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originally posted by: Astrocyte
a reply to: vethumanbeing
If by Darwinist you mean "do you accept natural selection"? And to that question I answer in the affirmative. Natural selection is present in everything that happens and is empirically undeniable.
But why couldn't it be the case that natural selection inevitably leads - at least in us - to an omega point: to love? Evolution is a beautiful concept which is perfectly consistent with spirituality and with God.
originally posted by: Astrocyte
a reply to: vethumanbeing
...In the Torah, when Moses asks what God's name is, God answers, "EHYH asher EHYH"...Go and tell the Israelites that "EHYH" sent me to you". Grammatically and semantically, "EHYH" means "I will be"; and in its double connotation, means, "I will be that which I will be". The claim here is that God is forever transforming into something new in every now. "His" name is YHVH - "being" - but in his highest expression, he is the Being that is forever transforming into a new Now.
...
Exodus 3:13-16 ... Moses raised the question: “Suppose I am now come to the sons of Israel and I do say to them, ‘The God of your forefathers has sent me to you,’ and they do say to me, ‘What is his name?’ What shall I say to them?”
...
God’s reply in Hebrew was: ʼEh·yehʹ ʼAsherʹ ʼEh·yehʹ. Some translations render this as “I AM THAT I AM.” However, it is to be noted that the Hebrew verb ha·yahʹ, from which the word ʼEh·yehʹ is drawn, does not mean simply “be.” Rather, it means “become,” or “prove to be.” The reference here is not to God’s self-existence but to what he has in mind to become toward others. Therefore, the New World Translation properly renders the above Hebrew expression as “I SHALL PROVE TO BE WHAT I SHALL PROVE TO BE.” Jehovah thereafter added: “This is what you are to say to the sons of Israel, ‘I SHALL PROVE TO BE has sent me to you.’”—Ex 3:14, ftn.
That this meant no change in God’s name, but only an additional insight into God’s personality, is seen from his further words: “This is what you are to say to the sons of Israel, ‘Jehovah the God of your forefathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name to time indefinite, and this is the memorial of me to generation after generation.” (Ex 3:15; compare Ps 135:13; Ho 12:5.) The name Jehovah comes from a Hebrew verb that means “to become,” and a number of scholars suggest that the name means “He Causes to Become.” This definition well fits Jehovah’s role as the Creator of all things and the Fulfiller of his purpose. Only the true God could rightly and authentically bear such a name.
This aids one in understanding the sense of Jehovah’s later statement to Moses: “I am Jehovah. And I used to appear to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as God Almighty, but as respects my name Jehovah I did not make myself known to them.” (Ex 6:2, 3) Since the name Jehovah was used many times by those patriarchal ancestors of Moses, it is evident that God meant that he manifested himself to them in the capacity of Jehovah only in a limited way. To illustrate this, those who had known the man Abram could hardly be said to have really known him as Abraham (meaning “Father of a Crowd (Multitude)”) while he had but one son, Ishmael. When Isaac and other sons were born and began producing offspring, the name Abraham took on greater meaning or import. So, too, the name Jehovah would now take on expanded meaning for the Israelites.
To “know,” therefore, does not necessarily mean merely to be acquainted with or cognizant of something or someone. The foolish Nabal knew David’s name but still asked, “Who is David?” in the sense of asking, “What does he amount to?” (1Sa 25:9-11; compare 2Sa 8:13.) So, too, Pharaoh had said to Moses: “Who is Jehovah, so that I should obey his voice to send Israel away? I do not know Jehovah at all and, what is more, I am not going to send Israel away.” (Ex 5:1, 2) By that, Pharaoh evidently meant that he did not know Jehovah as the true God or as having any authority over Egypt’s king and his affairs, nor as having any might to enforce His will as announced by Moses and Aaron. ...
But there is no way for new traits to emerge because of the required biological complexity to bring forth new functions.
originally posted by: Astrocyte
a reply to: Blue Shift
So therefore you do not think love is at the core of the cosmos?
originally posted by: Astrocyte
a reply to: vethumanbeing
If by Darwinist you mean "do you accept natural selection"? And to that question I answer in the affirmative. Natural selection is present in everything that happens and is empirically undeniable.
t: But why couldn't it be the case that natural selection inevitably leads - at least in us - to an omega point: to love? Evolution is a beautiful concept which is perfectly consistent with spirituality and with God. Why couldn't God be the temporal flow of a Universal and Creative Now-Consciousness?
Astrocyte: Every bit of matter is connected to every other bit of matter. These forms are under the control of a symmetry-logic, but the way they come together and how is largely unpredictable. Yet the logic of love within us seems to put us into the deepest level of connection with the underlying oneness, allowing us to perceive that in the "Aleph" of EHYH is love itself. The Hebrew language captures this by the numerical value of one and love - both equalling 13, which is conceived geometrically as the unification of the twelve lines of the cube.
originally posted by: Astrocyte
a reply to: Itisnowagain
Well time is real insomuch as time is what the Universe around us is.
We can't function coherently within the universe, and as bodies, without acknowledging the reality of Threeness i.e. the trinity. Rejection of the trinity amounts to rejection of reality and rejection of what is required for us to coherently structure it. If we want happiness; if we want peace on earth, if we want play, love, and awe, we must suffer within the ream of time.
I know itsnowagain that you must have suffered greatly in this world for you to be committed only to the now. But the reason the world is as it is, the reason Christianity emphasises the trinity and the reason it also comes with suffering, is that working within a broken, asymmetrically organized world is painful. Paying attention to and learning from the past, and planning for and provisioning for the future, is a source of problems when people haven't figured out the structure of the reality they live within. But we must let science continue gaining knowledge, so that humans can know how to live in the world in harmony with one another, the biosphere, and above all, with themselves.