Inspiration ... [ as the basis of 'inductive' 'thought' ?]

[Tenka]

It destroys the false understanding admittedly, opens the way to meditation on the scripture to receive the true understading of it from God :-

2Pe 1:20 Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation.

Perhaps you can show how answers found in private meditation are able to be diffferentiated from answers privatly interpreted.

Look at the evidence yourself, it is not a few but many , and these were not religionists, but men of the deepest thoughts and meditations, men whodevoted their life to seeking truth as rigourously and exactly as they could [as they were given to perceive] and there is a possibe cause of why allmen do not acknowledge the source of their inspirations, it is self pride , and it is a cause of delusion, not of truth

And here is your problem.

You have yourself here a self fulfilling premise that cannot be falsified as all data will fit your narrow predictions. Men saying their findings were inspired confirm your idea and men saying god did not inspire than are dismissed as pridful and deluded.

This is simply saying everyone agrees with me and those who don't are liars.

Equally an anaysis of the information flow in revelation/inspiration would reveal that the human brain is incaple of anything like that rate of flow... mankind's finiteness again shows what man is not capable of in himself and blows the 'scientific' [actually 'armchair'] presumption that inspirations come from a 'sub-concious ' mind out of the water

What tha' frink? Seriously look at what you've written there. Nothing but unevidenced assertations mated to a pseudo-scientific term "information flow". This is worth nothing to consider.

Then there is prophecy, which you poo-poo too easily withut considering it in detail first ... a bit too uncareful really if one really seeks the truth

Show me prophecy that is specific, show prophecy not open to a multitude of interpretations potentially capable of verification in a number of probable situations. I "poo poo" them because they are retro-active prophecy, interpreted in hindsight of the event supposedly foretold.

Well we could begin by discussing why you think the premise is false, there is no need to rush on until we establish the foundations... no hurry

Sure, no trouble. I don't know how you made the leap that I "recognise 'heavy drinking' you recognise touching the emptiness".

According to Jesus , 'Theism' will result inbeief that Satan is God [Rev 13:3-7] in all but a couple of thousand amongst 6 billion ... thus it would be better perhaps if one could understand the God of the very few saints , rather than measuring god by the false idols of religious and rationalistic 'theism' which are actually easily all dismissable as incomplete, inconsistent

So? The fact remains that most of the world believes in some sort of God or Gods and men being men would like to think that god is talking to them personally, you have taken these examples and given them special consideration because they fit your belief. Despite the fact that men saying things is really only evidence that they can communicate.

I regret that you take that stance, I am only telling you the implications of my current beliefs for information purposes in discussion, not to patronise

I realise you probably hadn't meant it that way, which is why I made that assumption. But nevertheless the effect was inescapable, it's forgotten and forgiven now.

I didn't arrive at it by hearing it ,but by reading scripture and meditating on the meaning of 'incorrupton'... the nearest analogy I can find for 'timelessness' in 'physical reality' is the reversible reaction.... things that go backwards in time just as easily as forwards ... that concept is a little help perhaps in envisaging timelessness.... the otherconception I like is the idea of a holographic recording of the whole of finite time ... one could store the whole thing in a library and just play back any part of time at will

That no more makes one "timeless" than being able to move forward and back through traincarriges makes one not on the train.

Try to imagine a snapshot of all time, everything happening at once.

Again the terms one uses MUST of necessity be understood poetically since we have so little experience of the spirit that we have no words touse literally about it... thus the cynicist has a hey-day picking whatever words a person uses to pieces , but never understands what a person is saying behind the words until the inspiration comes and sudenly he wants to use wors thatway too.

This does not address the matter at all, only a minor part of the objection. A sceptic is not necessarily a cynic, that's your mistake.

Ok so show me the twist you think that you see , I'm willing to learn

You said: "Rtaher the mind gets in a mess trying to fit words suitd only to this projected 'reality' to the true reality of spirit which created this illusion "

Thus you have determined in advance that everything will fit your expectation but if it doesn't apear to make sense it is because of some unevidenced factor beyond control.

These rationalisations get us as far as 'Last Thursdayism', the belief that everyhting was created last thursday to look billions of years old and we were created as we are with the memories intact. Everything fits this evidence but nothing can contradict it, it is unfalsifiable and a useless assumption that explains nothing.

Philosophy seems to have proved that there is no objective reality , do you reject that? [if so why?]

Go boil a jug of water, then pour it over your head. I'm willing to bet judging by my observations of the world that you will be severely scalded. Using a calculator add 1 to 1. Two people using the same method weigh a cubic centimetre of water, their result is objective. Objective reality is those things that can be demonstrated for the same results. Sunburn is an objective reality. Decomposotion is an objective reality. These things occur regardless of the subjective experience of them, they are objectively true.

Biology/Psychology showed us that our conception of reality is simply a projection that is subject to countless [even continual] illusions amd delusions

I can give you a chemical experiment to reproduce, can you give me instructions that will allow me to experience God with the same certainty?

We have little basis for believeing in 'physical reality'

Right, other than it's the only reality we can demonstrate.

it is just a pagan myth with as many holes/cracks in it as any other pagan myth ... do not be fooled by its popularity, learn from watching lemmings jump off a cliff hat follwing the masses is not necessarily the best or true way ... even when it comes to what is real and what is not

That is hopeless, the only experience of anything we get is through a physical body in a physical reality. if you accept that you cannot trust that then you must give up because everything is in doubt.

Assuming that we exist is an assmption I'm willing to make, it hasn't failed me yet I still appear to exist.

Once one understands that physical reality is just the spirit's version of virtual reality, then one can undestand miracles very easily , and realise that whenmen see miracles 'with their own two eyes' then they will believe in the 'god' who apparently controlls the miracles... so very hard for the saints not to be taken in to by such 'direct' 'evidence' ... it ain't so easy this 'truth game'

Why is that an "understanding" rather than simply conjecture as useless as last thursdayism?

Thus atheists are all-too-easy to fool by miracles since they believe in physical reality, they will believe the miracles when they see them

You must be joking, when some statue starts crying do atheists worldwide take serious notice?

Rather if you were to look more carefully you would see that there is DETAILED prophecy that God will reveal for simply asking Him :-

Mt 15:27 And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.

Joh 16:13 Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.

Were those supposed to be "detailed" prophecy?

There is no better way of lulling people into complacency than this argument, but even a fairly superficial analysis in any terms reveals that the end MUST come some time ... I see no point in finding ways of denying that ... rather look fr the real signs of the end , there are plenty of them about in the world

Sure you can also find evidence of martian invasion if you look for it. You don't start with a conclusion then seek evidence to support it.

Equally consider this possibility , that God is a perfect 'life-form' in a completely different 'Physics' of a parallel universe where there simply is no time or space as we know it ... how can one discount that as the means by which we tarvel to another universe where lovingness dominates instead of the evil in this universe

That leaves you with a bizzare situation in which God residing in a love dominated universe creates a hate dominated universe for us.

Also, why is there 'love' in this other universe?

That would imply multiversality of time

What? the only reference I can find to "multiversality" is in pages dealing with meta-physics and spiritual meaning.

Can you perhaps illuminate this term a little more.

As I am trying to point out, it is a presumption that it is a process in time

Science is naturalistic, it has no option but to look for a natural cause because that's all that can be observed and tested.

Again you presume so without even hearing the explanation of God , just because you heard the xlanation of religionists and rightly rejected it ... no problem, you did better than many of us ...but why not just check out all the possibilities instead of equating religion with God ?

Is your "Goddidit" better than another Goddidit?

and equally you seem to ignore some of the implications already in some things that you have said

Could be any less vague perhaps?

I did not say that we cannot learn, my belief is that the saints will leran all things in this life [John 16:13] and that all men will learn all things in the next life [Joel 2:28]

By themself or will God zap the information into their brains? Because the latter isn't really learning so much as being reprogrammed.

 

[Tenka]

Well I know of some that do so at least some of the time , and there was even a time when the chief physicists in the country announced that Newton was sufficient basis for understanding all things ... even scientists get the same delusions that plague the thought processes of religionists

So now your hinderence of knowledge " one cannot learn anything if you think that you already know the answer " Only applies to some of the people some of the time.

I have known other of my atheist friends whothink it is demeaning that man cannot find the answers himself, I still do not see it , why should one resent learning from a greater 'intelligence' than oneself?

Because you've said that God does not want us to learn for ourselves, he wants us to fail and come crawling to him for an answer.

Yes, and I think that I ought to be excited to, but instead I feelincreasingly calm and at times a little sad that the whole edifice built by men must crumble in order to save us from our selves

We'll see.

There are many problems that science simply refuses to address [as 'inappropriate'] and so they are insoluble by rationality [but accessible by meditation]

What within the realm of science is deliberately avoided?

Yeah , an ugly concept, but one we are stuck with in this medium mostly perhaps ... i sometimes try leaving it out simply because it causes misunderstanding, as it appears to have done here

No misunderstanding, it's that way because it is, as you've stated repeatedly, Reason is overrated.

I take the approach that it is as well to state my position and then discuss from there, feel free to discuss any statement you wish to , despite the format I am not asserting anything as more than my best estimate of the truth at this moment

Nontheless, when you give no reasons for your answers other that "because that's the way it is" it really eliminates any possibility of being able to discuss it.

I nether seek to earn any such right , nor flatter myself , rather I hate myself and am amazed that God moves me to engage n discussion which I 'know' cannot lead anywhere unless He gives both His truth beforehand

Then you can refrain from presuming to have "challenged my beliefs" in such a way as to have me scared.

If you were to stop thinking for a while , you too could see how much clearer things are without faith in rationality ... it really is the most attractive 'god' but one which leads men to great evil ... a prime candidate for thr label 'Satan' or 'the antichrist'

The real danger comes when men stop thinking. Rationality helps things to make sense there is no need to have faith in it only to trust others abilities to use it.

Well let us try more slowly and comprehensively then , perhaps taking one or just a few point at a time ... cos' I thought that I had answered all your points very systematically.... let me try again and you may require an answer of me ... my thoughts onit are that perhaps all we have here is a misunderstanding [which is more than easy in this medium]

I'm good, I have a sort of system for resonding to this mega post now that seeems to be managable.

 

[stranger]

*******************************

That certainly is reasonable, however for you to be wrong about God existing, God must be falsifiable in some way.

Rather consider the possibility that that little bit of mankind's tradition in Philosophy might be wrong... I never believed it when I first read it and I still don't ... God is not falsifiable else He would not be God, thus 'physical reality' is unreality to the spirit and that is what leads most philosophy astray ... put another way, our knowledge from this world is unfounded, purely realtive ... take away the imaginary base of faith in axioms and the whole religious house of cards of rationality crumbles [and there's the greatest irony , that Bertrand Russell ,no less , pointed out, there is no sure foundation and Godel rocked the supposed sure foundation upon proposed 'axioms' , a contradiction at the very heart of rationality that is simply ignored by most people and which has neevr been resolved ... even the Greeks knew it from the start ['paradox of the liar'] and they too just ignored the contradiction ... it is just not logica to ignore a contradiction in logic , it destroys the whole thing ,rot and branch , hat it jhas a contrdiction in it very foundation...

Thus introducing yet another axiom of falsifiability does not save your god and it is not even a credible axiom .

There exists the explanation that we dream because it asists our learning process, like the training programs of the Matrix films. Scenarios we believe are real but are just 'simulated' to give us experience. Other animals dream also.

But did you ever go a step further and consider that our waking life in the physical world is a dream also , seeming just as real whilst we dream and even having 'cracks' through which we can see that it is a dream even whilst dreaming it ?

It's not lazy, it is just a result of our pattern seeking brains grouping things by relative similarities. Nothing wrong with it, it makes communication a lot easier and faster.

That is exactly what is wrong with it , the simplification that makes it easier [or even possible] for our finite understanding also clobbers the truth hard ... never mind the quality, feel the width ... making communication fast is not the ultimate aim, making it easy is not either ... over-simplification is the enemy of truth

Everyone may be individual certinly, but nobody is totally individual, similarities are shared.

nay my friend, unique is unique, one cannot be less than unique ... it is downright clumsy to group people together just because many people adopt the empty-minded strategy of following the herd and repeating what others have said ... one misses what in underneath their veneer of cultural hand-outs , one misses what they really believe!

The animals are grouped due to shared similarities, an occasional misclassification does not change anything, (besides 'genus' is higher up than the species level).

Nay my friend read it again, it ain't a matter of 'misclassifying' it is a disproof of the concept itself ...

Protestants and Catholics sometimes consider each other heretics yet they both share that same book at the base of their religion.

Nay my friend , they SAY that they share the same book, it as easy as pie to show that none of them do follow that book at all... not even do they follw all that Jesus said in that book !

No, 'impersonal' as in the God does not relate to humanity on a personal level or take any interest in us, sorry for not clearing that up.

Do we 'relate on a personal level or take interest in' the characters in our dreams WHLST weare dreaming ... I susupect not ... thus I struggle a bit with applying your definition to my view of God, but I think He nay be 'impersonal' in your sense ....

atheists that i have discussed this with seem to find that it is the 'trascendental' requirement they see in God than makes Him impersonal [which is equally well handled by the dream analogy ] ... I wonder if this is more what you were getting at rather than getting hung up on what is personal and what is not [which seems a red-herring to me , why would one care if God were 'personal' or not ? ]

Yet the real reality is the one we can demonstrate, we can demonstrate that UV light exists even though we cannot see it with our natural eyes (well, some humans can actually and their reality is the same as ours). It is a reality that if a bullet is fired from a gun and strikes a person it wil cause pain, tissue damage maybe even death, this is reality regardless of what you believe.

nay my friend , one can dream completley realistically that one is shot by a bullet and feel the pain , see the tissue damage , and maybe even die [of the shock] , but more likely you will wake up [and interestingly there may even be a mark where the bullet supposedly hit you ] .. BUT we do not say that is 'real' when we are awake ...

The final awakening to the spirit is described in scripture [after having up to three dreams or 'physical lives' ] :-

1Co 15:52 In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

This then you simply dismiss without considering it ?

I don't see how it is possible for the Christian God not to anthropomorphic, he is as human as Thor or Zeus, wanting, loving, hating, being jealous etc.

I am not talking about the god image of modern christian religious traditions of men ...I would agree thta very many christians anthropomorphise in their desire to image a god ... what I am pointing out is that the language of scripture is metaphoric, thus it is a mistake to read what is extremely deep 'poetry' as if it were literal , Jesus explained this point in detail ...as I attepted t point at.

I think you exaggerate when you say that you don't see anything as bad.

I think that you missed my point then, the good and the bad are integral to and oNLY in the 'physical reality' , they cannot touch the spirit ...which is perfect, incorruptible, immortal ... thus the spirit is the permananet reality of being ... the draem is just a virtual reality 'for a while' an 'imagining' of what time would be like ... then one 'awaes as spirit and finds that itwas 'just a dream' ... no good guys, no bad guys, no desytruction, no entropy , just a dream about what these things would be like if they were real to the spirit ...

Morality is a rational respose to our situation, people have different situation so different moralities have developed. Japan of centuries past had a huge population and limited agricultural space so being frugal with food was considered 'moral', houses were built with paper walls so being quiet was also 'moral'.

I don't disagree, but you missed my point that there is only subjective basis for morality , it is a foundation-less idea , no morality can be any 'better' than any other one ,and there are those with 'evil' morals whose maorality is equally unquestionable because it is equally subjective, unfounded, relative ...

God went to great lengths to prove this to us, even showing how He uses evil for good [just to confuse the average 'christian' moralist]

La 3:38 Out of the mouth of the most High proceedeth not evil and good?

I usually hear that life generates order from 'disordered' energy instead of bringing about more 'disorder', life needs to utilise energy not dissociate it.

Life maintains and even increases 'order' locally in individual life-forms, but at the expense of generating even more 'disorder' [entropy] in the environment 'degrading' chemical energy into the form of heat energy [which is less useful because in heat form the energy automatically disperses] ... thus the overall effect of life is the increase in entropy [that defines 'time' as one-way for us]

 

[stranger]

I find it almost meaningless to describe God as being beyond all these things we comprehend, it leaves no way to perceive 'him' let alone relate to 'him'.

That is a mistaken simpification , we can see through the cracks in physical reality, we can become aware during our dream of 'physicla reality' as a 'self' that we are only dreaming, that even self and conciousness are time-bound and illusory to our ultimate being as spirit... but one will not see the cracks which show it is a dram without looking for them ... so if one cuts off belief at rationality, one simply disbelieves all the evidence that 'science' does not address , one never even examines the means by which we believe beyond the present unscientific armchair theory of 'induction' and 'sub-concious mind' whaich basically only ammounts to declaring it a mystery !! It really takes not a lot of even straight scientific enquiry to blow those ideas out of the water ... they have no greater status that religious mystery myths that mankind invents in religion too when his theories fail to expalin the facts ...

I think it is not that language is inadequate any more than a chisel is inadequate for the carving of a beautiful statue because the delicacy of the chisel is dependant on the skill sculpter in this case.

language is a blunted chisel as soon as one imposes literality upon it so that one can apply logic and analysis ... thus rationality is a slf-perpetuating myth in philosophy and in much atheism that i have come across [including my own in the past]

A poor craftsman blames his tools.

What significant blindness though makes men try to work using a tool they know will not do the job

Conclusions drawn from rational investigation yield results that all are able to see for themselves, meditation yeilds a totally subjective experience with conclusions indistinguishable from imagination.

this person is not able to see any results from 'rational investigation' of God, the basis of belief, conciousness, the self , the foundations of knowledge, philosophy, religion; mna's way of life ... stop looking at the propaganda and look at the facts ... as for meditation it has yielded a single picture to all who can bear to take it to the limits , and that will be all men in due course, but not yet since God has other uses for men before redemption from evil ... thus consistency and convicting truth are the outcome of meditation and when it is commonplace then even you will be able to see the consistency of the results and praise the 'objectivity' of the truth [not that objectivity will be any concern then, as the lack of it is equally unconcerning to you now , as your inobservant blind faith in mere propaganda shows , objectivity has been disproven in science yet you cling to past myths and hopes that science is objective

There is no intelligable explanation for anthropomorphisations found in the bible other than God was written deliberately as having human emotions and agendas.

Strange indeed you say that since I am offering an intelligible explanation, these phrases are 'poetic' , symbolic , metaphoric, as indeed they must be since we have no words to describe God literally ... words evolve meaning from experience , else what do they label... men shy from their little experienec of God and so have no words for it ... thus other words have poetic licence taken of the to express about God , it does not mean that God's 'life' is anything like the life of a man , in fact we know it could not be ...

Everywhere you look God loves, God hates, God wants, God has a plan etc.. these cannot be dismissed as "poetic". If you are happy to dismiss the bible as uninspired tribal mythology I am too.

I do not dismiss any evidence so lightly , the bible holds instructions on how it may be understood, it is unsurprising that you misunderstand it by not following the instructions ... would you get into an airplane and say it doesn't work because you can't make it fly [but if you took the trouble to learn how to fly it, then it would fly]

God calls many even though He only gives ALL truth to a few for now [because he only requires a few priests to minister to many people in the new earth], thus many can understand a little of God's truth ... so it does not matter if you have not been called , you will be in due course, and when you are then youwill pray with yearning for the ONE truth about all things and perhaps even meditate on scripture too as some now recognise is the only way outside baptism of the spirit to receive some blessing of truth

Even the story of Jesus, this points to a God who is definitely not above experiencing human concepts like love, justice, mercy, suffering.

Jesus is ,simply put, the interface between God and men in the projection... thus it is unsurprising that the interface deals in terms men can understand at the time .... I suspect that you actually realise taht none of these things has anything to do with the spirit , so find out why that is so instead of dismissing it ....

That might fly when it comes to God "speaking" the universe into existence but doesn't work when it comes to God having human emotions and agendas.

You will find that it is religion that has hunam agendas, God simply [appaers to] use men for His apparent purpose of exploring what He is not ... but only we experienec it that way, in time ... thus we are God's knowing smeared out in time as-it-were , and that is why God is the beginning and the end and can prophecy with certainty, te future is no mystery to God or to His few saints [John 16:13]

This again, why do christians always assume that people must worship something or have some sort of God merely because they do? You claim it's either money, ourselves, logic, science it just doesn't compare. This just comes across as trying to drag others down to your level by making illogical leaps and non sequetors, It simply doesn't follow that respect for rationality makes it a god. I respect humans but that doesn't make them personal Gods to me.

Men can become gods to some people , it means that they live their lives by them, honour and respect them completely ... and many men come to honour rationality that completely too [although it is demonstrably flawed by its very own principles] ... thus simply define consistently what a god is , and you too will be able to rationally see that reason has become a god in 'Western' culture , and it is a pagan god too since it arose to popularity in Greece ...

In no sense is my rationality a God, It has no power to create,

That would in fact make the point of this thread if you actually believed it , but you do believe that men create new things by rationality , and your image of this universe is largely created from your rationality , as no doubt is your whole way of life and treating other people ...rather you just don't like to admit that it is a god by any definition since you want to pretend it is not an act of faith to believe in it , but demonstrably that is the case

it has no form physical or otherwise,

Since the 'physical' is illusion , Idunno how that has anything to do with defining what is a god, but rationality does take form in the sets of proposed axioms which were once purported to be its foundation [incidentally there is no difference between believing in the incomplete axiomatic system of reason than in believeing in the contradictory religions of men's other traditions... both are demonstrably myths ...

it has no motive or personality

Again I do not see the connection with a god, god's do not require a personality , but the personality of rationality is austere , formal, cold , ruthless, hypocritical [the latter because of its unaddressed known flaws]

The motive of rationality is clear, to take over all thought of men, it has spread like a plague from Greece to the whole 'Western world' and now threatens to spread to the East too

no ability to innitiate anything of it's own accord it is merely a description for a way we make sense of things.

Nay my friend , it is an incomplete faith system, a pretender to being saviour of mankind, in whose hands it has become a lethal weapon and by which we have moved to the very brink of exterminating ourselves many times i history ... thank God it IS a false god and we shall never ALL be in its grasp ... yet it is still to have its heyday, it final irony,when it brings almost all men to believe Satan is God because they witness with their own eyes the wonders and miracles that most men think are impossible today ... who ever thought God did not have a sense of humour? [LOL?]

 

[stranger]

Perhaps you can show how answers found in private meditation are able to be diffferentiated from answers privatly interpreted.

That's easy, simply meditate yourself , turn off your thoughts and listen to god for a change of viewpoint ....

And here is your problem.

You have yourself here a self fulfilling premise that cannot be falsified as all data will fit your narrow predictions. Men saying their findings were inspired confirm your idea and men saying god did not inspire than are dismissed as pridful and deluded.

This is simply saying everyone agrees with me and those who don't are liars.

In the first instance men are not liars just because they are deluded for a while , men cannot help being deluded and lying is usually used with the implication of deliberateness...

Equally it was you who said you were prideful [yet unaware of how much an enemy of truth that is] , not me ...

As for dismissing anyone, not me my friend , I came here to listen to lots of people and compare notes, not to dismiss anyone [but I did not come with empty hands ,as I do when I come before God to ask Him]

As for being falsifiable, that is perhaps simple, pray to God for an answer and if you get a different answer than me then you have falsified that God's truth is one truth... so your assertion of self-verification and lack of falsifiability is incorrect [besides being irrelevant]

Seriously look at what you've written there. Nothing but unevidenced assertations mated to a pseudo-scientific term "information flow". This is worth nothing to consider.

Information flow is a very precisely measurable scientific concept that is evaluable in terms of 'probabilities' according to some world-class scientists , one can indeed assess the information flow in this case and it is enormously more that the calculable information flow of all human brains on the planet ...not even in the same ballpark... the nearest thing to a proof of God that anyone ever devised ... the heat generated by that information flow would fry all the human brains on the planet if they were its source, but of course they are not ... it is rather curious really that man has the science of information theory at his feet, yet fails to utilise it because of what it would show him about himself , what limited creatures we are ... bad for morale, bad for the ego , bad news for those who lead men their way {I have lived this selectine blindness in those supposedly in charge of this world , it is rather inane that men could run things far better if their egos did not get in the way every single time, it is no different when one proposes exploding the myth of induction from within the brain of men]


Show me prophecy that is specific, show prophecy not open to a multitude of interpretations potentially capable of verification in a number of probable situations. I "poo poo" them because they are retro-active prophecy, interpreted in hindsight of the event supposedly foretold.

I already showed you, but there are countless such prophecies in scripture :-

Rev 13:3 all the world wondered after the beast.
4 And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?
5 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.
6 And he opened his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.
7 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.
8 And all that dwell upon the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.

Sure, no trouble. I don't know how you made the leap that I "recognise 'heavy drinking' you recognise touching the emptiness".

Drinking is a substitutive behaviour, an act of desperation to avoid facing the emptiness of living without fulfillment of one's greatest urge [to love, to be 'perfect' , to be integral, to be one with everything]

So? The fact remains that most of the world believes in some sort of God or Gods and men being men would like to think that god is talking to them personally, you have taken these examples and given them special consideration because they fit your belief. Despite the fact that men saying things is really only evidence that they can communicate.

I am not sure how men could only 'think that some god or gods is talking to them' ... surely men know if they are receiving all truth of God or not ... but I accept that men do play games in religion of pretending all manner of things that they just want to believe [cos' they are scared] and they certainly then love saying their acquired beliefs in the religious ritual called proselytising which is getting painfully more common these days ...I give no 'special consideration' to these many, they seemno different than school teachers and university lecturers equally led astray due to their acquired faith in this or that.... rather I feel rather sorry for mankind being so used and so incapable of seeing through it , but God at least told everyone it was gonna happen that way [so one might say that men could have read about it, instead of listening to prating sinful men instead ...whether in science, philosophy, or religion]

Once again the proof is in being moved to carry out the 'experiment' oneself ... it is harder to be quite so cynical when God speaks to oneself things one knows one did not know and could not find out any other way , things bayone anyone's capacity to know by any knownmeans except meditation and prayer for truth to God ...

I realise you probably hadn't meant it that way, which is why I made that assumption. But nevertheless the effect was inescapable, it's forgotten and forgiven now.

It is a valid point nonetheless that God's truth is so convicting, so 'evidently true', that one does get accused of being patronising or arrogant because it 'creates' faith in one in it [and it is hard not to project that faith in consideration of other people's reaction to one's confidence, well I still find it hardanyway , [although i am slowly learning not to do it , the hard way!] ... so hopefully I can manage better in future, and thanks for pointing it out and troubling to understand , and my apologies for my not being fully on top of avoiding that problem as yet in my presentation]

That no more makes one "timeless" than being able to move forward and back through traincarriges makes one not on the train.

I'm not saying thatit does, only that it is the nearest model we have [within space-time ] to perfection, and thus it is useful in understanding, it makes an analogy possible ...

Try to imagine a snapshot of all time, everything happening at once.

Or rather not 'happening' at all ... but what do you conclude fromsuch a thought experiment?

This does not address the matter at all, only a minor part of the objection. A sceptic is not necessarily a cynic, that's your mistake.

So what does it not address, cyniics and sceptics alike mostly make the same mistake philosophers do of implicit reliance on words and logic , so one is theoretically lost in that approach if one enters a field of study such as the spirit in which there is so little experienec that there are no words... and thus words from 'physical reality' get abused in poetic fashion to talk about things that they never did pointat in their creation as words ... religionmakes just the same mistake. seemiingly even deliberately in many cases... but the scripture points out the problem behind the false impressions of mind [again saying that the delusion is temporary and deliberate by God and reversible in due course]

1Co 2:14 But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.

Again this is not condescending, it is simply a statement of fact [confirmable by other scripture]

You said: "Rather the mind gets in a mess trying to fit words suited only to this projected 'reality' to the true reality of spirit which created this illusion "
Thus you have determined in advance that everything will fit your expectation

Rather I am seeking a theory of evereything, a concise description of all truth ... thus I have not determined anything in advance , but i have found a better method [by methodology] than rationalism or religion ... and the reason that it is 'better' for me is that I just never could accept the 'leap of faith' in either science or religion ...in that one sense I am more sceptical than most people I know of ... and meditation actually requires one not to determine anything in advance

 

[stranger]

but if it doesn't apear to make sense it is because of some unevidenced factor beyond control.

Sorry , you lost me there, if something does not make sense thenit is a prime candidate for meditation, that is the requirement even... and if one really wants to know then one just keeps on meditating until one does know ...

These rationalisations get us as far as 'Last Thursdayism', the belief that everyhting was created last thursday to look billions of years old and we were created as we are with the memories intact. Everything fits this evidence but nothing can contradict it, it is unfalsifiable and a useless assumption that explains nothing.

Well they aren't rationalisations, even though they might look like that because I have to present them in language [which has it's own causal conventions] , but again I would contend that these things are verifiable and falsifiable in accord with your faith in these things , you can verify them for yourself in meditation and in principle it is thus falsifiable in that it would be disproven if you got a different answer from myself [for instance]

Go boil a jug of water, then pour it over your head. I'm willing to bet judging by my observations of the world that you will be severely scalded.

The same would happen in a dream [apart from the likelihood that the shock would also awaken one]

Using a calculator add 1 to 1.

The result is defined, this is not an experiment , but a tautology ... add one rabbit to one rabbit and you get far more than two rabbits ... but that didn't disprove your tautology , did it ?

Two people using the same method weigh a cubic centimetre of water, their result is objective.

Interestingly they never get the same answer without approximating ...

Objective reality is those things that can be demonstrated for the same results.

and modern physics proved that observing things changes the outcome , even to the extent of things appearing where one looks for them , objectivity is a very attractive idea, were it possible, but it ain't ... live with the best truth we have or continue pretending as men did for centuries that objectivity exists

I can give you a chemical experiment to reproduce, can you give me instructions that will allow me to experience God with the same certainty?

Sure, I already did that

Right, other than it's the only reality we can demonstrate.

Like I was pointing out there are 'cracks' in this apparent rality that show it is unreal, and one can see what is 'beyond' this reality through the cracks ... just as one can sometimes tell one is dreaming when one is dreaming ...

That is hopeless, the only experience of anything we get is through a physical body in a physical reality. if you accept that you cannot trust that then you must give up because everything is in doubt.

Assuming that we exist is an assmption I'm willing to make, it hasn't failed me yet I still appear to exist.

I tried the experiment of giving up everything and found out that the only thing that remains in us [whilst embracing nothingness ] is the desire to love ... that then explains our conflict and frustration with this world, that it gets in our way of doing what we most want to do ... On the other hand ceasing to be oneself is much easier and less traumatic , my experiment in that cost me three days o my life and yielded far less that the other experiment , simply that with no 'me', and no conciousness, that there was no awraeness whatsover, three days just disappeared and I gained an awareness that life is indeed for a brief exploration of emptiness until god allows oe to become loving ...

As for trusting physical reality , your definition might stretch to incuding faith in what is received in meditation, because once received it is physical informamtion that I can even write about ...thus the only problem is that many men just spend all their time thinking and never stop to meditate [that is why rationality is a disease, it stops one listening to God]

thus I might liken people who never stop thinking to people who say they cannot see because they have a blindfold on.... if one denies that ones natural sense of meditation exists and so does not meditate, one is certainly blind to God's truth ... yet meditation is a perfectly natural physical sense bywhich one receives information that is simply mind-blowing in its depth , its ability to covince, its beauty , and so powerful that it can cause men to become loving [even a few in this world] ... so science simply got it wrong, man has far more senses thatn science admist to , simple as that ,'blindness' has thus become the norm in Western society , 'Eastern' societies have a very diffeent problem in using such things as mantras in meditation which prevent deep meditation ...

Why is that an "understanding" rather than simply conjecture as useless as last thursdayism?

It's a good theory since it concisely explains so much that other theories completely fail to do , and its falsifiable cos' anyone can in principle meditate and find it out for themselves or in priciple discover that way that it is false ...

You must be joking, when some statue starts crying do atheists worldwide take serious notice?

I am not talking about statues crying, I am talking about things being done before their eyes which men think are impossible ,where the absence of any 'trickery' can be established

Were those supposed to be "detailed" prophecy?

No , they are simply the evidence that God says the truth is availabel to all men even though all truth is not yet availabel to all men ... I am not sure why you have any trouble finding prophecies in the bible, it is full of them from beginning to end

Sure you can also find evidence of martian invasion if you look for it. You don't start with a conclusion then seek evidence to support it.

I'm not sure that one could find evidence of a Martian invasion , but I did not start from a conlusion and then seek evidence for it... so I'm puzzled why you would mention that

That leaves you with a bizzare situation in which God residing in a love dominated universe creates a hate dominated universe for us.

Nay my friend the love dominated universe is our next dream after 'death' and 'resurrection' to another physical body...

Love may be the nearest thing to perfection that a body can experinece ,but it is not at all the same as actually being immortal spirit with no physical body...

Also, why is there 'love' in this other universe?

Simply because that is the other extreme from evil for God to have known through us , another aspect of what is not God , but one which is in a sense closer to perfection since it is not so destructive

What? the only reference I can find to "multiversality" is in pages dealing with meta-physics and spiritual meaning.

sorry, I love inventing hybrid words... i was going to say universality, but it is universality in the multiverse [of M-theory] , so I made up a word that I thought you would understand [since you mentioned M-theory in passing] ... apologies read it as 'universality in the multiverse' [Yuk, what an awful phrase ]

Can you perhaps illuminate this term a little more.

I was , rather clumsily it seems, trying to say that time just won't be a part of some universes in the multiverse , and an interesting conjecture might then be that God is the 'lifeform' in one such timeless universe with a perfect 'Physics' unlike our Physics...

Science is naturalistic, it has no option but to look for a natural cause because that's all that can be observed and tested.

Theoretical Physics goes way beyond that ... and discovers that what man thinks is natural and known is in fact simply myth ... the problem of such viewpoint is that it assumes that what one acknowledges as 'physical' is ALL that is physical... and we jsut don't even tday know enough to set those limits.... the term natural is thus undefinable and actually thus says nothing ... [except that even physicists can close their minds sometimes]

Is your "Goddidit" better than another Goddidit?

Of course,when you find the real one ... best bet, try meditating yourself, then you don't need to listen to anyone else's clumsy words about it ...

By themself or will God zap the information into their brains? Because the latter isn't really learning so much as being reprogrammed.

If someone tells you the truth and it changes how you behave, are they reprogramming you?

God does no more than tell people the truth , and theprophecy is that some willstill have to go on the HARD way and learn for themselves ....

the neat thing is that those who have to learn the hard way cannot learn in this world cos' life is all-too-easyfor the evil of this world ... so taking away those who are easily convinced of the truth of god means that the evl at last suffer evil from the other evil left around them ... rather a neat way of showing people their mistake i think ... and that's why it takes three dreams for some men ... they just cannot learn in thisworld or in a loving world, they require a most eveil world to find out that they don't reallylike being evil ...

comprehensive demo by God then , all holes covered ....

 

[stranger]

So now your hinderence of knowledge " one cannot learn anything if you think that you already know the answer " Only applies to some of the people some of the time.

Nay , that applies to everyone

Because you've said that God does not want us to learn for ourselves, he wants us to fail and come crawling to him for an answer

.


Nay , God gives everyone all truth for nix eventually [Joel 2:28, John16:13] . He just requires us to do a little task for Him [and ourselves]first .... so at this time we can only get scraps of truth and only by asking ...and only such things as cannot interfere with the plan of things are revealed at this time [ but a very few men , about one in 3 million alive today , receive all truth of God in this world ,so that they can minister in the new earth [the next 'dream']

We'll see.

Yes we will, but there really won't be anything for you to celebrate if I'm not right... even using only scientific evidence , the next twenty years are sheer devastation of our way of life as whole civilaisations run out of energy and find that they then have not the means to change their infrastructure ... and so collapse into anarchic chaos and death on scale unknown before in human history ... it ain'ta joy-ride either way one looks at it

What within the realm of science is deliberately avoided?

the very subject we are discussing for one very topical example ... free will is another , it would be so easy to show by statistics that mankind's will is not indeterminste, yet men in general just do not want that proved to them because of the implicatons for human institutions like 'law' and 'justice' and pet cultural 'moralities' ... simply proving empirically what some philosophers have proved logically [afetr millenia of 'fumbling the ball', incredible! ... significant! ]

Nontheless, when you give no reasons for your answers other that "because that's the way it is" it really eliminates any possibility of being able to discuss it.

I would see that as an unsatisfactory answer , so please feel free to query it whenever you like ...[ it worries me in fact that you say that I have said such a thing, it is just not my aim ...]

Then you can refrain from presuming to have "challenged my beliefs" in such a way as to have me scared.

Ah , sorry, you misunderstand , the truth of god about ourselves is very scary indeed [enough to kill one with shock] , I was not presuming that I could say anything that penetrating, only commenting as-it-were on what is in store for all of us when we face the truth about ourselves , our lives, etc ... I already had some experience of it and nearly killed myself , its hard to even describe the level of fear there is in the self that all has to go sometime ...anyway feel free to ignore this since it will all be resolved in de course [according to me and scripture anyway ] Certainly I intended no offence , it was only by way of information [and some people are aware of how afraid they are of God's whole truth about themselves]

The real danger comes when men stop thinking. Rationality helps things to make sense there is no need to have faith in it only to trust others abilities to use it.

What danger intaking a half hour off from thinking each day for a week say , as an experiment infinding out the very real and immense benefit it brings in integrating one's self and removing conflicts even before one starts receiviing truth for nothing...

As I expalined , rationality is relative , it only operates on faith in it , using it implies faith in it [or , as in my case ,testing out why faith in it fails men]

I'm good, I have a sort of system for resonding to this mega post now that seeems to be managable.

Icannot help feeling that someone will complain soon ... for some reason a longer thread of shorter posts is less imposition on people that a shorter thread with long posts ...even if they contain much of the same content ... even though the posts are broken up into sections as we have done ...

 

[Tenka]

Sorry stranger, it is as I had feared earlier, the rhetoric has proliferated beyond any chance of meaningful discussion.
When you dismiss reason and reality there is no basis for sensible discourse and everything becomes no better than a hypothetical in which no one can relate to the premise.
You went to no length to explain how the definate biblical anthropomorphisms could be construed as 'poetic', 'symbolic' or 'metaphorical' when it is clearly not self evident or intuitive.
Your redefining of the term 'God' (and of every term applicable thereto) to include rationality loosened the term so severely that it becomes meaningless to apply in much the same way as Christians before you have tried to mutilate 'faith' so that it applies to atheists also.
I feel that each critique you have met with summary denial and restatement of your belief making for a totally unsatifying response.

Furthermore, you grossly misunderstand classification. At the species level classification beomes a dark art, why? because genetics isn't that neat, a horse may breed with a donkey, a lion may breed with a tiger yet they are distinctly different species with reconisable and unique gentic traits.

 

[stranger]

Sorry stranger, it is as I had feared earlier, the rhetoric has proliferated beyond any chance of meaningful discussion.

That is indeed sad if you feel that you cannot query what you judge as rhetoric ...

When you dismiss reason and reality there is no basis for sensible discourse and everything becomes no better than a hypothetical in which no one can relate to the premise.

That is simply an expression of your faith in your god ... someday you will become more sceptical about reason and projected reality and enjoy the revelation that we are spirit, not flesh and blood , projections from timelessness , not trapped in time to inevitable entropic doom :-

Ec 12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Ge 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath [spirit]of life; and man became a living soul.

1Co 15:51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed

You went to no length to explain how the definite biblical anthropomorphisms could be construed as 'poetic', 'symbolic' or 'metaphorical' when it is clearly not self evident or intuitive.

Well I did give an example, but simply read Revelation and see if you can read it literally ... that is the Revelation of Jesus of all scripture, but written in symbols, not literally ...

Lu 8:10 And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.

Your redefining of the term 'God' (and of every term applicable thereto) to include rationality loosened the term so severely that it becomes meaningless to apply

Actually if you remember, I used your definition ... and showed that your definition of a 'deist' was logically applicable to your own faith in the [incomplete] axioms of reason ...

in much the same way as Christians before you have tried to mutilate 'faith' so that it applies to atheists also.

Try as you may, youcannot really deny that one has to ACCEPT the axioms of reason ON FAITH , they cannot be proven , they are a priori assumptions taken on FAITH .. ironically however they can be DISPRoven as incomplete , as in Godel's incompleteness THEOREM , a waterproof logical proof of the incompleteness of all sufficiently complex languages , including all logics [for logic is not unique either!]

I feel that each critique you have met with summary denial and restatement of your belief making for a totally unsatifying response.

A valid point , but our conversation was getting unmanageable , we can go back and expand on the bits where such temporary short-cuts were inserted for brevity [on the basis of simply saying as-it-were ,'nay, I think you need to reconsider that and get back to me on it'

Furthermore, you grossly misunderstand classification. At the species level classification beomes a dark art, why? because genetics isn't that neat, a horse may breed with a donkey, a lion may breed with a tiger yet they are distinctly different species with recognisable and unique gentic traits

Again I am not contesting that species is a useful vague concept, simply that it is not precise ... and i do not quite know why my proof of that does not satisfy you ... your calling it a 'dark art' rather makes my point that it is not a precise, not a scientific , concept, just another slighty sloppy but 'useful' human idea that blurs the fact of uniqueness of every individual [even genetic clones and 'identical' twins]

 

[Tenka]

That is indeed sad if you feel that you cannot query what you judge as rhetoric

That's just it, I have questioned the 'rhetoric' and recieved yet more for my troubles. Little incentive for me to continue such query would you agree?

That is simply an expression of your faith in your god ... someday you will become more sceptical about reason and projected reality and enjoy the revelation that we are spirit, not flesh and blood , projections from timelessness , not trapped in time to inevitable entropic doom

Do you know what the effective difference between this assertation and wishful thinging is?
nil.

Ec 12:7 Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Ge 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath [spirit]of life; and man became a living soul.

1Co 15:51 Behold, I shew you a mystery; We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed

Why do you choose to take that as literally meaning that the spirit will return to God? and that we will change?

Well I did give an example, but simply read Revelation and see if you can read it literally ... that is the Revelation of Jesus of all scripture, but written in symbols, not literally ...

Lu 8:10 And he said, Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.

This again makes no headway toward explaining the metaphoric meaning of the clear anthropomorphisms described of God in the bible.
What is the poetic meaning of God's very human emotional profile?

Actually if you remember, I used your definition ... and showed that your definition of a 'deist' was logically applicable to your own faith in the [incomplete] axioms of reason

Would you perhaps re-state your debunking of reason, I looked but there is much to search through.
I've no idea how you can logically disprove logic.

Try as you may, youcannot really deny that one has to ACCEPT the axioms of reason ON FAITH , they cannot be proven

I don't need 'proof', it is the domain of math and alcohol. I simply want the best possible answer given what we know.

Again I am not contesting that species is a useful vague concept, simply that it is not precise ... and i do not quite know why my proof of that does not satisfy you ... your calling it a 'dark art' rather makes my point that it is not a precise, not a scientific , concept,

In don't know why you think science must be 'precise', Relativity, atomic theory, gravitic theory, evolutionary theory etc are all science but are far from complete, proven and precise.
'Species' remains a concept useful to science.

just another slighty sloppy but 'useful' human idea that blurs the fact of uniqueness of every individual [even genetic clones and 'identical' twins]

Sure, all organisms are unique, as much as every Ford Falcon is unique.

the very subject we are discussing for one very topical example ... free will is another

I began a thread on freewill myself a short time ago, noboby was able to show me how it could exist.

Ah , sorry, you misunderstand , the truth of god about ourselves is very scary indeed [enough to kill one with shock] , I was not presuming that I could say anything that penetrating, only commenting as-it-were on what is in store for all of us when we face the truth about ourselves , our lives, etc

I can't tell from your posts but do you think I prefer being an atheist? Do you think I have yet to consider my place in the universe and the nature of God?
It could be taken from some of your posts that if I don't agree with what you say then I haven't really thought about the things what we're talking about.


There might be more for me to respond to, but later, right now I'm too frustrated with other things to do so in a civil manner.

 

[stranger]

That's just it, I have questioned the 'rhetoric' and recieved yet more for my troubles. Little incentive for me to continue such query would you agree?

Well I don't agree since we are addressing a broad field of enquiry from two perspectives , turning a 'tree' it into a linear process .... where each chooses to 'prune' a branch [you say rhetoric] then it is up to the other to decide when to open that branch to the linear process again , it is simply a matter of prioritising [since the size of post was becoming unmanageable]... thus simply open up whichever 'rhetoric' you think is most important to discuss more deeply first ... then we can cover everything in due course , but in manageable fashion ...

the aim is discussion of all points, but ,however interesting all points may be, we cannot do them all at once , we must then prioritise and order the discussion ,else the branching overwhelms us quickly, as it was doing ...

Do you know what the effective difference between this assertation and wishful thinking is?
nil.

You may indeed consider that my belief in the little of the absolute that I know is nought but 'wishful thinking, but it was NOT arrived at by thought , so it is not thinking at all... also it is al I am , so that if you are so sure of your position whyare you discussing with someone whom you regard as nothing? ... rather I think there is some common ground , and the effect of pushing what one believes t its limits is finally to have to admit that one doesn't know as well as one conned oneself one did ... then rather amazingly one gets 'told' something seemingly 'new' and amazing ... really one should realise at that moment that it did not come from you ,since one was stumped ... if you doubt that this will happen to you, then try reading the autobiogrphies of 'great' men who changed the whole course of history ... it is a constant feature , a phenomenon that science ought really to have studied, one that overturns the rather sloppy armchair assumption that inspiration comes from a man ...

Why do you choose to take that as literally meaning that the spirit will return to God? and that we will change?

I don't, and I didn'tsay that I did ... Rather the whole of 'physical reality' is known to be projected by our brain and altered by our observation of it... thus it is a short step from that to viewing it as similar to a virtual reality , and thus that our supposed 'seves' and 'conciousness' are not our ultimate being ... that inspiration explains so very many things that one might even look it as a theory and see that itis a good theory since it explains things so well, is concise, consistent , comprehensive ... pretty awesome really ... then look at why men reject it ... following tradition, ignoring aspects of 'reality', feeling it demeans the self ... these are not good reasons to reject a theory

This again makes no headway toward explaining the metaphoric meaning of the clear anthropomorphisms described of God in the bible.
What is the poetic meaning of God's very human emotional profile?

Surely that is simply a device for explaining in terms that men can understand ... men do not have experienec of the spirit, so framing descriptions in terms of things they are familiar with gives men something to latch onto ... God even uses men's misunderstanding in taking these words too literally as a means to tackle pride inbelief in men [by letting mens false beliefs fail us , God opens up our self to lstening to Him ... that is what inspiration is , the very theme of the thread ...

Would you perhaps re-state your debunking of reason, I looked but there is much to search through.
I've no idea how you can logically disprove logic.

Well the greeks managed it in the 'paradox of the liar' ... consider the valid proposition : "This statement is false" .... logic asserts that this proposition MUST be true or false ... BUT it is NEITHER true nor false !

because if it s true then it asserts that it is fasle truly , and so contradiction

but if it is false then it asserts it own truth ,thus asserting its own falseness , again contradiction ..

Godel in 1945 formalised this into a rock-solid formal proof , the 'Incompleteness Theorem' which rocks the very foundations of Mathematicsand Logic and language ... even Bertrand Russell agreed with that at the time ... no-one has resolved this 'paradox' ,which one might more honestly call the contradiction of man's usage of logic, language and Mathematics... these things are simply considered too useful to allow a mere contradiction to stop people using them ... well fine, but it is still illogical and irrational to ignore a contradiction and carry on as if it did not exist ...

I don't need 'proof', it is the domain of math and alcohol. I simply want the best possible answer given what we know.

Then you need to re-consider you metric by which you determine 'best' since the current one you are using seems to exclude what I see as the 'best' possible answer ... best is simply not necessarily what one has been taught all these years, not necessarily what is familiar, not necessarily not overthrowing the cosy little nest we make for our selves by ignoring such contradictions as the above cos' they are 'inconvenient'

Rather scripture demonstrates that what is best is found through abandonning all that one thinks one knows and simply asking God ... but men will not do that until their ways fall apart ... God is thus obliged to let men's ways fall apart [as they are just beginning to do as we speak] and then men will listen in due course of events ... sadly with much suffering of the consequences of our mistakes , held to far too long on account of refusal to accept that they are flawed even at root ... and given our propensity to follow the 'leader'. many men will suffer for the mistakes of a few too ... it is called 'tradition' and many men 'worship' it , honour and respect it, just cos' its there and many people follow it ...

I don't know why you think science must be 'precise', Relativity, atomic theory, gravitic theory, evolutionary theory etc are all science but are far from complete, proven and precise.

Rather I know that science CANNOT be precise , that is even proven in modern physics in the uncertainty principle and gets even worse in the depths of quantum wave theory where things seems to appear where one looks for them , but maybe don't exist at all if one does not look a sheer nightmare for the 'traditionalist' view of science largely inherited from Newtonian misconceptions which were thought ultimate , complete and comprehensive in their time ... the illusion was made by men and men have not changed ... the restriction on knowing is within us , but the knowing is beyond our selves ...

'Species' remains a concept useful to science.

Sure, all organisms are unique, as much as every Ford Falcon is unique.

Glad we agree ... now try and ascertain the metric of 'useful' as you used it here , then we might progress in understanding each other a little further

I began a thread on freewill myself a short time ago, noboby was able to show me how it could exist.

Again we agree , and that is i think one of the hardest things for a @westerner' to understand, 'free-will' is the evry basis of 'Western' justice devised by men , most men will claim that without it that they have no 'responsinbility ' and so it must exist ... they even say that God gave men free-will even though the scripture says otherwise ...but. hey, that is not what we are discussing here so maybe in your other thread if you PM me a link]

I can't tell from your posts but do you think I prefer being an atheist? Do you think I have yet to consider my place in the universe and the nature of God?
It could be taken from some of your posts that if I don't agree with what you say then I haven't really thought about the things what we're talking about.

Not in the least my friend , I was an atheist myself for very many years , I regard it as a very honest belief system [apart from the qualifications above, that i too managed to sweep under the carpet for many years] ...

The irony for religionists is that they attempt to use reason to interpret scripture and generate a creed [that is why there are paradoxically tens of thousands off creeds about one God (LOL?) ] whereas the scripture says that it is God alone who GIVES faith ...

Now god undertakes to give all truth to all flesh eventually [Joel 2:28, John 16:13] but there i the problem for men who just CANNOT wait ... God gives all truth to a few first so that He can use those few [as 'priests'] to help [minister] in the bringing of other men to the truth...

It is an obviously sensible approach, use feedback to make the process efficent ... but many men foolishly want to be the few who are first!! And as is the way of men , there are always men who are prepared to make money and a way of life out of telling other men that they can be first if only they believe this or taht 'creed' ...

More interesting than this obvious evil is that God uses it to defeat the selves of these men and at the same time defeats the pride in Sqatan using these men as bait in the trap [without them even knowing that they are being used]... all rather simple and elegant really ... but one is well out of it by being an atheist until God GIVES one faith ...

The other complication is that men who profit from religion obviously need to convince the masses that they must be saved in THIS life [since they need their money now] , thus scriptre is ignored in modern religion to say this in almost all chrstian 'creeds' ... thus if you are to even vaguely consider the option that scripture might be true then I would point out that one needs to go by scripture, not b what men say, and then one will not be afraid of death [as many people are] , nor think that one must receive all truth n this life [as DEMONSTRABLY very few men do !! - incidentally disproving the view put forward by almost all 'chrsistians!]

Thus personally I have a great respect for atheists and the extent of their integrity [although I always suggest that integrity really can be improved by meditation, ceasing thought for a while] , the truth will come to all, and there is no hurry in my view from scripture , there is a time for all things [Solomon] ... so I am not trying to teach or convert and ceratinly not to judge others [I am in no position to do that and have nodesire or need to judge , but rather instructionin scripture specifically not to do so, something I understand the reason for quite well now ... all people serve God, even those who do not know they are serving him , even those who are not yet given belief in Jesus , even those whothink that they have faith in Jesus but do not , everyone ... and this is a belief close to my heart too , but i do not expect it in anyone else, I am not selling it, nor can it be sold ... ]

There might be more for me to respond to, but later, right now I'm too frustrated with other things to do so in a civil manner

Sorry about that, this is actually a rather frustrating medium forwhat we are attempting .. hopefully we have made some progress again though ...

 

[Tenka]

the aim is discussion of all points, but ,however interesting all points may be, we cannot do them all at once , we must then prioritise and order the discussion ,else the branching overwhelms us quickly, as it was doing

Very well, the reason I came into this thread in the first place was that your orginal claim that God gives us knowledge because we are not capable of coming to it on our own is evidenced only by 'cherry picking' from the anecdotal accounts of religious men.
This appears to be the closest we got to anything concrete and debatable.

so that if you are so sure of your position whyare you discussing with someone whom you regard as nothing?

I'm sorry, what?

then rather amazingly one gets 'told' something seemingly 'new' and amazing ... really one should realise at that moment that it did not come from you ,since one was stumped

Whoa whoa, ideas aren't just spontaneously generated what is being witnessed is just our capacity for abstract thought. The kind that allowed us to envisage traps with which to snare our next meal, the kind that allows us to imagine what other organisms are thinking.
Humans aren't even the only animal the exibits this phenomena, other great apes can too even dogs show some abilty for it.
The fact that some men claim God just gave them the idea carries very little weight in this discussion as far as evidence is concerned. The plot to Dragonball is equally the result of imagination and inspiration taken from other experiences that the invention of the microwave oven is.
Look for example at Light theory
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArtTextonly.aspx?refid=761579230&print=31
Ideas aren't just zapped into the conscience they are built upon previous (usually greatly flawed) thinking, observation and experimentation gradually getting closer to the truth.
And frankly, I'm more than a little angered by your labeling things Greek as 'pagan' and somehow flawed because of that. The Greeks had a more than impressive history of contribution to our knowledge of the universe when some 2000 years later 'Christians' were torturing and killing "witches" out of fear and ignorance.

one that overturns the rather sloppy armchair assumption that inspiration comes from a man

This is just slander, which is made all the worse when you stand heavily on the frail shoulders of anecdotal evidence.

I don't, and I didn'tsay that I did

Then you quoted it for a reason quite beyond me I'm afraid.

thus it is a short step from that to viewing it as similar to a virtual reality , and thus that our supposed 'seves' and 'conciousness' are not our ultimate being

The size of the step is not an issue, one can step any distance into the wrong direction.

that inspiration explains so very many things that one might even look it as a theory and see that itis a good theory since it explains things so well, is concise, consistent , comprehensive ... pretty awesome really ... then look at why men reject it ... following tradition, ignoring aspects of 'reality', feeling it demeans the self ... these are not good reasons to reject a theory

As a theory it's a failure.
It's not testable empirically.
It's not predictive.
It's not repeatable.

In fact it is not a theory, just a hypothesis.

Surely that is simply a device for explaining in terms that men can understand ... men do not have experienec of the spirit, so framing descriptions in terms of things they are familiar with gives men something to latch onto

And that which they are 'latching onto' is false. It takes far less mental gymnastics to come to a conclusion that God was written about like that becasue that's the way those men and pretty much every theist thought of God, like a big human with powers.
It makes zero sense that God -if he did not possess that character- would proliferate that image of him instead of something less confusing.

God even uses men's misunderstanding in taking these words too literally as a means to tackle pride inbelief in men [by letting mens false beliefs fail us , God opens up our self to lstening to Him ... that is what inspiration is , the very theme of the thread

There is simply too much mental gymnastics involved in accepting this view, assumptions made about true meanings and God's motives wander further into mere conjecture in the same way your response wandered away from answering the question.
We are no closer to explaining what was meant "non-literally" by the human emotions and motives ascribed of God.

Well the greeks managed it in the 'paradox of the liar' ... consider the valid proposition : "This statement is false" .... logic asserts that this proposition MUST be true or false ... BUT it is NEITHER true nor false !

No, logic absolutely does not assert that it must be true or false merely by virtue of it including "false" in the proposition.
It asserts nothing that can be qualified as either true or false. Although being grammatically correct it is nonsensical and illogical.

Godel in 1945 formalised this into a rock-solid formal proof , the 'Incompleteness Theorem' which rocks the very foundations of Mathematicsand Logic and language ... even Bertrand Russell agreed with that at the time ... no-one has resolved this 'paradox' ,which one might more honestly call the contradiction of man's usage of logic, language and Mathematics... these things are simply considered too useful to allow a mere contradiction to stop people using them ... well fine, but it is still illogical and irrational to ignore a contradiction and carry on as if it did not exist

I don't find that it changes a damn thing about the effectivness of logic in the same way that "Can God think of an equation so difficult he himself cannot solve it?" doesn't disprove God's omnipotence.
Paradoxes, while clever have little real world application because paradoxes aren't something we deal with day to day. I never have to worry about being on a train travelling at the speed of light wondering what happens if I move from the back to the front carrige.
I can carry on as though it doesn't matter in full knowledge of it existing because logic is what works in every situation that isn't a paradox.

Then you need to re-consider you metric by which you determine 'best' since the current one you are using seems to exclude what I see as the 'best' possible answer

I need to reconsider because I don't come to the concusion you have? LOL.

Rather scripture demonstrates that what is best is found through abandonning all that one thinks one knows and simply asking God

That is no basis for me to agree or do so.

Rather I know that science CANNOT be precise

Are you using precise as in 'exact'? or highly accurate?

Glad we agree ... now try and ascertain the metric of 'useful' as you used it here , then we might progress in understanding each other a little further

I'm sticking with a fairly traditional interpreyation of "useful" as having use.

Not in the least my friend , I was an atheist myself for very many years , I regard it as a very honest belief system

I know I don't have all the answers, but the basis of my atheism is that I'm not willing to place an unevidenced God in the gpas of my knowledge, that won't solve anything for me rather it will just create more unanswerable questions.

Now god undertakes to give all truth to all flesh eventually [Joel 2:28, John 16:13] but there i the problem for men who just CANNOT wait ... God gives all truth to a few first so that He can use those few [as 'priests'] to help [minister] in the bringing of other men to the truth

Like ..your scientists? or are we talking about theology "truth"?

It is an obviously sensible approach

I disagree with that, a sensible approach is for God to give knowledge directly to all those that should have it. There is no real reason for him to rely on humans to spread it since he didn't rely on humans to find the answers in te first place.
I find this to be another instance when man's role in 'Gods plans' makes no sense.

More interesting than this obvious evil is that God uses it to defeat the selves of these men and at the same time defeats the pride in Sqatan using these men as bait in the trap [without them even knowing that they are being used]... all rather simple and elegant really ... but one is well out of it by being an atheist until God GIVES one faith

"simple and elegant" ? ....???
Its incredibly bizzare and unecessarily complex for a being unlimited in power and intelligence.

Thus personally I have a great respect for atheists and the extent of their integrity [although I always suggest that integrity really can be improved by meditation, ceasing thought for a while]

I tend to feel that that encourages an emotional descision rather than an integral one, I couldn't be honest if I made emotional choices about the things I believe.

Sorry about that, this is actually a rather frustrating medium forwhat we are attempting .. hopefully we have made some progress again though

Oh it's not so much this forum, just life and the people in it that are my current frustration. This thread is more of a welcome relief by comparison, not to trivialise the discussion of course.

 

[stranger]

Very well, the reason I came into this thread in the first place was that your orginal claim that God gives us knowledge because we are not capable of coming to it on our own is evidenced only by 'cherry picking' from the anecdotal accounts of religious men.
This appears to be the closest we got to anything concrete and debatable.

Rather I cited the autobiographies of men who are regarded as the topmost scientists in the world as part of the evidence, many of whom are [or were] areligious like myself , but still believed in some conception of God...

Thus referring to them as religious is incorrect , and regarding the life stories of men who felt it wise to leave a legacy of their most painstaking and exact observations on life as anecdotal is to decry the words of some of the words of some of the most careful and intelligent men in history , men on whom you own faith was founded in fact ... why not read some of them , it is fascinating witness about life and powerful evidence about induction ... everything in science came about by the careful work of such men and yet you wish to disparage their very witness of their life's work and how it came to resolve that which was shown by them to be unresolvable by deduction ?

But equally you seem to have missed the point about the unlikeliness of such inspirations arriving at just the right moment which makes the task theoretically beyond the known capacity of the human brain for information transfer ... that is specific scientific evidence and even a cursory examination indicates that it is not even a close call, all tne brains on the planet added together [were that possible] would not be capable of such information flow, such control... thus the hypothesis of internal inspiration that was invented in an 'armchair' long ago is easily disprovable in modern times by 'information theory' [or 'cybernetics' as Wiener called it]

I'm sorry, what?

If you REALLY believed in your methodology then why would you be talking to me who is telling you that it is wrong [not only externally inconsistent , as above, but internally inconsistent, as shown by Godel and others]

As I say to all my atheistic friends eventually, why do atheists spend so much time defining precisely what they don't believe in , sooner or later one must realise that one is looking for something beyond rationality because rationality is a [proven false] leap of faith, just as one can show that all religions are a [proven false] leap of faith ...

At that point, whenever it is reached [most likely not in THIS life ,according to scripture , one in three million against it being complete in this life!] one is left stranded, helpless empty , scared, but if one can gather one's wits, then it is possible to notice that one still desires to love [to be perfect] even thoughone knows one cannot be ... strangely that completely fruustrated desire , however useless it is because one cannot fulfil it, is closer to one's being that the love of life itself ...

thus I am tempted to call it 'absolute' , since one cannot rid oneself of it [even in attempted suicide ] ... it may not seem much, but it is all we have on which tobuild a sure faith with no LEAP involved ... so far better than rationality or religion whch rest on presuppositions about the 'reality' of what we are, what God is , etc

By eliminating the relative one discovers the absolute faith ... and a strange thing then occurs ... inspiration starts filling in everything elseone meditates upon, simply yearning fror truth hving become nothing but the desire to love, one is GIVEN understanding as one asks [but one is asking like a baby, from total admission of ignorance... and the bible actually says that this is the ONLY way that one will enter upon all truth, I now then believe that :-

Luke 18:17 Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child shall in no wise enter therein.

Thus perhaps you see why I reject your methodology and the theology of religion? And why my 'hypothesis' of induction by inspiration is both tstable and has been tested [anyone else is welcome to try it out and test it too]... in principle it might fail, so it is falsifiable also ...

Whoa whoa, ideas aren't just spontaneously generated what is being witnessed is just our capacity for abstract thought.

That is a presupposition my friend , one that is easily disproved by modern information theory, our capacity just ain't high enough for it to be so ...

The kind that allowed us to envisage traps with which to snare our next meal, the kind that allows us to imagine what other organisms are thinking.
Humans aren't even the only animal the exibits this phenomena, other great apes can too even dogs show some abilty for it.
The fact that some men claim God just gave them the idea carries very little weight in this discussion as far as evidence is concerned. The plot to Dragonball is equally the result of imagination and inspiration taken from other experiences that the invention of the microwave oven is.
Look for example at Light theory
http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/refpages/RefArtTextonly.aspx?refid=761579230&print=31
Ideas aren't just zapped into the conscience they are built upon previous (usually greatly flawed) thinking, observation and experimentation gradually getting closer to the truth.
And frankly, I'm more than a little angered by your labeling things Greek as 'pagan' and somehow flawed because of that. The Greeks had a more than impressive history of contribution to our knowledge of the universe when some 2000 years later 'Christians' were torturing and killing "witches" out of fear and ignorance.

'pagan' is a technical term for non-Hebrew belief systems, it is nothing to get angry about , it simply identifies the source of such beliefs in Satan, not in the God of the Hebrews [from a scriptural viewpoint]

This is just slander, which is made all the worse when you stand heavily on the frail shoulders of anecdotal evidence.

The evidence is far more than anecdotal as explained above, and I intend no slander, merely pointing out that tradition was wrong by a mile on this one, and no-one bothered to test it out, people just accepted the hypothesis as truth without any test ... so it is sloppy science in anyone's book never to test a hypothesis before accepting it

As a theory it's a failure.
It's not testable empirically.
It's not predictive.
It's not repeatable.

As I showed, it is in fact all these things , and far from being a failure, I have tested it and proved it myself

And that which they are 'latching onto' is false. It takes far less mental gymnastics to come to a conclusion that God was written about like that becasue that's the way those men and pretty much every theist thought of God, like a big human with powers.
It makes zero sense that God -if he did not possess that character- would proliferate that image of him instead of something less confusing.

You say this simply because the 'God' image that you are taking about is that of modernchristian religion ... I too can easily disprove that empty image [idol] of God , that is NOT what I am talking about at all ... but the god of scripture DOES explain why men are kept blind for a while, in fact it is the very reason why we exist [if one looks at it in terms of reasons, which is admittedly not the best way but perhaps a step on the way for some]

If our very creation is simply the projection into time of God knowing what He is not [as-it-were in order to have considered/imagined all things] ,then clearly man will not know Goduntil that knowledge has been collected as-it-were ... I say as-it-were since I am 'explaining' in language as if this were logic, and it is understood that God does not experienec in time as we do, that God has no purpose ... thus God's purpose in the earth [Isaiah 14, Ezek 28, 2Thess 2] is only provided as comfort for mankind in our distress whilst experiencing what is not God ... clearly we should never have sinned if we had and believed all truth of God from the beginning, man would have then been loving to all men from the start, as we shall be in the new earth , [but thebGod would not have His info about what He is not , which is the very thing behind what we are projected to be]

 

[stranger]

There is simply too much mental gymnastics involved in accepting this view, assumptions made about true meanings and God's motives wander further into mere conjecture in the same way your response wandered away from answering the question.
We are no closer to explaining what was meant "non-literally" by the human emotions and motives ascribed of God.

It's a bit off-topic, and perhaps we can take this discussion further in another thread, but just as an example look at the 'wrath' of God ... surely the God of Love cannot be wrathful [so many tell me so anyway] ,so look at what the wrath of God is ... simply put it is allowing men to destroy themselves , their own way of life ... all it is is the consequences of the decisions men have made in allowing such greed as capitalism (compound interest robs the poor to give even more to the rich - interest is not allowed to be charged in God's people) to dominate and then destroy itself [economic 'theory' relies on infinite growth in a finite world , it does not take a genius to see that is going to end sometime , that sometime we are seeing unfold in the oil crisis that is pushing up oil price never to come down this time , and subsequent world slump miles worse than the 1930's]

thus men will see it as God having abandonned men [cos' billions will die] and so it is aptly symbolised as the 'wrath of God' ... the reality though is that it is the only way to cope with the ego of men , to defeat their faith in themselves... much pain then coming [and yes, you see it is predictive, so watch it come to ass and weap with me that it has to be ... then will you see it as proven? we shall see if you thought this was a good enough test ....

No, logic absolutely does not assert that it must be true or false merely by virtue of it including "false" in the proposition.
It asserts nothing that can be qualified as either true or false. Although being grammatically correct it is nonsensical and illogical.

Again thn I refer you to Godel's proof which is far more rigorous than the original Greek version , no-one has been able to fault it , it is logically sound proof of the incompleteness of logic

I don't find that it changes a damn thing about the effectivness of logic

It does in fact change a lot, it means that the [very frequent] usage of 'reductio ad absurdum' 'proofs' is theoretically unsound , that is nOT a method one can rely upon in logic ,Godel proved it formally ... of course that doesn't stop people, they've been using raa for milleni, so why stop now just because someone showed that it is not sound logic to do so ?

in the same way that "Can God think of an equation so difficult he himself cannot solve it?" doesn't disprove God's omnipotence.

Nay my friend , that one is illogical , it cannot be formalised in logic , the other is proven beyond question formally by Godel

Paradoxes, while clever have little real world application because paradoxes aren't something we deal with day to day.

Again that is not true, my own insurance policy states that it does not apply if another insurance policy applies to a claim made under it...

If I have two such policies then it is impossible to say wether either or neither or both apply to my claim under them ... the contradiction is very real , and calling it a paradox doesn't change the fact that it really is a contradiction... that is a very strange way to blind oneself by changing words , call a spade a spade and see it as a spade , you cannot make it a fork by calling it a fork...

I never have to worry about being on a train travelling at the speed of light wondering what happens if I move from the back to the front carriage.

That ain't a paradox, simply a mistake made by Newton cos' he never tested anything moving that fast for the affects of acceleration near the speed of light ... else he woud have known that his equations were false at high speeds

I can carry on as though it doesn't matter in full knowledge of it existing because logic is what works in every situation that isn't a paradox.

Unfortunately you have no way of knowing whenit is paradoxical and whenit is not ... no-one has yet come up with a workable systen of logic that avoids incompleteness although people are still trying some 60 years after godel proved that the axioms of ALL sufficiently complex languages are incomplete [not just the logics]

Are you using precise as in 'exact'? or highly accurate?

The question is moot, we know the theoretical maximum accuracy attainable , that one cannot exceed it because the very structure of the universe prevents one ... Heisenberg showed that there is no 'exact' and created the metric which tells us how inaccurate we must be ... thus the old idea that one can get more and more accurate until one is exact enough simply ain't true , there is a set limit ..

I'm sticking with a fairly traditional interpretation of "useful" as having use.

'useful' in this world then ,to make life even 'easier' for the few, and hasten man's downfall into chaos ... not very interesting or 'useful' to me at all ....

I know I don't have all the answers, but the basis of my atheism is that I'm not willing to place an unevidenced God in the gaps of my knowledge, that won't solve anything for me rather it will just create more unanswerable questions.

Like I say, you simply refuse to look at the evidence that is there , discounting it even when it is observed by world-reknowned men of observation, and ignoring the information theoretical analysis of induction which disproves the age-old 'hypothesis' that was never even tested before the world accepted it and it became accepted as lazy tradition...

Like ..your scientists? or are we talking about theology "truth"?

To me 'theology' is an oxymoron

I disagree with that, a sensible approach is for God to give knowledge directly to all those that should have it. There is no real reason for him to rely on humans to spread it since he didn't rely on humans to find the answers in te first place.

Again you make the mistake of listening to what MEN SAY the scripture says instead of reading what it actually says , to reject religion as false is easy and obvious [I did so at sixteen] , to discover that God is NOT in religion takes a little longer [six years for me], to discover that rationality is just a pagan belief system that spread like a disease through the world and will kill most of us , that took a lifetime to realise and is hard to bear ...

I find this to be another instance when man's role in 'Gods plans' makes no sense.

That is simply because you listen towhat men say are God's plans insteda of reading what God says are His plans , an elementary mistake, go to the source in all enquiries, do not listen to hearsay except to guide you to the source where you can check it out ...

Thus the farce of religion vs science intermittently throughout history has concealed the fact that neither is the truth of God

"simple and elegant" ? ....???
Its incredibly bizzare and unecessarily complex for a being unlimited in power and intelligence.

On the contrary, I am overwhelmed at times by its beauty and elegance and efficiency and there simply is no more comprehensive theory to compare it with ... compare it to M-theory for instance , which inprinciple wil explain far less and whose application an understanding are beyond most people, let alone the vast computation required to solve even the properties of a couple of atoms, let alone a whole universe cvered by God's 'theory' ... it is extremely simple in comparison to the best man can put up to compete with it ... whilst being deliberately set in 'code' as symbols so that men will not decode it before God is ready to let us [and so reveal His power over time, which so many doubt]

Sirach 39:1 But he that giveth his mind to the law of the most High, and is occupied in the meditation thereof, will seek out the wisdom of all the ancient, and be occupied in prophecies.
2 He will keep the sayings of the renowned men: and where subtil parables are, he will be there also.

Isaiah 6:10 Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

I tend to feel that that encourages an emotional descision rather than an integral one, I couldn't be honest if I made emotional choices about the things I believe.

You already did my friend in choosing to have faith in the incomplete axioms of logic ... even if yu did not yet even make your irrational [and proven illogical] paradoxical faith explicitly seen by yourself yet [cos' it hurts to look, I know ]

Oh it's not so much this forum, just life and the people in it that are my current frustration. This thread is more of a welcome relief by comparison, not to trivialise the discussion of course.

I went through a phase like that just recently, found myself frustrated by what I saw as the 'inanity' of mankind... finally I realised that we are 'inane' simply because God has not yet revealed all truth to us [as He will , Joel 2:28, John 16:13]

perhaps you might prefer an additional site to strech the mind ?

http://www.freethought-forum.com [many 'athests' here]
http://inallthingslove.net [many 'theists' here]