by Terry 143 Replies latest watchtower bible
The speed limit is 60 in Texas but everybody is going much, much faster than I am (cruise control 60 mph.)
The speed limit on the toll road (highway 130) between Austin-Bergrstrom airport and I-45 in Round Rock is 80 mph. Just two weeks ago today I was doing 110 on that road, following a state trooper who was still pulling away from me (no lights on, he slowed down and followed when people were in front of him).
The American Autobahn
The speed limit on the toll road (highway 130) between Austin-Bergrstrom airport and I-45 in Round Rock is 80 mph. Just two weeks ago today I was doing 110 on that road, following a state trooper who was still pulling away from me (no lights on, he slowed down and followed when people were in front of him).
Individually, driving has become an existential crisis with antisocial impulses too virulent to control.
When I'm going the maximum speed allowed by law in the slow lane folks come up behind me and ride my tail fully and irrepressibly goading me to transcend my own concerns for safety simply because it is their impulse to do so.
Our appetite for our own whims isn't governed or even governable.
This comes to our greed for God as well.
So ravenous are the religious-minded in their starvation for numinous love and eternity they put a lead foot on the pedal of their imagination and zoom full throttle into the arms of the Lord.
Those of us who putter along looking for facts are a nuisance to their impulse and they roar up behind us and rev their fanaticism to full roar: "Get outta my way--I'm heading for heaven's highway!"
Also known as "the way to get to the airport from Round Rock because I-35 sucks donkey balls".
Those of us who putter along looking for facts are a nuisance to their impulse and they roar up behind us and rev their fanaticism to full roar: "Get outta my way--I'm heading for heaven's highway!"
I was headed to pick someone up.
Hmm, the photo's meaning is lost on me. Perhaps that means the joke's on me.
Well, I just wanted to clarify that I was in no way claiming to have any answers. To me, personally, it seems to be common sense that if God created the universe, God must be outside of time, and that therefore he can see all of (our) time at once. Perhaps, EntirelyPossible, you don't think that's self-evident; if not, I can't think of how to prove it to you, so I'll just shrug and let bygones be bygones.
Ultimately, I agree with Terry that any attempt to conceive of God is futile from a human standpoint. I see no evidence of God directly, but I do see evidence of design, or at least intent. I don't see evidence of a Judeo-Christian God who observes a sparrow falling to the ground, and numbers the hairs on our head, but I do see evidence that someone wanted us to develop safely on this planet, nestled in a safe place in a stable galaxy with a great big stabilizing moon and protective outer planets. But since I can't prove anything, I can only live my life the same as anyone else.
So I doubt I have anything further to add to the discussion, but thanks for listening. I guess that's the difference between an agnostic and a believer (Christian, atheist, etc.) -- I have no desire to proselytize. Exchanging ideas and speculation is fun, but because I don't believe that I have access to any real answers, there's nothing that I absolutely have to share with others for their own benefit, nor do extended debates hold my interest.
Terry, thank you. : no,-- "such a small thing in our head" is not running the world, which seems to run by itself quite well, thank you. , and that world is BIG and its OLD, and Einstein who had a bodily big head, expressed it this way: its the most remarkable feature of the universe that we can (learn to) understand it
working with the limitation of the human mind that you Terri identified, it is possible to think of a creator, but he is working better than we.
of a creator that lived before us and still lives. That is eternal and posseses eternal time and more energy than we do.
all what is said is only a construct of our minds. everything we know is. but much what we know is also out there,-- like the rush we get on the Texas autobahn.
Apognophos: I share your thought -of -limit on god as a creator.--so, Can you think of god not outside of time, but as time to be an eternal property of an eternal god? time through which we move as on a texas highway, but time through which god does not MOVE, but is? that god IS already in the future? eternally?
and I am Not proselytizing. just my ideas, in my head.
I agree that Terry's suggestion is unfair -- that because we have trouble conceiving of God, our weak conception somehow makes God lesser. If God exists, he is not dependent on our ability to conceive of him, any more than the laws of physics are dependent on our understanding of them. At one time, humans had a very weak understanding of physics, but those physical laws were just as valid as they are now; at least, I don't see anyone suggesting that they have gotten stronger or more complicated since our descriptions of them have become more confident and precise. Even when scientists believed in a cosmic ether, or in phlogiston, or in spontaneous generation, the real universe kept on ticking regardless.
That's an interesting suggestion, prologos. It has occurred to me in the past that we might exist in God's mind altogether, as a sort of thought experiment. One way or another, it could be that our existence is totally dependent on him, moment to moment. Certainly your idea would explain how God can know all things, although it's also hard for me to grasp the concept of God being time just as it's hard to grasp the idea of His having no beginning.
At the same time, as someone who works with computers, it's hard to shake the idea that we might be in a giant simulation, run by more advanced beings. They might be no more like God than a person who sits down to play The Sims on his PC and watches sim-people go about their sim-lives and satisfy their sim-needs until he gets bored and shuts down the computer for the day. The goal of our universe, their experiment, might simply be to see what happens, just for fun. In fact, a game of Civilization might be more accurate than a game of Sims.
To take things back to Terry's point, his initial assertion that the idea of God does not make sense simply lacks weight with me because there are aspects of science that make just as little sense. Why should a hazy collection of interstellar gas give rise to a rocky planet with water, where organic compounds form into cells? That's absurd! Perhaps true, but still absurdly hard to imagine! Why should these early cells have a desire to replicate and survive? They were just bags of water and long strings of atoms forming carbon-based compounds! How silly! How is it that light behaves as a wave without a medium to travel through, and that quanta, building blocks of matter, have indefinite states until observed?
Why, if I wanted to mock scientific theories based on current gaps in their explanations, or on their seeming far-fetched, we'd be here all day! But Schrödinger attempted to do that with his rhetorical cat, and look where that got him. If we are really closer to the truth today than we were before quantum theory, then Einstein, Schrödinger and others have egg on their faces! If such smart people can be wrong in doubting in concepts that they had trouble understanding, what does that mean for you, Terry? :)
The bible type god is an ego product. Ego likes power, grandiosity, knowing everything. Thus, biblegod, as a thing, is not spiritual, but animal in nature. Biblegod was born in brutal times of minimal resources, when disputes were settled w blood, generally. Times have changed. Why not change gods to suit the times?
S
