Great post Terry, as usual! I've been getting in the habit of not using the term god lately. Even if we could prove the existence of some THING out there in never never land, it's an EVEN LARGER leap to say that that "blob" is a god. So, as a race, we have not proven ANYTHING to exist out there. This preempts us from ever even broaching the subject of god by default. Only AFTER we prove SOMETHING is out there can we begin to describe it to the point that we learn that it is not "not God" and that it is a god. Then we have to assess whether that god is THE god. Another fantastic leap into the void.
In other words, we are a hell of a long way from proving a blob's existence. Therefore we are even farther from (and infinitely short on facts regarding) proving a god-monkey exists.
GOD---the anti-concept
by Terry 33 Replies latest watchtower bible
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83501nwahs
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Homerovah the Almighty
Its too bad that there was never enough faith in the potential of humanity to make those necessary changes that were needed past and present
...... faith in humanity now there's a real concept
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IP_SEC
I used to have faith in humanity hova. Even after the humanity of USA selected GWB. Now continuing to watch the political process, I am more and more driven into my ivory tower. Sheep... a buncha sheeple.
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journey-on
Language does get in the way, but here are my thoughts. As above, so below. As in the macrocosm, so in the microcosm.
In the brain are neurons that receive signals constantly from outside stimuli. The spaces between these neurons, synapses,
transmit the signals and transform and translate them into conscious thoughts. Nobody around you can see, hear,
taste, smell, or touch the thought that your brain just created from this outside stimulus. If you don't verbalize your thought,
no one can tell you even had one. Yet the thought is powerful and influential to you. It is filed away somewhere where it remains
to be retrieved whenever we want or need it. We assume it is filed away in our physical brain somewhere in the creases and folds
of all that gray matter. But, as yet, nobody has seen, held, or touched a thought because it cannot be found much less measured.
It is not a visible thing, yet it can color your world, inspire you, or make you behave a certain way.
There are as many stars in the heavens as there are neurons in your brain. This visible universe is moving and constantly active. We can't
see it with our naked eye, but science tells us by means of certain kinds of instrumental observation that stars and galaxies are dying and being
born all the time. In this vastness of the universe, there is space in between these "neurons" of cosmic matter where "signals" are transmitted,
and translated into unimaginable Divine Intelligence. Like a thought, you cannot see it, but it is powerful and can interact when you are "connected" to it.
It is not the"blob of gray matter itself" but rather it is the unseeable, untouchable, unmeasurable generator of inspiration and Pure Consciousness.
Why is that so hard to see? Like a thought, we may never prove this D.I. exists because it cannot be seen. The "language" of this spiritual energy
is everywhere around us. It is a living word, but because some haven't learned or even tried to understand the language, they deny it even exists.
That sounds irrational to me.
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Homerovah the Almighty
But is it rational and logical to believe in the nothing ?
We do have something to believe in and have faith in though and that is human intelligence
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journey-on
Homerovah,
Just as you can see the results of human intelligence through what we have created (technological advancement),
so, too, you can see the results of divine intelligence through creation. How can you say that the automobile or the
computer or the television just came to be without human intelligence behind it. By the same token, can you say that energy
and matter and life itself wasn't brought into existence by divine intelligence behind it. The only difference is in size and energy vibration.
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Homerovah the Almighty
There are plenty things on earth all a round us which could be considered non-intelligent in its formation and design.
Why would a true intelligent designer globally destroy just about every living animal such as the dinosaurs in that era, by one colossal comet
which took millions of years to develop and evolve, does that sound intelligent ?
This doesn't sound very intelligent in my view.
Perhaps Journey-on you should spend a day inside of a hospice or an institute for the severely mentally handicap, you might reconsider
your viewpoint on intelligent design....... respectfully
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WTWizard
God is the one being that, when a vast majority of people obey Him, mankind settles into a Dark Ages.
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Terry
In the brain are neurons that receive signals constantly from outside stimuli. The spaces between these neurons, synapses,
transmit the signals and transform and translate them into conscious thoughts. Nobody around you can see, hear,
taste, smell, or touch the thought that your brain just created from this outside stimulus. If you don't verbalize your thought,
no one can tell you even had one. Yet the thought is powerful and influential to you. It is filed away somewhere where it remains
to be retrieved whenever we want or need it. We assume it is filed away in our physical brain somewhere in the creases and folds
of all that gray matter. But, as yet, nobody has seen, held, or touched a thought because it cannot be found much less measured.
It is not a visible thing, yet it can color your world, inspire you, or make you behave a certain way.
Wonderfully expressed!
I find that people who desire to believe in a consciousness all-encompassing and embracing fall into a kind of wonder trap which is a disguised form of the Fallacy of Argument from Ignorance. In saying "this must be so because we don't know such and such..." they make their premise that of ignorance rather than knowledge.
Not knowing does present itself as wonder sometimes. Awe is not a source of information, however.
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Narkissos
Terry,
That was interesting. It may come as a surprise, but I think the best (imo) of theology would readily agree that God is an anti-concept. Perhaps not the only one btw. "Being" and "nothingness," "infinity," "absolute" or "eternity" would qualify equally I believe.
But whether our thinking process can dispense with such "anti-concepts" altogether is a very different question.