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All religions
Topic Started: 20 Oct 2009, 09:52 PM (5,192 Views)
conradw
Goliath
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with regards to God being personal. I think if you're going to believe in something despite there being no evidence, then I say its bound to be personal (in that sense).
Is God a person I can have relate to in the same way I relate to you. The answer is (in my opinion), no. God is a person in the same way that the people of a nation, or followers of a football team can speak with one voice. Can you speak to God as another person? no, but you do speak in every way you interact with another person.

'whatsoever you do unto the least of my brothers, that you do unto me.'

How about that? Is that an evasive enough answer for you? As I've said before, God is Love and Love is in all of us. But is there love without people to love? Well a cake is just a cake, but when your girlfriend bakes you one for your birthday and it took all day and she nearly burnt the house down baking it: well, love exists in that cake somehow.
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Concolor
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Barabbas
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@conradw:
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My problem with him was that he couldn't say something like 'its not conceptual, its not physical, its transcendental/fundamental/descriptive'
Well he starts off with a discussion on exactly why the word "transcendental" is problematic in this case. I agree that "fundamental" might be a better word than "abstract" (which he suggests), but I really don't see "descriptive" as being fitting in this case.
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However, while I might like love to exist if mankind didn't out of some poetic or romantic inclination, I don't suppose that it does, except maybe in the hearts of other forms of life and/or sentience.
I wholeheartedly agree with the latter part of that sentence :D
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and about brain stimulation - might it actually be a Radar for the divine
All we KNOW is that people have religious experiences and that these have in certain cases been observed to be induced by entirely natural causes. What MIGHT be other reasons for such experiences, whether they use the same mechanism as in the all natural case or not, are an infinite number of possibilities. You just suggested a radar for the divine, I might suggest a Play Station replacement for invisible sock gnomes, or perhaps entirely natural causes. The thing is that all of these infinite possibilities are of indistinguishable truth-value unless they can be linked to what we know in a relevant way. If one is to believe one of these hypothetical possibilities to be closer to the truth than any of the others, one is betraying all the other possibilities for no reason at all. Yes, having a hunch or a bias is a natural thing, but I wouldn't base my perception of reality on it.
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Is God a person I can have relate to in the same way I relate to you. The answer is (in my opinion), no.
I know we don't necessarily agree on these definitions, but you are aware that this puts you firmly outside the realm of Theism in my book?
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God is a person in the same way that the people of a nation, or followers of a football team can speak with one voice.
Do they really speak with one voice, or is it just a more poetic way to say that a group of people can sometimes find a common denominator in certain aspects of life?
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Can you speak to God as another person? no, but you do speak in every way you interact with another person.
I need you to explain that one to me. You cannot not communicate, I know that. But that is because a person will interpret every action you take as a message. How is this natural, impersonal God relevant to this?
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God is Love and Love is in all of us.
This statement, however poetic, is either reducing God to Love (an emotion) or exalting Love to a God. I'm suspecting the latter and would gladly debate you on that one.
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But is there love without people to love? Well a cake is just a cake, but when your girlfriend bakes you one for your birthday and it took all day and she nearly burnt the house down baking it: well, love exists in that cake somehow.
Once again I disagree. Both her and I, and any other sentient being who receives information about the process behind this cake would probably treat it in our minds as a symbol of her love for me. Yet the cake itself is just a cake. If my worst enemy baked a cake to symbolize his hatred for puppies, thinking hateful and malicious thoughts while baking it, and a friend of mine stole it from him and gave it to me while (lying and) telling me the story you presented - I can assure you I would feel the sweet love in that cake in every bite. A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet (in a blind test of course).
Life is beautiful, love heals, people come through.

Reason, compassion and love comes first. Everything else is secondary. Except for Skittles. - And emperor Cheezy! Posted Image
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For I am persuaded beyond doubt (am sure) that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things impending and threatening nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 8: 38-39

ARAZEC :spamz:

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Concolor
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Barabbas
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@ARAZEC: Except for unbelief, which will send us straight to Hell :P
Life is beautiful, love heals, people come through.

Reason, compassion and love comes first. Everything else is secondary. Except for Skittles. - And emperor Cheezy! Posted Image
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dont be so quick to judge snowpuff
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conradw
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see, i would agree unbelief wont get you into hell. but then you all know my views on that
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Concolor
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Barabbas
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@conradw: So you did not find anything to disagree with in my rant, or did you just pull an ARAZEC? (You've already pulled a couple of Concolor's when asking for definitions :D )
Life is beautiful, love heals, people come through.

Reason, compassion and love comes first. Everything else is secondary. Except for Skittles. - And emperor Cheezy! Posted Image
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conradw
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I didn't think it was a rant as much a critical analysis.

I think you touched on the crux of the issue a few times in what you said but I'll get to that later, there are a few things i want to cover before that.
For one, if I am not a Theist, then I'll think you'll find no one is. I'll explain: I don't think you'll find anyone who really believes themselves to be having a chat with God in the same way you and I might. That's part of the reason why we have a word for talking to God and not one for talking to your teacher. People may say things like 'having a friend in Jesus' but they don't mean it in the sense that you'll go to the pub and he'll buy the first round.

Incidentally, I once encountered a funny situation where someone was saying 'no one loves me.' and a consoling friend replied 'that's not true, Jesus loves you.' I thought, what a way to kick someone when they're down and looking for support '... well, *I* don't love you, but I'm sure we can think of someone, AHA! I know! Jesus!'

Personally, I'm not such a great fan of Prayer. I find it helpful sometimes, but in terms of things like morality and reason and everything, I think I get a lot more from talking to other people. Put succinctly, I see God in others, not a pair of clasped hands. In talking and interacting with others we share we contribute to this shared experience of life. When my friend explained to me what it is for him to be gay and then made a joke about my "alternative lifestyle choice" it really did a lot to show me how skewed my preconceptions were (and probably still are to some degree). I feel no problem in comparing it a religious experience.

As to reducing God to love or exalting Love to God, I guess I am guilty of both. I fleece God of the role of Punisher, of righteous wrath, and injustice.
At the same time, I say that Justice is an act of love; mercy and forgiveness are holy, and it is love, not faith that can move mountains.
I find it interesting, though, that you don't say I'm reducing Love to God or exalting God to Love. I think you could be completely right in saying such a thing - is it not enough to admire the garden without imagining there are fairies at the bottom of it?

But the crux of the whole thing is the poetry of it. While i could describe my love for Arazec in terms of chemical reactions, receptors, transmitters, ion pumps, axons and more than a few depolarisations, wouldn't you rather I described it as the river that drowns the tender reed, the razor which leaves my soul to bleed, a hunger and endless aching need, but also a flower and her, its only seed?
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Concolor
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Barabbas
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@conradw:
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I don't think you'll find anyone who really believes themselves to be having a chat with God in the same way you and I might.
ARAZEC, where did you go to? We need you as a witness here. I do believe there are plenty of people who counts God as a personal mind in the exact same way they count you or me as one. People experience hearing his voice, and some experience his communication through other senses or events (just like if your boyfriend is the silent type who rather gives you a flower than say "I love you" directly). And some people really do have an experience of a real bff-relationship with Jesus.
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Put succinctly, I see God in others, not a pair of clasped hands. [...conversation with friend...]. I feel no problem in comparing it a religious experience.
Ah, well I do. This is not a disagreement about facts (I think), it's a disagreement about words and definitions. I prefer to reserve the word "religious" for things which demand attachment to dogmas regarding the supernatural, and rather use "epiphany" or "eye opener" or "deep emotional experience" of other things. In some of these cases, it's just a matter of preference on my part. The reason why I'm not a deist is because I like the principle of Occam's razor, if it's not needed it's not wanted by me. Adding "fluff" to reality may be fun, but I would always be worried that I may wind up in a situation where I would use the fluff as if it was factual. Which is bad, as that leads to misinformed choices.
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I fleece God of the role of Punisher, of righteous wrath, and injustice.
Why? These are all roles he has in the Bible. Why does your process of picturing God start with the Biblical one, and then you tear him down to what I would call nothing? Why do you even bother to read it if you have to cut out so much that you'd be better of with the Washington post? Why not start from scratch and say, this is the deity I like, this is how it should be regardless of what old men in the desert thought thousands of years ago? I think you would be more then up for the challenge. Hey I even got you an inspirational video just to manipulate your feelings to better tempt you to see my point. (WARNING: At least one of the makers of the video does not believe in a theistic God at all)
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I find it interesting, though, that you don't say I'm reducing Love to God or exalting God to Love. I think you could be completely right in saying such a thing - is it not enough to admire the garden without imagining there are fairies at the bottom of it?
Darn straight you don't need fairies in the garden. But for me Love is a garden, and God is including (but not limited to) fairies in this comparison. I'm saying that every concept I could possibly accept as being labeled God MUST incorporate something supernatural. I don't see any reason to suppose that Love has anything to do with anything supernatural. Therefore, to say that "God is Love" would to me imply that God is being reduced to my naturalistic image of Love (in which case the word God is redundant since we already have the word Love that will be less prone to cause misunderstandings in this case), or that Love is implied to entail some of the supernaturalism of God. This latter one I would claim to be expanding the concept of Love from the natural world to also include the supernatural.
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wouldn't you rather I described it as the river that drowns the tender reed, the razor which leaves my soul to bleed, a hunger and endless aching need, but also a flower and her, its only seed?
No. Not if you are discussing Love in a rational manner. I would most certainly prefer that description if our goal was to entice my emotions, but that's not what I'm going for in a rational discourse. Dienst ist Dienst und Schnaps ist Schnaps. There is a time for everything. When I want to feel love I kiss my girl. When I want to learn about STD's I prefer a graph.
Life is beautiful, love heals, people come through.

Reason, compassion and love comes first. Everything else is secondary. Except for Skittles. - And emperor Cheezy! Posted Image
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conradw
Goliath
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business may be business, and Schnapps, Schnapps. But you're wielding your Razor too liberally if you can't find time for a little metaphor.

The world doesn't have to be as black and white has you suggest. Have you ever read Jaberwocky?
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Concolor
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Barabbas
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I did not say the world is black and white. I said using emotions in rational discourse is not very rational (okay, I'm polarizing a bit here. If it's not clear what I mean, just tell me and we can go deeper into it.)

Metaphors may be useful, but they are still metaphors. Describing electric current through a wire by comparing it with water through a hose works great until you want to talk about induction. At some point one must leave the fanciful images behind and get down to a merely factual description of reality. Just imagine the opposite: A Shakespeare play where every actor constantly describes the factual reality in minute details "Oh, the wind is blowing at a speed of 4.24538+-3 mph from a South-Western angle thereby lowering the pressure in the air around me by on average 0.38851+-1 bar...etc.etc."

It would be an abomination, and dreadfully boring. Likewise, poetic descriptions, metaphors and allegory can help communicate and remember the ideas and conclusions that rational discourse leads us too. But the rational part is purely rational. (To the extent of our human limitations of course.) It's goal is to discover and explore the facts of reality. You may have fun while driving, but fun is not what your car runs on.

No I haven't read Jaberwocky. Good stuff?
Life is beautiful, love heals, people come through.

Reason, compassion and love comes first. Everything else is secondary. Except for Skittles. - And emperor Cheezy! Posted Image
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Hey im still here ! (summer :) no waterproof wireless internet :( )

anyway i liked the point about Uranus and no im not gonna say youve been talking out of it again-but i will say that adding "fluff" to reality is part of every scientific experiment and thats a fact ! and before you challenge our different definitions of fluff let me say that when facts change and dont stay facts how do you base your informed choices? on the new facts? on the old? on the facts that are given to you or the facts that are not? on your limited human limitations? on the truth you are not sure exsists? on the love you think may or may not be an emotion? FLUFF? ....... i think its sounds like a thread your hanging on to..... :) :hug:


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Concolor
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Barabbas
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@ARAZEC: Adding fluff to a scientific experiment is the same as adding accidents to traffic. It happens, but it is most unfortunate and should be avoided whenever possible. That is why the scientific is established precisely to counter our human flaws and weaknesses as much as possible, and I have yet to find a system more apt than the scientific one.

When what we thought was a fact is shown to not be a fact anymore (like when we discovered that the sun didn't really revolve around the earth, even though it most certainly looks like it), we must change our view of the world accordingly. - Based on the new facts, thereby allowing humankind to actually improve itself rather than hanging on to the intellectually comfortable, yet perilous and unstable ways of the people of the bronze age.

And for the record I DO think love is an emotion. I just don't see any reason to add more fluff to it than that. The whole point is that I do NOT rely on fluff. In fact I try to keep my fluff-levels at an absolute minimum. Fluff has a tendency to stick to your eyes when you try to navigate through life, I want a clear view unobstructed by fluff.
Life is beautiful, love heals, people come through.

Reason, compassion and love comes first. Everything else is secondary. Except for Skittles. - And emperor Cheezy! Posted Image
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so an example of fluff would be thinking love is more than just an Emotion?

***excuse me theres something in my eye********
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Concolor
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Barabbas
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Yes :) Now you've got it.
Life is beautiful, love heals, people come through.

Reason, compassion and love comes first. Everything else is secondary. Except for Skittles. - And emperor Cheezy! Posted Image
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