote:I think all leptons, including electrons, were created during the first few instants of the universe.

Anyway, I think god is:

1. so far outside the realm of human experience that we are unable to really understand what god is, and....
2. so far outside our ken that we do not really matter to god in any useful sense
.


Instants would require time, something that did not exist "prior" to the big bang.
In any case, you actually said something that makes sense. WOW this is like a pig flying moment.
User avatar
By Julian658
#15140915
Wellsy wrote:Just to make a distinction explicit by going a bit further, this doesn’t seem to be God inferred as the ultimate ground to reality as God I think should be something more than what we know exists in the universe. Even with Spinoza in which God is some sort of infinite of attributes rightly posits God as greater than all of our reality which is constituted by two fundamental attributes of extension and thought. Which are but two among the infinite derived from God, the substance of our reality yet not reducible to all of it as it/they are something greater. This is about as close as I can get to inferring a kind of God as a logical necessity as a way to explain the existence of reality.


I tried to look at the proof of God by Kurt Godel, but that is above my pay grade.
Image

:eek: :eek:
By Pants-of-dog
#15140918
Oxymoron wrote:Instants would require time, something that did not exist "prior" to the big bang.


...which is why I was referring to the first few moments after the big bang.
By B0ycey
#15140939
@Wellsy, just reread your post to me to digest its full majesty. It is difficult to respond as it is a self reflection to reach a conclusion of what is God. Would I be right you seem more influenced by Feuerbach in your thinking here? You seem like you are trying to entice humanistic beliefs or understand when the answer is above that. That is to say, the humanistic God, the one of moral objectivity and the creator of Man of his self image exists in the imagination of man - that much is true. But that God manifests depending on the religion you adhere to and serves a purpose to control behaviour to what we desire from ourselves and others within the guise of religion. The other God, the one of away from the gospels, the creator and all seer cannot be explained with human morality but the meaning of the universe. Perhaps @quetzalcoatl and my thinking cannot help you here for the existence of a God of moral objectivity is a creation of man and only exists for self purpose.
User avatar
By Wellsy
#15140940
B0ycey wrote:@Wellsy, just reread your post to me to digest its full majesty. It is difficult to respond as it is a self reflection to reach a conclusion of what is God. Would I be right you seem more influenced by Feuerbach in your thinking here? You seem like you are trying to entice humanistic beliefs or understand when the answer is above that. That is to say, the humanistic God, the one of moral objectivity and the creator of Man of his self image exists in the imagination of man - that much is true. But that God manifests depending on the religion you adhere to and serves a purpose to control behaviour to what we desire from ourselves and others within the guise of religion. The other God, the one of away from the gospels, the creator and all seer cannot be explained with human morality but the meaning of the universe. Perhaps @quetzalcoatl and my thinking cannot help you here for the existence of a God of moral objectivity is a creation of man and only exists for self purpose.

Well I do think the loss of the interventionist God as just another myth is unfortunate in some ways but an opportunity in anothers as long as the bleakness under capitalism is truly realized in a world not without problems but based on human needs in their multifacetedness.

It does seem that such a God of moral sentiment is incompatible with the philosophers/theologians God as the ultimate ground/reality.
And indeed there is nothing to reconcile the two as they seem to be different conceptions or some sort of splinter off from the original conception.
By B0ycey
#15140941
Wellsy wrote:And indeed there is nothing to reconcile the two as they seem to be different conceptions or some sort of splinter off from the original conception.


Indeed.

Perhaps that's the crux. Everyone has a manifestation of what they believe God to be that to explain 'what is God' depends on the notion and beliefs of the person you are debating with at that moment of time. :hmm:
User avatar
By Wellsy
#15140942
B0ycey wrote:Indeed.

Perhaps that's the crux. Everyone has a manifestation of what they believe God to be that to explain 'what is God' depends on the notion and beliefs of the person you are debating with at that moment of time. :hmm:

Well I’ve just engaged in a lot of thinking to avoid believing in God or to try and avoid metaphysical speculation a little bit as ultimately I am satisfied with explaining things in their real relations more so than the much more speculative.
User avatar
By Yggdrasill
#15158417
I have yet to see a logical argument to demonstrate the existence of God that a) is not circular; and/or b) gets past a Deistic god to a Theistic god (let alone a specific Theistic god/gods).

That said, I don't understand Godel's argument.
By B0ycey
#15158421
Yggdrasill wrote:I have yet to see a logical argument to demonstrate the existence of God that a) is not circular; and/or b) gets past a Deistic god to a Theistic god (let alone a specific Theistic god/gods).

That said, I don't understand Godel's argument.


There was a user once who came on here saying he had proven the existence of God reciting George Berkeley. It was full of holes but he made a goodish argument that wasn't circular... you just had to accept immaterialism and that we are part of someone elses consciousness that's all. :lol:

Nonetheless I only reply to you that most religious people don't actually try to prove God. Religion works on faith and no evidence is required when faith is the underlining factor.
User avatar
By Julian658
#15158422
Yggdrasill wrote:I have yet to see a logical argument to demonstrate the existence of God that a) is not circular; and/or b) gets past a Deistic god to a Theistic god (let alone a specific Theistic god/gods).

That said, I don't understand Godel's argument.

Whether God is real or not is a moot point. What has shaped history is the concept of God.
God does not have to exist to do good or harm. Atheists do not get this point.
By Atlantis
#15158423
The concept of God always was a silly idea.

If God does exist, then the human concept of God amounts to heresy. In fact, that's why most religions prohibit the conceptualization of God in words or pictures: "thou shalt have no other gods." Since the concept of reality is different from reality, the Gods we create by concepts or images are different from the reality of God. Thus, by creating "other gods," we commit heresy.

If God does not exist, then the very notion of it is absurd.
User avatar
By ingliz
#15158459
What is God?







For those who apparently did not see this post pro[…]

A new film has been released destroying the offic[…]

Sounds like perfect organized crime material ex[…]

Commercial foreclosures increase 97% from last ye[…]