The Being Who's Intelligence is Consciousness made actual

(Jan 7, 2021 04:43 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote:

Quote:The possibility of meeting God on earth has its potential to become actualized through every human observer so yes.

Why not be satisfied that God makes it difficult to communicate with because he/she/it doesn't want to. Think about it, if God speaks to you and no one else then you've been given a tremendous advantage/privilege in life that almost every mortal on Earth will never experience. So, what have you done with this advantage/privilege? Please don't say spreading the word..

Communication is a two-way street. We make it difficult to communicate because we don't want to acknowledge a god. God speaks to everyone equally. There's no real privilege in simply choosing to listen.

But I agree. Spreading the word, in a world where knowledge of god is readily available (so places other than ones like China, were religion is actively suppressed), is largely useless. You can't help someone who doesn't realize they have a problem. All you can do is live a better life yourself.

(Jan 7, 2021 04:57 PM)Syne Wrote:

(Jan 7, 2021 04:43 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote:

Quote:The possibility of meeting God on earth has its potential to become actualized through every human observer so yes.

Why not be satisfied that God makes it difficult to communicate with because he/she/it doesn't want to. Think about it, if God speaks to you and no one else then you've been given a tremendous advantage/privilege in life that almost every mortal on Earth will never experience. So, what have you done with this advantage/privilege? Please don't say spreading the word..

Communication is a two-way street. We make it difficult to communicate because we don't want to acknowledge a god. God speaks to everyone equally. There's no real privilege in simply choosing to listen.

But I agree. Spreading the word, in a world where knowledge of god is readily available (so places other than ones like China, were religion is actively suppressed), is largely useless. You can't help someone who doesn't realize they have a problem. All you can do is live a better life yourself.

Cant be bothered to look it up but I can't help but think of that poor misguided fool who despite being warned once, went back to an isolated island inhabited by a primitive tribe to spread the word and got himself killed for it. I hesitate to say murdered as tribe was defending land from an intruder they thought dangerous. No different than shooting a B & E suspect in your home. 

Why doesn't an incident like this suggest God prefers to remain non-communicative or at least not in favour of spreading the gospel? Plenty of martyrs to go around throughout history.

(Jan 7, 2021 05:05 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote:

(Jan 7, 2021 04:57 PM)Syne Wrote: Communication is a two-way street. We make it difficult to communicate because we don't want to acknowledge a god. God speaks to everyone equally. There's no real privilege in simply choosing to listen.

But I agree. Spreading the word, in a world where knowledge of god is readily available (so places other than ones like China, were religion is actively suppressed), is largely useless. You can't help someone who doesn't realize they have a problem. All you can do is live a better life yourself.

Cant be bothered to look it up but I can't help but think of that poor misguided fool who despite being warned once, went back to an isolated island inhabited by a primitive tribe to spread the word and got himself killed for it. I hesitate to say murdered as tribe was defending land from an intruder they thought dangerous. No different than shooting a B & E suspect in your home. 

Why doesn't an incident like this suggest God prefers to remain non-communicative or at least not in favour of spreading the gospel? Plenty of martyrs to go around throughout history.

Listening to god doesn't make one immune to their own hubris. And those who listen don't usually do so 100% of the time. That's just human.
There's nothing wrong with martyrdom, so long as it actually accomplishes something...like people dying in the fight for freedom or principles. But that case only demonstrated how foolish that guy was. Now, if the government allowed access, you'd take a force sufficient to protect your missionaries and start with simple trade and communication.

Just thinking. How can anyone be sure it’s god talking? To most theists there is a dark side. Perhaps if god won’t talk then something or someone else will.

(Jan 7, 2021 07:02 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Just thinking. How can anyone be sure it’s god talking? To most theists there is a dark side. Perhaps if god won’t talk then something or someone else will.

Same question goes for addiction, coping mechanisms, excuses, cognitive bias, etc.. They all use your same inner voice. The angel and the devil on your shoulders, so to speak, both speak with your own voice. So you have to learn how to differentiate them by content. Some content is harmful or self-serving, while some is beneficial. The truly beneficial is god, or your higher power, higher self, or whatever other term you're comfortable with.

It's not a matter of a theist having a dark side. It's the fact that all humans have a dark side. Believing in god doesn't make you any less human.

(Jan 7, 2021 07:02 PM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: Just thinking. How can anyone be sure it’s god talking?

There are two kinds of "cause": (1) the familiar conception of cause preceding effect in linear time; and (2) a stratified context, wherein there is what serves as the superordinate "reason" for an _X_  [material world] existing, independent of those aforementioned spatiotemporal relationships (which are merely properties of the subordinate _X_ itself). 

Accordingly, I can't fathom a genuinely noumenal or Kantian-transcendent God having thoughts -- much less directly communicating in a contingent context as if a language bound personhood, since that type of "god" would be prior in rank to space and time. IOW, it would be some kind of immaterial principle, but not one dependent on the artificiality of technical description or abstract symbolism. Such a deity would not be subject to change or modifications since that would contradict its absoluteness (make it vulnerable to the relationships and magnitudes constituting the very physical or phenomenal world that it makes possible).

Immaterial principles lack a location (apart from our indicating that they're hierachically prior to _X_) -- they don't have a "place" or "time" they reside in, or an appearance/form/size. That the patterns of a world conform to such would be the only evidence of their existence -- i.e., that governance itself of what they bring forth would arguably be the extent of their being (or the limits of what we could ever apprehend).

(NOTE: "Immaterial" is arguably a redundant adjective, unless one is referring to a "principle" literally expressed by inert words or signs. It's an adjective purely used to emphasize that potent principles are not perceptual objects. What they bring forth and/or regulate, that is experiential or cognizable, seems to be all that we could say about their manner of existence.)

Quote:To most theists there is a dark side. Perhaps if god won’t talk then something or someone else will.

As a potential candidate for the "dark side", Schopenhauer's "will" was blind and tortured. There was no feedback or sensory system for making adjustments to what it was defecating ontologically, or phenomenally in the experiences of conscious creatures. It was Evil as neglect, via lack of knowing or understanding what it was outputting -- spasmy and thrashing about in unfeeling emptiness. Really just arty, cosmetic lipstick applied to the pig of natural laws or scientific regularities, indifferently proceeding like computer calculations.

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Richard Dawkins: 'Belief' interview
https://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions...kins.shtml

EXCERPT: Let's talk about the three letter word - God. What is interesting is how the use of the word varies now, and that while many people have what in shorthand I might call a 'Sunday School' version of what they believe in God, many people including scientists are using the word 'God' in a much more abstract way. What do you feel about those developments?

Einstein, for example, frequently used the word 'God' in very clearly what was not a 'Sunday School' way. It was somewhere between deism, the belief that some sort of intelligence started the universe going and then stepped back and did nothing else, which actually I don't think Einstein believed in, and a sort of pantheism, where he was using the word 'God' as just a name for the laws of nature, the laws of physics, for which he had a deep reverence, as do I.

Stephen Hawking talks about 'the mind of God'.

Stephen Hawking ends up his famous book by saying 'Then we would know the mind of God' and that's precisely like Einstein. It's a metaphor, a personification, it's a poetic way of expressing 'Then we should know everything, then we should understand everything.' Stephen Hawking was looking forward to a day when physicists finally have unified all their theories and understand everything, and 'Then we should know the mind of God' was a way of expressing that. Stephen Hawking and Einstein: neither of them believes or believed in a personal God.

So which is the God you don't believe in?

I certainly don't believe in a God who answers prayers, forgives sins, listens to misfortunes, cares about your sins, cares about your sex life, makes you survive death, performs miracles - that is most certainly a God I don't believe in. Einstein's God, which simply means the laws of nature which are so deeply mysterious that they inspire a feeling of reverence - I believe in that, but I wouldn't call it God.

What about Buddhism, mysticism, contemplation, meditation?

I know little about Buddhism; meditation as a kind of mental discipline to manipulate your mind in beneficial directions, I could easily imagine. In reciting a mantra in a repetitive way - it's entirely plausible to me that might have some sort of trance-inducing effects which could even be beneficial.

But you don't do it?

I have done it, and it didn't do anything for me, but I gave it a go. But it certainly has nothing whatever to do in my mind with a belief in anything supernatural.

Let's take another religious word - 'evil'. Do you have a concept of evil?

I mistrust the uses of words like 'evil' which suggest a kind of personification of them. I'm happy to use a word like 'evil' of a particular individual. I'm happy to say that Adolf Hitler was evil, Adolf Hitler did evil things, but too many people once again, leap to the conclusion 'Oh there must be some kind of spirit of evil which entered into Hitler,' or 'There's a spirit of evil abroad'. That I think is unhelpful, putting it mildly.