A thought experiment about what it means "to be" GOD

by Terry 143 Replies latest watchtower bible

• 

  Terry

  Without a baseline from which to measure DEVIATION we have nothing! We cannot communicate. We cannot convey quantity, identity or specificity.

  If you are a mathematics professor you understand this.

  But, if you are Spiritually-minded thinker you likely DO NOT because you CANNOT.

  Most of us understand that when it comes to numbers:

  I say "5" and you don't think, "Hmm, that could be 27 or even 106!"

  That would drain quantity, magnitude, measurement use, utility and function.

  This would be like working hard and getting a paycheck that had the word "whatever" in the amount box.

  The difference between primitives and moderns is the functionality of SPECIFIC communication.

  Technology and science cannot exist without specific communication.

  Enter an e-mail address or password and CHANGE just one specific character and prove my point!

  Technology, science, quantity, value, specificity and identity is LITERAL.

  Some of the more religious-minded people here on JW-net don't see words as tools of specificity. That, I would assert, is because

  their thinking has been damaged by Jehovah's Witness deconstructions of "meaning" over the last 100 years.

  The GB uses language like a Navy Seal demolition team detonating plastic explosives in our intellect.

  If you don't understand the word IDENTITY you can't receive any communication (internal or external) that differentiates one thing from another.

  For anything to exist it must be different from everything else in some unique way.

  Which of the following numbers contains a specific identity and why?

  555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555555

  Go ahead, you tell me.

  You can't.

  I can impose identity using a specificity, however.

  The thirteenth 5 from the left is the one I wish to identify.

  Okay. Now, if you distinguish left is different from right and how to count to thirteen WE CAN COMMUNICATE.

  See how specificity works? That is how we IDENTIFY!

  Go Back and read my opening paragraph and cut the crap!

  Stop using words as playthings!

  I use words very carefully to communicate exact contexts, descriptions and quantities.

  I don't use words so that you can twist them, squeeze them and turn them to suit your own purposes!

  The TRINITY violates IDENTITY.

  Look at those 5's again. None of them has identity beyond the inherent representation of "no more than and no less than".

  Big 5? No. Little 5? No. Father 5? No. Son 5? No. Holy Ghost 5? No.

  Get real and use your brain to identify and not to transform to conform.

  Thought experiment: can you imagine a circle that is square?
• 

  Terry

  If God is a self-sustaining Triune entity, that answers all your questions.

  There was NO point in which God was NOT creating or knowing or not-existing.

  You are using words. I can see that. But, you are not communicating meaning.
• 

  Terry

  God always knew and experiences love because of the unity of trinity...another "other" toward which love can be given and received...a constant reciprocity, so to speak, apart from creation.

  You are using words, but, you are not communicating.

  For God to always know.......is a phrase at odds with meaning.

  God=an existing intelligence without origin

  always=non identifiable position in time (in which no events can be measured)

  know=to possess facts, knowledge, ideas OF non-events, non-things, non-existent insubstantiality

  Every component of your sentence FAILS to communicate an actuality.

  Just like me saying "circle that is square" is stringing together a non-thought into a sentence.

  Love=the strongest possible emotion attached to a value placed on something.

  Trinity=primitive pagan construct which posits mutually exclusive disambiguity while asserting identity without differentiation!

  In other words: nonsense.
• 

  Terry

  God was God. That is something.

  Is this a reasoned argument?

  God would have no attributes, identity or context.

  Says who?

  What is an attribute, an identity, a context? You have know that to continue. It has to mean what it exactly means.

  A God of Love with nothing to love? A God of wisdom with nothing to actually know?

  God would love God. God would be the personification of love and wisdom.

  Plato would love your argument because he granted greater beingness to mental constructs than to reality itself. Love is an emotional value and does not and cannot detach into a person floating forever in a big nothing. Come on--get real!

  In order to BE God...there must already exist OTHER than God. Just as: for there to be a dream there must be a dreamer.

  You cannot get nothing from nothing. The fact that there is something proves there was never nothing.

  How is it you managed to get nothing from nothing:) When you start your second sentence with the words "The fact..." you assume into existence

  without proving. There is no fact. You made one out of nothing. You proved nothing. Literally:) The bible tells us god hung the earth upon nothing.

  Consequently, only in the mind of MAN can God find context and omniscience, power, etc.

  Only in the mind of someone trying hard to convince himself there is no God could someone conceive of your last statement.

  But, you've demonstrated how possible it is to grant context where there isn't any to be granted. The mind can be a laboratory or a plaything.
• 

  PSacramento

  You are using words. I can see that. But, you are not communicating meaning.

  Sure I am, it's just that you don't understand and that is my fault because I am not relating to you what I think.

  THe first thing you have to accept is that IF God is GOD then any "boundries" that our logic and reason have do NOT apply to Him.

  Saying "I don't get it" or "I don't understand" or "That doesn't make sense" are comments on OUR limitations and nothing more.

  To suggest that before God created THIS universe He wasn't doing anything is assuming that NOTHING existed before THIS universe came to be, thatis of course incorrect since GOD existed, which means HIS universe existed.

  To suggest that before this universe came to be there was NOTHING anywhere else is based on what? Our sole perception that THIS universe is all there is and ever has been ( although some scientists are already postulating that is NOT the case).

  In short, you are like I said before, pigeon holing God into what YOU think He can or can not do.

  WHy?
• 

  Terry

  GOD, in order to exist, must be DIFFERENT from a non-existing nothing. Don't you grasp that?

  When we try to differentiate God from nothing how do we manage to do it?

  What description matches the reality of an existing God?

  If you were somehow created miraculously on a desert island on which no other living persons existed could you be MORAL or even GOOD?

  It is a social construct which only acquires "meaning" in relation to interpersonal situations.

  God's attributes must attach to be accurate descriptions of reality.

  God, in my opening statement, not only is not on a desert island.......God is nowhere because nothing has been created which can be a "place" in which to be. No events of ocurred so there is no TIME in which to exist.

  See how this works?

  To BE means to exist as something in relation to other things which are different.

  5 cannot mean anything if there is nothing other than 5.

  This isn't rocket science.
• 

  Terry

  You say the following:

  "it's just that you don't understand and that is my fault because I am not relating to you what I think."

  That is an appeal to my mind and my reasoning process using your mind and your reasoning process. That is how we communicate meaning.

  You proceed to try and have it both ways simultaneously. How would you rationally KNOW the following statement either reasonably or logically?

  THe first thing you have to accept is that IF God is GOD then any "boundries" that our logic and reason have do NOT apply to Him.
• 

  PSacramento

  God's attributes must attach to be accurate descriptions of reality.

  Fine then, whos?

  Whos reality must God be attached to?

  Not ours because He existed before ours ever came to be.

  His reality then? Yes, I agree, but what do WE knwo of His reality?

  Our own understanding of OUR reality is every changing, our perception and understanding of our reality now, on Dec 12 2012 is far different than human understanding of reality on Dec 12 212 CE, and theirs was far different from Dec 21 2012 BCE.

  Can you imagine what our understanding of reality will be in Dec 12 3012 ??
• 

  Terry

  To suggest that before God created THIS universe He wasn't doing anything is assuming that NOTHING existed before THIS universe came to be, thatis of course incorrect since GOD existed, which means HIS universe existed.

  I'm not trying to be impolite I'm just asking how you get to assert your statements as TRUE when there is NO WAY you can acquire any facts

  about them other than imagination!

  This is how religious mysticism gets transferred from mind to mind--imaginative assertions without any means of instantiation!

  All reasonably functioning citizens of planet earth wouldn't accept claims from a salesman which could not be known to be provable. That's how you end up with ownership of the Brooklyn Bridge and swamp land in Florida.

  Unprovable assertions about God are useless in communication.

  I'm approaching this topic using one of mankind's most long-lasting reasonable tools of learning: Philosophy. What do we know and how do we know it?

  Aristotle, the father of Logic, brought the tool by which science later arrived.

  Karl Popper brought Falsifiability to science and the scientific method (and mathematics) was enriched and emboldened to utility.

  Supersition brought Religion and religion brought mysticism, illogic, fear and conformity.

  Can you see why Philosophy can be useful?

  Philosophy requires that we clearly state the meaning of our terms and that none of what we assert or posit contradicts itself.

  Contradiction with reality is the RED FLAG of lies and twisted meanings and duplicity and ignorance and superstition.

  The mystical shaman uses words as meaningless sounds to create an atmosphere in the mind of those willing to be duped into believing he

  has the powers unavailable to the ordinary man.

  Let's not use words as meaningless sounds.

  Tell me things that CAN BE KNOWN because they MEAN something which does not contradict reality!
• 

  Terry

  Whose reality must God be attached to?

  There is only ONE reality. There is only ONE Universe. The word UNI-verse means ALL of what ther IS.

  Not ours because He existed before ours ever came to be.

  If you are in a room before I get there....once I'm in there with you we share the SAME room. Precedence does not alter reality.

  His reality then? Yes, I agree, but what do WE know of His reality?

  God doesn't get to have His "own" reality because reality is what is REAL.

  I have to ask how YOU could have knowledge of what you are saying is UNknowable so as to have this conversation?

  The fallacy of the Argument from Ignorance comes to mind.

  These arguments fail to appreciate that the limits of one's understanding or certainty do not change what is TRUE They do not inform upon reality.