@MMJ2017 Connect these two dots.

 

"We are going through a period in which many people are questioning everything that they have been told to be true. You could argue that science is also a belief system. Politics is also a belief system, culture, Darwinism, ideas given by ETs. Any set of rules or given 'facts' that provides answers to important questions becomes for people a belief system that they buy into and which they live their lives by. So, the traditional God belief has become less important as a belief system because newer beliefs seem to answer for them, the big questions in a more comprehensible way. I predict that the world will, at some point, be presented with new explanations about the nature of reality, creator via a prophet who will come with a group of ETs. But even when we are witness to religious miracles, natural disaters or alien invasions, we must remain suspicious that advanced technology can create it all to decieve us. All that I have said is the reason that I think the question of atheism or theism is an irrelevant question, or the question needs to be re-imagined."


I take science as a general term that describes testing and probing reality in order to differentiate between fiction and reality or specifically fiction vs non-fiction , next science is a general term that describes the entirety of human progress. all differences between us living as cavemen and living the way we do now comes from science , and yes the humanities are also a science "art" roughly is the "science of human expression"

 

"
My name is John I am going to be 37 in a couple months
MMJ2017 said: ↑
those separate disciplines are separated out in our society for many reasons i have spent time to have full picture of each
@MMJ2017 Connect these two dots.
"


i will expand upon that, a human being must consider all variables in a situation in order accurately form a thought about something, if we for instance leave out big chunks of information and then proceed to form a idea based on the information it could never be accurate.


we form a branch called psychology lest say. it is not that there is an actual separate thing in reality called psychology , instead we are zeroing in on one particular aspect of reality that deals with a subjective human experience. this means we symbolically make a branch when in reality there is no separation , reality is one thing.

 

Last edited: Apr 17, 2017

"I think the question of atheism or theism is an irrelevant question, or the question needs to be re-imagined."




well, ATHESIM vs THEISM is a position a person can have on one particular claim that in reality such a thing as GOD exists and is real that is non-fiction. that is one particular proposition that is being evaluated and one surely can take another independent proposition and proceed to evaluate that new one.

 

"2. Very few people can sit still or meditate for an whole hour. Why is it that we, who are most fickle and cannot control our own thoughts, so easily dismiss God whereas, truly advanced spiritual people who can meditate for 24 hours or more, at one go, never question the existence of God?"


it is kinda off topic but maybe important for you to know , i spend at least 2 hours per day meditating and by that what i am describing is laying down bring my awareness to my body letting all thoughts go until there is no thoughts, only the feeling of being present just a feeling of "being" many times i stay in this state for many hours on accident and come out rejuvenated like i slept for a whole night and when i go to use my mind and motor skills there is double improvement as well as clarity and focus. i meditate everyday because i see that what makes "me" me is not my thoughts of feelings there is a deeper level than that, the thing that is " I am" is being in a present moment with awareness, from there anything that arises next like thoughts or emotions ,arise inside of consciousness on a level down that is not fundamental.

 

I'll take quick stab at some of your points with what comes into my mind..

Do you have an opinion on countless of people who have the first hand "experience" with God and not through reading a book of some sort and then believing, but the other way around. For example first experiencing God's grace, and only then believing what is told in the Bible?

You probably agree that brains transfer lots of data, correct? You have many examples of electricial data-transfering methods, so I think we are on the same page of thinking here, except what came to my mind was radio-signals which can transfer data through a human body and even through objects, still keeping that data intact. Maybe this X billions and we may have something resembling a soul, or even a conscience of God? Who knows? We couldn't even detect said signals but only recently, and as everybody knows, human race is very young, so who can say what we could be able to detect in the future, hidden from our eyes like radio-signals were just a few hundred years ago?

Just like mentioned above, thousands years ago there was no demonstratable evidence of radiation, but it doesn't mean it wasn't there. If there is no demonstratable evidence of existence of God today, it doesn't automatically mean there is no God? I didn't quite understand what you meant by this to be honest, so I am not sure if my "argument" is "satisfying".

I like this, never heard of this before God is also beginning and the end and time is a creation of His, and He lives in the past and the future at the same time, all the possible moments, everywhere, combined in one moment, He just.. is? I don't know what it is like to be God. I actually have thought about this a little before now that I remember, I wondered could it be a lil boring to be God, knowing everything there is to know, is there the end, actually, if God is the beginning and the end, but also eternal, don't these conflict a little? I don't have anything to say to this, only that I don't know what it is like to be in the shoes of God.

I always wondered, if God ever wanted to stop existing, could He do it or is there something which would conflict with it? But then again, His "free will" is tied to what He is like; inherently good, just like our free actions are tied to what we want deep inside us, how we are made. God wouldn't go just zapping people to death with lightning strikes, because that conflicts with his nature of what He is like. (Btw, from what the Bible tells us, God has all the "right" to just do it to humans, because we are so evil in our nature, but God is slow to judge us and wants everyone to be saved through His Son, Jesus, because through Him we can have forgiveness of all our evil actios, sins and gain eternal life.)

Anyways, sometimes Jesus asks from me what I would choose. He has a plan for everyone one's lives and we have a free will to follow His thoughts or not, but sometimes in His plan for us we get to choose what we want. Obviously God knows what we will choose (or if He is "all powerful", maybe He can put a "veil" in front of His knowledge, and kind of like, surprise Himself, I don't know?)

I don't think knowledge of everything inteferes negatively with your free will, it's just that He is free to be Himself. If you were a good person, obviously you would always choose the right thing to do, no matter the situation and you know that this is what you will always choose to do. Do you view this as a lack of free will, or just doing what you actually want to do, being yourself?


I'm not entirely pleased with my own answers, but I hope you will find some meaning in them. Good luck

 

it's actually one of the biggest problems we have.
everyone thinks his "god" is the only "real" one.
because believing is the opposite of knowing, this ends up in a lot of issues...

 

"Do you have an opinion on countless of people who have the first hand "experience" with God and not through reading a book of some sort and then believing, but the other way around. For example first experiencing God's grace, and only then believing what is told in the Bible?"



an opinion i have not, BUT what i can do is evaluate the truth value of such a claim, first a human being finds themselves in a present moment , next the claim is that they begin to have a "first hand experience" with god, so what we can do is get into the details of what those symbolic words you typed actually mean, are you saying they have a particular experience for which they create an explanation called " experience with god" ? what justification do they have to say that what actually took place was an actual experience of god and that god is something a part of reality? if they claim that then they have to take steps to show god is something, and that they had experience with it. that this explanation actually took place not just calling it "experience with god" but to show there actually is a god.( differentiate fiction vs not fiction)

OR are you saying they have a particular experience, then come to the conclusion of "i don't know" then proceed to call their ignorance god?

 

"I take science as a general term that describes testing and probing reality in order to differentiate between fiction and reality or specifically fiction vs non-fiction , next science is a general term that describes the entirety of human progress. all differences between us living as cavemen and living the way we do now comes from science , and yes the humanities are also a science "art" roughly is the "science of human expression"

Well yes, that would be an acceptable definition of science. Science relies on measurement systems to prove and disprove aspects of existence. People mistake theories for fact though. Einstein's Relativity and Newton's Gravity were only offered as theories not facts. We can trace the original meaning of science to Latin, and for the ancient Italians it meant 'to know.' That word 'know' is deep though! it may even have had deeper meanings for the ancients. For instance a shallow meaning of 'know' might be that you've felt rain fall on you and therefore you might say you 'know' rain. But there is much more to really knowing what rain is: how is it made, where does it come from, how many types of rain are there, what causes rain. There are many people walking around saying they know this and know that but don't really know anything properly, only very shallow types of knowing. All I can say is do a master's degree or PhD which which will most likely open your mind to a way of thinking that reveals that everything has so many possibilities, that your heart will be broken when you realise that there are really no such things as solid, iron-cast facts, including in the perfectly-measured 'science' - there are only opinions, or theories if you prefer. When you realise that, belief systems will break down for you into mere realms of possibilities. It is not surprising to me that quantum science has encountered the 'measurement problem' (in simple terms it is that an atom takes form ONLY when observed by one of us, when we don't observe it, the atom seems to occupy all currently known existence). So again, at the highest levels of academic inquiry we've hit the wall of just realms of possibility, and ironically, for me, that is so limiting. Then again, science and God-belief seem to be coming together again as scientists discover beautiful 'intelligent design' in all things, and other patterns such as the 'Golden Ratio'. Many scientists have to give way to the strong possiblity that there might be an intelligent mind behind Creation.

 

"You probably agree that brains transfer lots of data, correct? You have many examples of electricial data-transfering methods, so I think we are on the same page of thinking here, except what came to my mind was radio-signals which can transfer data through a human body and even through objects, still keeping that data intact. Maybe this X billions and we may have something resembling a soul, or even a conscience of God? Who knows? We couldn't even detect said signals but only recently, and as everybody knows, human race is very young, so who can say what we could be able to detect in the future, hidden from our eyes like radio-signals were just a few hundred years ago?"\



you state it perfectly when you say " who knows?" that is literally saying " i dont know" or ignorance. we can never go from ignorance to saying that what we are ignorant of equals something else you can add up ignorance divide subtract ignorance but you always end up with " i dont know"


to say that in reality something is possible plausible or probable you need that opposite of " i dont know" or in other words demonstrable evidence data from testing and probing reality itself that the answer IS, X is possible, X is plausible, X is probable.

 

"
Well yes, that would be an acceptable definition of science. Science relies on measurement systems to prove and disprove aspects of existence. People mistake theories for fact though. Einstein's Relativity and Newton's Gravity were only offered as theories not facts. We can trace the original meaning of science to Latin, and for the ancient Italians it meant 'to know.' That word 'know' is deep though! it may even have had deeper meanings for the ancients. For instance a shallow meaning of 'know' might be that you've felt rain fall on you and therefore you might say you 'know' rain. But there is much more to really knowing what rain is: how is it made, where does it come from, how many types of rain are there, what causes rain. There are many people walking around saying they know this and know that but don't really know anything properly, only very shallow types of knowing. All I can say is do a master's degree or PhD which which will most likely open your mind to a way of thinking that reveals that everything has so many possibilities, that your heart will be broken when you realise that there are really no such things as solid, iron-cast facts, including in the perfectly-measured 'science' - there are only opinions, or theories if you prefer. When you realise that, belief systems will break down for you into mere realms of possibilities. It is not surprising to me that quantum science has encountered the 'measurement problem' (in simple terms it is that an atom takes form ONLY when observed by one of us, when we don't observe it, the atom seems to occupy all currently known existence). So again, at the highest levels of academic inquiry we've hit the wall of just realms of possibility, and ironically, for me, that is so limiting. Then again, science and God-belief seem to be coming together again as scientists discover beautiful 'intelligent design' in all things, and other patterns such as the 'Golden Ratio'. Many scientists have to give way to the strong possiblity that there might be an intelligent mind behind Creation.
"




"People mistake theories for fact though."


A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world, based on a body of facts that have been repeatedly confirmed through observation and experiment. Such fact-supported theories are not "guesses" but reliable accounts of the real world.






"For instance a shallow meaning of 'know' might be that you've felt rain fall on you and therefore you might say you 'know' rain"


no, you are saying that you felt the experience of rain falling on you and you use language in a slang way a shortcut to word that as "I know rain" , you are saying you are saying that you felt the experience of rain falling on you , but you are squeezing that meaning down to fews words in such a way that is ambiguous. no human being in that example is saying rain drop fell on them therefore they have complete entire factual knowledge of rain in its entirety.







"There are many people walking around saying they know this and know that but don't really know anything properly, only very shallow types of knowing."

yes because in order to demonstrate THAT you know , you require an ability to show the way things actually work , then if your proposition matches the way things actually work it can be said that you "know" that topic or area or subject. we call this process of differentiating between fiction vs non fiction SCIENCE. that is the difference between being correct or wrong regarding a claim of knowing.



"it may even have had deeper meanings for the ancients."

it has been shown to be the case that the "ancients" even the smartest or most intelligent person on the planet is dumber of knows less than a 7 year old today. its called progress or "learning" why is it that no people meditating in caves came up with transistors, computers refrigerators or the knowledge that disease is not evil spirits? why was the average lifespan less than 30 years old?





"All I can say is do a master's degree or PhD which which will most likely open your mind to a way of thinking that reveals that everything has so many possibilities,"

the truth value of any proposition is not impacted by phd's or any paper with ink on it for that matter. a 7 year old can ask a question and a 55 year old can ask and any education level can ask and yet the answer to that question the way things actually work regarding the question is not impacted in any way by phd's. ( for instance a poor person could spend everyday of their life on a laptop they pulled out of a dumpster using free wifi from a coffee shop and take their time to learn any topic and how it connects to any other topic regarding reality.







"
that reveals that everything has so many possibilities, that your heart will be broken when you realise that there are really no such things as solid, iron-cast facts, including in the perfectly-measured 'science' - there are only opinions, or theories if you prefer. When you realise that, belief systems will break down for you into mere realms of possibilities. It is not surprising to me that quantum science has encountered the 'measurement problem' (in simple terms it is that an atom takes form ONLY when observed by one of us, when we don't observe it, the atom seems to occupy all currently known existence). So again, at the highest levels of academic inquiry we've hit the wall of just realms of possibility, and ironically, for me, that is so limiting. Then again, science and God-belief seem to be coming together again as scientists discover beautiful 'intelligent design' in all things, and other patterns such as the 'Golden Ratio'. Many scientists have to give way to the strong possiblity that there might be an intelligent mind behind Creation.
""




to say it is the case in reality that something has possibility probability or plausibility it has to be demonstrated to be true that is you show that something is possible and how it is plausible or how it is probable. thinking inside of thought alone the concept " anything is possible " is fiction, you could restate it though as " i can find out something to be the case i was previously unaware of" this is not fiction that is demonstrable.








"that there are really no such things as solid, iron-cast facts"

lets spend one second of our life to see if this is itself fiction or non-fiction.

well i just uncovered that there IS actually a difference between something that is fiction and not that means there is a difference which means you sentence itself is fiction. the sentence " there is an actual way things are in reality" is identical as " there is a such thing as facts" i have demonstrably shown your sentence to be a creation of your imagination , while not pertaining to the way things actually work. in other words that sentence you wrote is shown to not be a fact. and the sentence that i wrote IS a fact . it SI a cold hard iron-cast fact that there is a difference between fiction and reality that for example rick grimes the fictional main character in the walking dead storytelling is not the same as the actual you the person that exists . it is a fact that you are a person that exists and the fiction character is not a person that exists there is a differentiation between fiction and not fiction, we loosely describe fact as that which is not fiction or that which is the way things actually work, but what we actually mean is that we are justified by demonstrable evidence to accept the information based on what can be shown with full awareness that we can learn more in the future that our knowledge is not fixed . this does not mean that fiction and reality are identical .

it can be said that no string or arrangement of words is a fact. instead it is possible to have a description using words that are symbols that represent an actual state of affairs to the best of our ability that can always be expanded upon and more can be learned about it that is a clear picture of "the way things actually work" can be built language is entirely and always virtual that is a representation at best. but this does not say therefore there is no difference between fiction and reality or fiction vs not fiction. the way things actually are and what we are justified as accepting as true statement are very different things . in order for me to form a string of words that i claim is the way things actually work i need more than my internal thought process composed of more words, i need some way to find out the way things actually are. and to the degree that symbols like words and language fall short we can always refine how things actually work themselves described in those symbols. yet none of this impacts that there is a way things actually work. we could have been born inot a type of world where there is no such thing as "the way things work" it could be a world like"the secret" for which anything you think changes reality itself we could have ( theoretically i mean) found ourselves born into that reality , BUT we were instead born into the reality we were.

 

Last edited: Apr 17, 2017

Our lord and savior Jesus M. Christ that's who

 

GOD never told any man to prove that he exist. The bible says that "a fool says in his heart that there is no God". A person cannot believe in God all he wants, no problem, because it does not make GOD any less GOD than what or who he is. Too not believe in him, means that you lived according too his word and he never fulfilled any of the promises that he made too you. If you lived according to his word and he broke a promise to you, then you can have somewhat of an argument, but to say that you don't believe because you just don't believe is groundless unbelief. What you call unbelief is inexperience, GOD is not to be intellectually comprehended, but spiritually discerned. All atheist eventually believe in GOD with all their hearts. Once they die, they are like fish who never saw the oceans surface, but caught on a hook seeing for the first time the sun, sky, man...the atheist steps into the spirit realm,(upon his death) and all of his thoughts about life are laughed at by demons, who usher him into hell. He is tormented both night and day as he awaits the day of judgement, where he sees his maker face to face, and there in that place of no repentance, he believes in the GOD that he mocked, criticized and joked about. After the judgement of his soul, he returns to hell believing in GOD forever...But wait, theres hope while your still alive. Whoever calls upon the name of the LORD shall be saved. Romans chapter 10 verses 9-10 says 'if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved". "For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation".Romans 10:17 says "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God". So of course your an atheist or unbeliever if you don't spend time in his word.

 

"GOD never told any man to prove that he exist. The bible says that "a fool says in his heart that there is no God". A person cannot believe in God all he wants, no problem, because it does not make GOD any less GOD than what or who he is. Too not believe in him, means that you lived according too his word and he never fulfilled any of the promises that he made to you. If you lived according to his word and he broke a promise to you, then you can have somewhat of an argument, but to say you don't believe because you just don't believe is groundless unbelief. What you call unbelief is inexperience, GOD is not to be intellectually comprehended, but spiritually discerned. All atheist eventually believe in GOD with all their hearts. Once they die, they are like fish who never saw the oceans surface, but caught on a hook seeing for the first time the sun, sky, man...the atheist steps into the spirit realm,(upon his death) and all of his thoughts about life are laughed at by demons, who usher him into hell. He is tormented both night and day as he awaits the day of judgement, where he sees his maker face to face, and there in that place of no repentance, he believes in the GOD that he mocked, criticized and joked about. After the judgement of his soul, he returns to hell believing in GOD forever...But wait, theres hope while your still alive. Whoever calls upon the name of the LORD shall be saved. Romans chapter 10 verses 9-10 says 'if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved". "For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation".Romans 10:17 says "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God". So of course your an atheist or unbeliever if you don't spend time in his word."




I fully understand that your comment is telling the storytelling ( the bible) that you believe, but i am evaluating whether or not the storytelling is fiction or not fiction. If i said "spider-man is real and the creator of morality" then when you responded back how you dont think that is true then i responded by telling the story contained in the 1st comic book then moved on to parts of the second comic edition and so on what i am doing by telling the story is separate from evaluating the truth content of the story itself.\


there is a storytelling with characters and plots with good guys bad guys success and failures called the bible. in this way it is identical to the walking dead storytelling . both are storytelling constructed of words which are symbolic, neither have any demonstrable evidence to show that they are a part of reality itself or have any connection to " the way things work". they are isolated with no branches to reality. in the story of the bible, there is a super-hero character with magic powers called "god", just like in the walking dead there are "walkers" in both of these instances the way these things work in the story cannot branch out to reality itself because the way they exist in the story is not compatible with how things actually work in reality. this means the character" god" in the story only exists in the concept in a mind just like a "zombie" only exists as a concept in a mind for each of these there is no demonstrable evidence no way to show that these characters are possible plasable or probable in reality because the story setup these charactors to work in such a way that is not compatible with the facts of reality.

 

Last edited: Apr 17, 2017

"Just like mentioned above, thousands years ago there was no demonstratable evidence of radiation, but it doesn't mean it wasn't there. If there is no demonstratable evidence of existence of God today, it doesn't automatically mean there is no God? I didn't quite understand what you meant by this to be honest, so I am not sure if my "argument" is "satisfying"."




so there is a difference between the way things actually work and what human beings that exist in reality can do in order to say that some proposition is not fiction, that is accurately describes the way things actually work. we need demonstrable evidence from the actual position we are in of being a mind stuck each moment in our experience, trying to say something about reality is a certain way that some arrangement of words we create is not fiction buts describes "the way things actually work" us needing demonstrable evidence is needing it to use symbols which are virtual words to formulate ideas propositions ,ALL thoughts we have, that accurately describe the reality that actually exists. we need demonstrable evidence for that. IF there was a situation we had no demonstrable evidence to support a thought , that thought would be identical to a work of fiction say" the walking dead character rick grimes is a former police officer"

here is an example we will evaluate 2 different propositions we will look at ALL they have different and ALL they have the same

1. "rick grimes from the walking dead is a former police officer."
2. "god" is all powerful being that created morality and loves you

when evaluating any proposition for its truth content ( fiction vs not fiction) we want to evaluate the proposition to see if it is accurately describing the way things actually work outside of fiction. because fiction is storytelling for which anything is possible there is no connection to reality.



now lets go back to your comment again


""Just like mentioned above, thousands years ago there was no demonstratable evidence of radiation, but it doesn't mean it wasn't there. If there is no demonstratable evidence of existence of God today, it doesn't automatically mean there is no God? I didn't quite understand what you meant by this to be honest, so I am not sure if my "argument" is "satisfying".""


lets create a situation, lets imagine (fiction) that there is a world in which god exists for real in , but in this reality the human beings that exist in reality have no demonstrable evidence to show that their thoughts related to god are accuracy talking about the way things work.
that would mean in this example no person has justification to accept god is real, but what that means is even more profound , it means that god created human beings in such a way as to not be able to know him more than fiction, that god created the reality in such a way forcing people to not be justified in accepting the god, one could say in that type of reality maybe that god is testing people to see did they just believe any old thing with no justification? god actually betrayed those people, but in the end at judgement will only reward the atheists. for doing the hard thing , that is evaluating each proposition no matter what they wanted to be true, IF they cannot differentiate between fiction and reality. something to think about.

 

Last edited: Apr 17, 2017

I'm an antitheist.
Long live Christopher Hitchens.

 

Any and all mysticism is the product of a weak mind imo. I don't believe any of it. However, positively asserting "there is no god" assumes too much as one would need know everything to be sure. And "knowing everything" is approaching godly omniscience......and the cosmos is a big place, right? Could be hiding anywhere......

BTW, I recently saw a Chomsky lecture on YooToob where he was saying there is *no* definition of matter.....so the essential foundations of things like "materialism" are suspect. "The ghost in the machine" assumes a materialism that is unwarranted.....as there has been no successful effort to define "material" or "matter".

 

happy easter

 

lets put god in a "box of the unsureness" ... we can't know for sure if god is alive or dead, as long as we don't open the box... So, regardless of beliefs, god is dead and alive at the same time.