But spirit is the very essence of God.

 

Who created God, and where did he exist before he created everything?

The elements (carbon, hydrogen ect) that we are made of, are the most abundant minerals in the universe that we know of. Through trillions of years and almost infinite combinations of these elements simple life was formed, then through evolution we exist. We are made up of nothing special.

Do you think we are really the only life forms in the universe? Will we share the same god? There is only one chromosome difference in our DNA that makes us man or ape. Is there a life form that might have an extra chromosome that would make us lower primates in their image?
Would we consider them gods?

 

I think you're hitting on something really important when you point out the difficulties language has with addressing the topics in this thread. You might be interested in Wittgenstein's theory of "Language Games," in which he explains that the most important questions addressed by philosophy and religion are unanswerable because language doesn't provide us with the tools to speak of such things. Essentially, we think and communicate in terms of a physical world of facts, and that prevents us from effectively thinking or speaking of anything beyond that world. I think you're saying something similar when you write that linear thought is the problem. We think in a linear fashion because the physical world adheres to a linear system of cause and effect, yet God would exist outside of that system, so it's impossible to talk about God in that context.

Whatever the reason, there is no perfect answer to countless questions addressed by philosophy and religion. In fact, I'd say that all of the most important questions we struggle with will never be satisfactorily answered, and I've come to believe that that is precisely the point. Although people have known for a very long time that they likely can't be answered, people still spend lifetimes thinking about them, and I don't believe doing so is futile. They teach us about ourselves and others, and, perhaps more importantly, they connect all humans throughout history with an incredibly meaningful common ground.

Somebody asked if a lack of answers and concrete beliefs makes a person feel purposeless, and I have to ask if the opposite might be true. If we had all the answers, if we knew exactly what we're doing here, much of the most poignant art, music, literature, and philosophy simply wouldn't exist. The wonder people feel at being part of something vast, strange, and beautiful wouldn't exist, as one can only feel true wonder when presented with something outside the scope of one's understanding. All of the times I've felt joy when stumbling across something profound and life changing wouldn't have happened. I don't know why I'm here, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Every day, I wake up with a feeling of purpose and anticipation, because there's always the prospect that something I've never even imagined could happen.

 

Last edited: Aug 21, 2016

Great points and questions.
Let me comment and play with possible answers.

1. Nothingness
World comes out of nothingness the same way how waves appear on the surface of the ocean. In a 2D analogy if there were no winds and ocean inner currents the surface (world in this analogy) would be perfectly still and would appear not to exist due to lack of any vibration.
Give it a little push of intention and all kinds of waves and interferences start to appear and expand throughout the ocean. At the age of the surface where waves did not reach yet it would seam as if there was nothing there. But the sames ocean, same nothingness is there waiting expression.
So this all pervasive nothingness is absolutely necessary for anything to appear, only as you said it it isn't nothing it is just what it is not yet manifested in vibrational flow.

2. Chaos
Chaos and order live together in perfect harmony. There is no reason to attribute a higher value to order because even if only chaos existed (which is beyond mind's ability to comprehend, being so tightly structured) it would be equally amazing. Because how come that anything exists at all. Isn't this the ultimate thing to grasp?

3. Constants
Maybe without current constants universe wouldn't stand as it is but who knows if the version with other constants wouldn't be even more amazing.
The fact is the whole world is just internal projection in a mind which in human case is very very limited in comprehending what it is becoming so that most scientists and non scientists seam to end in dogmas. A very few keep open mind because that requires daily hours of introspection and stillness. Only calm mind is able to reflect deeper meanings.

4. Life
The simplest answer would be that the life is inherent in everything. In matter it lies dormant in highly evolved beings it finds multitudes of expression but even a stone "breathes" expanding during sunshine and contracts during the night. It is rudimentary reaction to being in that form in such environment.

5. Consciousness
Consciousness cannot come out of nothing as you perfectly said. It can come from matter because it is filled with it in a dormant form.
The whole world is consciousness in different more or less bind forms, the witness of the universe is consciousness in unbound form, the act of creation that is the endless change we experience is also consciousness. Without that movement crude mind wouldn't know it exists similar to how the hand doesn't know it is laying on the leg if you holding it perfectly still for a few minutes.
This movement is the process of awakening dormant consciousness - scientist call it rightly the evolution.
In advanced beings such as humans there is a possibility of degradation, that is of crudification of consciousness.
Oppression of people leads to crudification of consciousness.

6. Emotion
... is just another form of expression of higher consciousness but even if you imagine a crude world with only primitive unemotional beings everything is still alive and well...
Scientist actually do explain biological functions for emotions. There are many. And emotions are very efficient and the subtler ones lead to intuition which is even more efficient than the emotion and intellect together. BTW I have a friend who used to work with the police helping them uncover tough cases. He used only his intuition.

7. Beauty
Once you reach a point where you see the beauty in everything you are probably very close to home at which point the perfect peace and rest from vibrational flow is the pure bliss.

 

True. If you believe in god then you must be spiritual.

Do you believe in " team spirit"? The idea that if we are a team, share our resources and intellect, act responsibly and work together then we could achieve more than if we act alone. Do we need god to achieve great things?

Is this what religion implies? Only with god in the equation.

Thanks for making me think. Insiteful again. going to gig now, Ill check back later.

 

Exactly.
Not only language is too primitive to convey any unknown experience but the conscious mind itself (with or without language) is unequipped to deal with "reality" in "rational" fashion.
For example if I say there is a local frut here called Equiamaka I can spend a life trying to explain how it tastes better than anything you ever tested and language cannot convey a taste. To know something one has to come close to the subject and experience it directly. Language by design is generalization that is detachment from specifics of "reality". It is used to wirelessly convey just a very crude and rough sketch of the subject.
Only those who train their minds and intellect or have natural introspection know the limits of conscious mind and therefore focus more on activities that help subconscious and unconscious mind give their expression and contribution. For example inspiration and creativity come from those.
Best use of language is to talk ourselves or others into doing something that is worthwhile doing.
If we talk a lot and achieve a little we don't understand the purpose of language as an evolutionary tool.
Similarly the purpose of the conscious mind is almost the same. If we think a lot and do little our mind might be trapping us.

 

The Universe functions exactly as it should without a God. The addition of a "creator" simply throws a complexity into the equation that is simply not necessary and a diversion from seeing things as they are as opposed to how we believe they should be.

 

The fact that there is a single atom in existence is absolutely special.
One chromosome is mega special.

The experience of the limited mind is that everything (outside) has beginning and consequently the end.
However we really do not remember our beginning. You don't know if the last birth didn't come after a kind of sleep that mind uses to take different form.
In effect we do not have beginning nor end so the question when did God come into existence doesn't arise because there is no one who experienced coming to beginning or end as a conscious being.
I'd propose to substitute word God with consciousness which permeates everything and beyond time (which is just another generalization and not even proven which we wrongly take as a fact). Time flies therefore it must exist as do other things that fly, right?
This consciousness takes different forms through vibration similar to pixels on your screen. While they vibrate you see the text or the movie, when they stop there is nothing. Pixels are there but not yet manifested or manifested for you.
Therefore the world comes into existence with vibration of consciousness and disappears into consciousness when vibrational flow rests.
When our mind rests at night our world disappears for a while.

 

All things are the way they are because individual minds believes in a particular version and it's view point only.
To one mind a God is diversion to another it is absolute necessity.
Now what?

 

I believe in God because everything has a creator. when you create a music there's you that write the song. There are big engineering teams behind technologies like car,....
if you are a musician or an engineer you understand what I mean. so how could it be possible that all of these great creatures like human is created by nobody..?

 

There's something called evolutionary biology. Read a few books.... maybe Richard Dawkins. He can explain much better than I, why a God is impossible. Again, I'll ask how a Creationist God makes our existence a simpler fact. Science, by observation and verification know why we exist. If you can explain in as much detail, how God whipped up everything, I'd like to hear it. I'd also be interested in why an omnipotent being, is busy creating galaxies, supernovas and black holes, yet can't be bothered curing babies born with leukemia. And again we come full circle to your point of "everything has to be created" ... so who created God? Or is that the single exception?..... but it can't be since you said "everything has a creator"

 

i dont believe in any form of creator or wizard or ruler.
In fact, hearing about the concept always make me chuckle.

 

Impossible
It is only a point of view. For the cat the old tube TV was a much better warm bad while you'd rather price your latest flat TV on which cat cannot sleep. To you TV is one thing to her another. It is so among people as well. For each word you use another human will have slightly or dramatically different internal representation. But we can continue to pretend that we mean same things or understand each other just because we are using same words.

Evolution
Evolution is a fact that we can witness even during our lifetimes (in species whose life times are many times faster than ours) yet evolution is beside the point at the moment so for the sake of conversation would you be so kind to look into and let us know how Richard Dawkins (or any other scientist) explains the exact point of origin of the life. How the most primitive organism came to be from the dead matter, not how this life evolves further once it is there.

Creation
I have already offered a theory above, everybody is welcome to challenge it.
This theory also simplifies a lot and you seam to be into simplification so you might like it.
Everything is a creator (consciousness).
How does it simplify? Well if the whole universe is a body of consciousness in a different stages of awakeness, life is already there built in a fabric of space and matter, there is nothing but life so it is only natural that it goes through transformations, mutations, evolution.
Most of our body weight is built out of microorganisms that are not a part of us but with their help our bodies live. Then we have living cells of our body (smaller percentage of our weight) that live and die and get replaced so that our mind can move on mostly unaware of lives taken.
DNA in a single living cell (which almost everybody would consider a primitive organism compared to themselves) are way smarter than our conscious minds are.
Our unit minds form a collective body of human society which crates structures and change the planet. Some changes are way beyond the reach of a single human and in many cases beyond the reach of single generation of humans (huge cities for example).
Only as a collective organism we'll be able to move to other planets and later into other galaxies unaware of their lives similar to how microorganisms and cells can't be aware of ours, not so much because they don't have enough cognitive capacity but because our size and a lot slower life speed wouldn't give them enough frames to perceive our reality even if they had cognitive capacity.
Similarly the solar systems and galaxies have sizes and life times so much beyond our short lives that we don't get enough frames to understand life of their communities. That is why we need strong imagination. Isn't it ironic how imagination (as opposed to real) is crucial in understanding the universe and its laws. You can't see the the law, you can only imagine it.

Unjust God
Regarding your question about curing babies from leukemia. Creation, life and consciousness are all about that.
Challenges of life push bodies and minds of living organisms to adapt, to evolve and find solutions to enlarge the scope of life to expand the expression of consciousness. If you look into every personal challenge you have in your life be it mental or physical and in nature as well you'll quickly find out that those challenges were instrumental in helping your development and equally development of other individuals, societies and other species. Why? Because dormant consciousness is inert (lazy in human terms). As we have to push and inspire children to study and exercise and got to school and eat healthy food so the challenges of our surroundings are nothing but the push to awake, to study environment to find rules and invent solutions. Once you are awaken enough you start pushing yourself from within through inspiration and passion.

 

Human beings will always try and find "theories" to justify their existence. Some use science, religion, philosophy or some form of "theism". Let's face it, we have all been 'cursed' with a laughably brief life-span (especially when compared to the larger universe). Not even barely enough time to develop a plausible 'theory' justifying our brief splash on this rock. For many, it's tough to swallow the idea that after we depart, that's it! Finito! Fine! das Ende! No more! The end! It's a far more pleasant (and comforting) idea to believe that there is an "afterlife" (providing that they have lived a 'righteous' life). When it's all said and done, who can blame them. After all, this idea validates (at least for the "believers") the cruel joke that is life's brevity. On the other side of that coin, there are those stalwarts who have reached the rather harsh conclusion of accepting "The End" and all of its applicable finality. No fanfare. No "Saints Marching In". Nothing. For these folks, "bring it on!" is their mantra.

In my own family, the question of this thread has been debated for as long as I can remember. Our two camps of thoughts on this subject remain firmly divided -- with no apparent end in sight. So here we are. Same question. Same answers. As I mentioned earlier (IMHO) no amount of philosophy, "theisms", scientific thought, etc., will sway people's entrenched notions on this issue no matter how eloquent or passionate the argument.

 

This is the god of the gaps fallacy, i.e: I don't know, therefore it must be god... It's primitive reasoning, at best. In fact, all beliefs in the paranormal, the occult, including gods, are derived from it.

Human beings have a hard time coexisting with the unknown, so we make up magical explanations until we can find logical ones to replace it.

Theology is all made up from thin air.

Regarding the origins of life on Earth, we don't know about it yet, but we already have many promising hypothesis and new discoveries are made in this field almost on a daily basis.

Rest assured that, eventually, we'll get there. We will fill this gap just like we've filled countless other gaps that used to be attributed to god in the past...There're just a few left...

You haven't offered a theory. You have offered a hypothesis.

It's essencial to know the difference between these two things if you want talk about science and knowledge.

There you go. This is your hypothesis. In order to make it a theory, you have to substantiate it with evidence...The burden of proof, you know...

This is one of the oldest theological questions. It's called the problem of evil, and theologians still haven't found a bullet proof answer to it, despite trying really hard for thousands of years.

Particularly, this is a big problem for those who believe in the Abrahamic theological model (Christians, Jewish, Muslins), most specially Christianity, which claims that god is omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and benign.

Epicurus has phrased this problem very succinctly, in 340 BC.

It goes like this...

If God is willing to prevent evil, but is not able to

Then He is not omnipotent.

If He is able, but not willing

Then He is malevolent.

If He is both able and willing

Then whence cometh evil.

If He is neither able nor willing

Then why call Him God?

This becomes particularly interesting when we introduce the concept of the Christian version of Satan in the equation, which is the personification, the source of all evil, accordingly to Christians.

If God created everything, then he created Satan as well - Oh, but Satan was a supposed to be an angel (Lucifer), he's turned evil when he's started a rebellion against God!- Well, if God is good and knows everything (omniscience) then he certainly would have predicted it, and wouldn't even have created Lucifer in the first place, instead, God sent him to hell and made him its CEO, deliberately, so he could perform all evils from there, freely and without punishment.

Anyway, this brings us to another point. If God is good, almighty (omnipotent) and , as Christians say, considers Satan as his ultimate enemy, then why he simply doesn't exterminates him instantly? Could an almighty being even have an enemy, in the first place?

So, if according to Abrahamic religions, there's a hell and there's Satan, and an almighty, all knowing God that doesn't do anything about it, this is because:

a) God's not almighty.

b) God's not all knowing.

c) God's almighty and all knowing , but he condones it, therefore he's not good.

Either way, it shows how fragile the Abrahamic theological model actually really is, because its deity figure needs to be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient and benign for it to work, but it's logically impossible for it to possess all these atributes, as the problem of evil cleverly demonstrates.

Along the centuries, most attempts to refute this paradox were focused on another variable, which is freewill. However, all of them seem to assume that, in order to freewill to exist, there must be evil, which is, simply put, not true. There would still be plenty of choices for us to make, including moral ones, without the presence of the evil variable. There's still right and wrong without evil.

Anyway, obviously, this is a fascinating and very complex subject, and we know we won't be able to set it on this forum. However, if you want to dig deeper, this is a good starting point: http://www.iep.utm.edu/evil-log/

Cheers,

R.

 

Last edited: Aug 22, 2016

This sentence is wrong
God's is almighty and all knowing , but he condones it, therefore he's not good.

BTW I'm really scratching my head here because some of the answers have nothing to do with the questions asked by pinkpanther, and for some reasons you guys keep talking about religion when the first three words of the topic are "Not any religion"

 

Do you mean the sentence is grammatically wrong? If it is, I'm sorry. English is not my native language.

It isn't logically wrong, though, as explained above. If the same God that created Satan and hell, is almighty and all knowing, then he can't be good, otherwise he wouldn't have created them in the first place because he would have known that they would be the source of all evil. A good God wouldn't have created evil on purpose, let alone let his alleged enemy (Satan) reign freely causing chaos, specially since evil itself is not necessary for the existence of freewill.

Go back to my previous post and read it carefully. If you have an answer to the problem of evil, be my guest. Who knows. You might become famous.

Anyway, it's impossible to talk about God without talking about religion, specially Christianity, since the most common concept of God belongs to it.

 

Last edited: Aug 22, 2016

Here is a mind blowing fact (imho), if you go on microscopic level, most of our body weight is a ctually built out of "empty" space, take the atoms of our bodies, most of their mass is in nucleii consisting in protons and neutrons, these are not fundamental particles, yet if you check the mass of the quarks composing these particles, they add up to something around 90%, so most of the mass of a proton or a neuttron is made up of empty space around the quarks composing it..

 

I'd say most of the volume of matter is empty space but not most of its weight.

 

If we were to remove all that empty space from all of those atoms, the resultant mass of a human body would be infinitesimally small. It would be so small, in fact, that all of humanity would be equivalent to the size of a sugar cube even smaller than that.
https://www.scienceabc.com/pure-sciences/can-the-entire-human-race-fit-inside-a-sugar-cube.html