Does anybody still believe in God and the Bible?

by tornapart 218 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  sabastious

  Atheism's BS meter is a common trait for all of us ( you are capable of identifying mythological gods like Thor just as well as the next atheist ) and yet somewhere you made a distinction for one god. That choice you made doesn't overturn the laws of physics ( believing in Harry Potter doesn't make wands work ) yet your understanding of the laws of physics ( plus other facts ) presumably allows you to discount gods flying on chariots as the sun or elephant headed milk drinking gods. If you wish to use science and logic to back up your elected god you would do well to try and simply explain how the observed universe is best explained by your god; but then you have to be mature enough not to have a hissy fit when presented with data that would render any part of your conclusion as incorrect.

  Where do you get that I have an elected God? I believe there is evidence of a single force throughout all of humanity. I'm not a monotheist, per se, I do try to follow quantum field theory which I believe is connected to the force of God. I believe that the Bible was inspired by God because it was put through a peer review process, even though archaic when compared to the modern scientific method. I fully intend to expand past the Bible, but right now it and YHWH is my focus. You haven't seemed to follow my posts in this thread or I have failed to accurately communicate my thoughts. I want to be a scientist and a theologian. I understand the hazing when I attempt to speak science. I'll take another please.

  -Sab
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  Qcmbr

  fair enough.
• 

  sabastious

  When I believed I used to get angry with my inability to clearly state why my god was proven by the facts. I got very frustrated as I tried to find evidence for my god ( and my god only ) and then I had one of many epiphanies. The difficulty in enunciating my position was not my fault it was the lack of sustainable evidence, my emperor had no clothes on and no amount of misdirection and straining at a gnat could make it otherwise. The mental liberation and joy that follows from allowing the evidence to take the lead is wonderful. I no longer had to exhaust myself stuffing evidence into I'll fitted mental boxes.

  I'll say it again I believe that logic is a flawed model. Let me elaborate on MY (<-- important word) thoughts:

  My brain has the ability to acknowledge the impossible, which seems impossible to me. How could the universe NOT have exterior walls or some sort of stoppage? If it DOES have walls what is behind them? Logic doesn't seem to be able to hurdle whatever the infinite is therefore I believe it can be said to be a flawed, or incomplete, model. This, to me, is strong evidence of a higher power since it can be proven that the human brain has inherent limitations.

  -Sab
• 

  sabastious

  But is the force a person? We don't know! But we wish the force IS a person. Because we think it's a good idea.

  I call God energy and I call humans matter. I know energy is just dispersed/less dense matter, but there is a big difference between a rock and electromagnetism. Matter, as we have seen, evolves into sentient life when enough time is given for it to collect from a sun's gravitational pull, create a planet the right distance from the sun and have water delivered by an asteroid. Electomagnatism and other types of energy have been around much longer than sentient matter. Therefore would it be unreasonable to believe that life might have evolved first in the world of less dense matter before the world of dense matter?

  -Sab
• 

  Qcmbr

  Seems like a non-sequeter to me. The inability to postulate a model or law to explain a phenomenon doesn't automatically lead to an intelligence that can. Indeed that seems to simply push the problem behind a curtain, the problem you describe is one of self knowledge (?) if you truly knew who and what you were you would, by definition, also need to comprehend your context (since nothing exists atomically alone.) The ability to know yourself to this infinite level does not in and of itself require a being who does (the ant does not require a human simply because a human is smarter.) What you seem to be arguing is the medieval concept of a chain of being with all creation in a heirarchy leading from rocks to animals to humans to angels to god.

  The ability to imagine the impossible does not mean the impossible exists. Let me give you a bodged mathematical solution to your edge of the universe problem which is one of dimensional folding. Each dimension can be folded through the dimension above it (as a rough example a 2d sheet of paper can be folded into a tube or more interestingly into a mobius strip) , this folding does not alter its dimension but it alters the coordinate system (and in the mobius strip example shows how - at least in one direction - an edge can be removed and infinity produced) a better shape to demonstrate this is the torus which is infinite in any direction. Interestingly dropping down two dimensions produces a coordinate singularity (a dot!) while going up one dimension produces time (change within the current dimension.) At no stage does my ropey model require a superior intelligence to make it work.
• 

  sabastious

  Seems like a non-sequeter to me. The inability to postulate a model or law to explain a phenomenon doesn't automatically lead to an intelligence that can.

  We're in the middle of the God hypothesis and testing phases. It's an observation of mine that logic is not something that can solve the problems of the universe because the universe doesn't seem to abide by it as a law.

  The ability to know yourself to this infinite level does not in and of itself require a being who does (the ant does not require a human simply because a human is smarter.) What you seem to be arguing is the medieval concept of a chain of being with all creation in a heirarchy leading from rocks to animals to humans to angels to god.

  I am saying I lack the ability to know myself on an infinte level. Therefore one hypothesis is that another form of intelligence does not.

  -Sab
• 

  sabastious

  The ability to imagine the impossible does not mean the impossible exists. Let me give you a bodged mathematical solution to your edge of the universe problem which is one of dimensional folding. Each dimension can be folded through the dimension above it (as a rough example a 2d sheet of paper can be folded into a tube or more interestingly into a mobius strip) , this folding does not alter its dimension but it alters the coordinate system (and in the mobius strip example shows how - at least in one direction - an edge can be removed and infinity produced) a better shape to demonstrate this is the torus which is infinite in any direction. Interestingly dropping down two dimensions produces a coordinate singularity (a dot!) while going up one dimension produces time (change within the current dimension.) At no stage does my ropey model require a superior intelligence to make it work.

  Are you referencing the theory that the universe is ribbon shaped?

  -Sab
• 

  sabastious

  At no stage does my ropey model require a superior intelligence to make it work.

  But it requires a force which doesn't have a known source, right? That source could be intelligent, right?

  -Sab
• 

  Qcmbr

  The more we study the universe the more mathematically elegant and simple the underlying concepts seem.

  It is entirely possible that life is merely an expression of entropic eddy as the energy gradient equalises so rapidly allowing momentary energy peaks (so a rapidly flowing river can be seen to momentarily stop or reverse in eddy pools.) In other words the non-intelligent universe is 'working' to maximise entropy but there is room for complex chemistry, energy storage and chaos patterns to occur which manifest in one special case as self replicating engines (life.) Life cannot continue infinitely in a universe experiencing unstoppable entropy and that very entropic state does not argue for an external lifeform to start it.
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  sabastious

  You just described the matrix I think. If the universe is a "system" who/what is it's operator?

  -Sab