God is Not a Person

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by logical7

 

you mean God is just a natural phenomenon? without conciousness?

God has to be a conscious being? Who is it that comes up with all these parameters that a god must fulfill in order to be a god? Who is it that pretends to understand what it is to be a god, or what a god is like?

Why can't a god be a natural phenomenon, and the human understanding of the idea of a god is simply pitifully lacking due to our subjective viewpoints?

because a non concious God is as good as not having a God.
Either we concious beings were created by a concious Force conciously or we accidently evolved into concious beings. Only one option allows for a God.

Originally posted by wildtimes
Found this one just now via Google:God is a Presence, Not a Person

Question – Osho, What is God?
Osho – Prem Sukavi, GOD is not a person. That is one of the greatest misunderstandings, and it has prevailed so long that it has become almost a fact. Even if a lie is repeated continuously for centuries it is bound to appear as if it is a truth.

God is a presence, not a person. Hence all worshipping is sheer stupidity. Prayerfulness is needed, not prayer. There is nobody to pray to; there is no possibility of any dialogue between you and God. Dialogue is possible only between two persons, and God is not a person but a presence – like beauty, like joy.

God simply means godliness. It is because of this fact that Buddha denied the existence of God. He wanted to emphasize that God is a quality, an experience – like love. You cannot talk to love, you can live it. You need not create temples of love, you need not make statues of love, and bowing down to those statues will be just nonsense. And that’s what has been happening in the churches, in the temples, in the mosques.

Man has lived under this impression of God as a person, and then two calamities have happened through it. One is the so-called religious man, who thinks God is somewhere above m the sky and you have to praise him. to persuade him to confer favors on you, to help you to fulfill your desires, to make your ambitions succeed, to give you the wealth of this world AND of the other world. And this is sheer wastage of time and energy.

And on the opposite pole the people who saw the stupidity of it all became atheists; they started denying the existence of God. They were right in a sense, but they were also wrong. They started denying not only the personality of God, they started to deny even the experience of God.

The theist is wrong, the atheist is wrong, and man needs a new vision so that he can be freed from both the prisons. God is the ultimate experience of silence, of beauty, of bliss, a state of inner celebration. Once you start looking at God as godliness there will be a radical change in your approach. Then prayer is no more valid; meditation becomes valid.

It's very difficult for life-long Westerners to conceive of the thinking of Buddhism or the Upanishads, etc....because the West -- and the Abrahamic religions -- all personify God.

I remember struggling to comprehend Alan Watts, years and years ago. It takes total concentration to "get" the things the ORIENTAL (sorry: edit to correct: the Occidental is the Western style) faiths are brought up with. .... like learning a new language, except harder. Like learning the Chinese language, or the Egyptian hieroglyphs...

it's not that hard to learn a new language that uses the same alphabet as your own. That is simply stringing sounds together in a new way. It's infinitely harder to learn a completely DIFFERENT language. Many people are polyglots, but not all of them understand MUSIC, how to make it, how to read it. Nevertheless, they understand how music touches something deep inside us.

That's kind of the same as the non-Abrahamic GOD concept. You just listen to it, and it resonates. You don't ask it to "give me a B", or "give me an F#", and it doesn't ask us to pray to it for the B or the F#. It is music all the same. Men can apply principles that are outside of us to create the soundwave that is B or F#, but they cannot implore music to make a B into an F#, nor to kill off F#.

if God is a presence like love or beauty that can be felt, does that mean God is not aware of the creation? In a sense God is dead? God a force that created but unable to take feedback from the creations.

Originally posted by adjensen

Originally posted by windword

Originally posted by adjensen
From your claim that the universe is cyclical and your dismissal of my pointing out that it is not.

Why can't it be both? We are observing its expansion, but we don't know that expansion isn't part of a cycle..

Yes, we do. Once again, if the universe was cyclical, either expansion would be slowing, or there would be an increasing level of contraction, but neither is the case -- we have accelerating expansion, and there is nothing to slow it down, because the mechanism to slow it down is what is causing it to speed up.

No we know don't this as a final fact. There are physicists and theoretical physicists that still continue to debate this. If they can't agree what makes you think that you have the empirical truth?

From a thread I wrote earlier this year:

Well, by their calculations, about 32.9 million years before the Big Rip, the Milky Way will be torn apart, as the gravitational attraction that holds it together is negated. Two months before the end, the solar system suffers a similar fate. The moon leaves our orbit five days out, 28 minutes before the end, the sun explodes, at the 16 minute mark, the Earth follows, and the very atoms that make up our physical reality are ripped apart at 3x10(-17) seconds. It's all pretty much downhill from there. (Source: XiaoDong, Shuang, QingGuo, Xin, Miao "Dark energy and fate of the Universe") (Source)

Even at that point, there is nothing that can coalesce all the distributed matter, so it will simply continue to drift apart. It doesn't cease to exist, it just simply becomes more and more dispersed, even on a quantum level.

Do you understand that this is theory? There are other valid theories that are being explored that contradict your theory. Just because you stubbornly believe something doesn't mean that the rest of the scientific community is in agreement with these postulates or that others are invalid. We still have a lot to learn before we can rest, knowing we have the truth.

A Cyclic Model of the Universe
Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok

We propose a cosmological model in which the universe undergoes an endless
sequence of cosmic epochs that begin with a bang and end in a crunch.
Temperature and density at the transition remain Þnite. Instead of having an
inßationary epoch, each cycle includes a period of slow accelerated expansion
(as recently observed) followed by contraction that produces the homogeneity,
ßatness, and energy needed to begin the next cycle.

The Cyclic Theory agrees that there was some violent event 14 billion years ago – we still call it a "big bang" – but this was not the beginning of space and time. The key events causing the creation of matter, radiation, galaxies and stars occurred billions of years before the bang. Furthermore, there was not just one bang. The evolution of the universe is cyclic with big bangs occurring once every trillion or so, each one accompanied by the creation of new matter and radiation that forms new galaxies, stars, planets, and presumably life. Ours is only the most recent cycle.
www.physics.princeton.edu...

If your model of destruction is true, it is no more threatening or scary to me than my personal death. It certainly doesn't make me want to run and read the bible to save me from an ever expanding universe.

But even if what you postulate is true, and the universe is destined to "not be," then I would postulate that GOD also would not be. Maybe GOD can die. If all we can know is all that is, but if "is" ceases to be, then all that is GOD also ceases to be. Because GOD is ALL that there is.

That would be the case, were pantheism correct, yes. As a non-pantheist, I believe that God exists apart from our reality, so he (and anything in his reality) would be unaffected by the end of the universe in the Big Rip, which, technically, has already happened from the perspective of his reality.

This is what you believe. It's not what I believe. I would not tell you that your beliefs are wrong, I would only tell you that I disagree with you.

"Our reality" is not all of reality. God, in my opinion, is greater than our earthly reality, but not greater than all that is, because GOD is all that there is. If there are dimensions that exist outside of "our reality" then they are still in existence within the universal realm of all that exists.

reply to post by adjensen

I am a non-pantheist because, as I said, from a scientific point of view, it is a logical impossibility.

From a scientific point of view, for many scientists, the idea of a creator god is a logical impossibility: Creating something from nothing, having no beginning or end.....etc.

Science isn't based in faith! You can't throw the word "scientific" around when trying debate your faith based opinion of the nature of GOD!

Originally posted by windword

Originally posted by adjensen
Yes, we do. Once again, if the universe was cyclical, either expansion would be slowing, or there would be an increasing level of contraction, but neither is the case -- we have accelerating expansion, and there is nothing to slow it down, because the mechanism to slow it down is what is causing it to speed up.

No we know don't this as a final fact. There are physicists and theoretical physicists that still continue to debate this. If they can't agree what makes you think that you have the empirical truth?

It is a fact that the universe is expanding, and that this expansion is at an increasing rate. Once again, here is your proof. The remainder is derived from that evidence, period, end of discussion. Beliefs in a cyclical or contracting universe likely predate that discovery in 2011, but if there are still those who wish to believe them, they will need to reconcile this contradictory data.

From a thread I wrote earlier this year:

Well, by their calculations, about 32.9 million years before the Big Rip, the Milky Way will be torn apart, as the gravitational attraction that holds it together is negated. Two months before the end, the solar system suffers a similar fate. The moon leaves our orbit five days out, 28 minutes before the end, the sun explodes, at the 16 minute mark, the Earth follows, and the very atoms that make up our physical reality are ripped apart at 3x10(-17) seconds. It's all pretty much downhill from there. (Source: XiaoDong, Shuang, QingGuo, Xin, Miao "Dark energy and fate of the Universe") (Source)

Even at that point, there is nothing that can coalesce all the distributed matter, so it will simply continue to drift apart. It doesn't cease to exist, it just simply becomes more and more dispersed, even on a quantum level.

Do you understand that this is theory? There are other valid theories that are being explored that contradict your theory.

Yes, it is a theory, but it is a theory with corroborating evidence. You can do the maths in that paper that I cited and see that it works out.

A Cyclic Model of the Universe
Paul J. Steinhardt and Neil Turok

Once again, this is an old theory, which has been demonstrated to be unlikely, if not impossible, by more recent data.

If your model of destruction is true, it is no more threatening or scary to me than my personal death. It certainly doesn't make me want to run and read the bible to save me from an ever expanding universe.

Who said that it would or that I care whether you read the Bible or not? I simply brought it up because the non-cyclical nature of the universe is germane to the subject of pantheism.

Originally posted by logical7
reply to post by windword

 

I am aligned with the theory, as are
others, that time and the universe are within a cyclical reality. Of course that
idea can be debated, but no one
knows for sure what is true.

ok lets take your theory, then God is in space n time and in a cyclic state with them, in short God keeps changing as space changes.
It makes me question, does that mean God also gets tied to laws of time and space?

In my opinion GOD doesn't have human based emotions, so therefore, "No, GOD doesn't get bored." I believe God to be the whole of all spiritual essence, residing in a body that is all that exists. Our bodies are GOD's bodies, our spirits are GOD's spirit. GOD is dancing a universal dance that makes the world go around.

Let's put it this way. I don't believe that
GOD throws around super novas,
hurricanes or volcanoes because he's
angry at us humans. We live within a
natural environment that mimics the
randomness of the universe. We on't find ourselves in the path of
destruction because of GOD's
judgement against us. Nor do I believe
that GOD actively intervenes to stop a
hurricane, super nova or volcano
because of pious prayer

neither do i believe that God does it that way, at least not that directly, God made a system and if humans mess with the environment then it may led to consequences.
But again a question,when you say they are random event does it imply that God is no longer in control?
And by mercy, i meant that we are provided with whatever we need,air,water etc thats Mercy too.

I don't believe that human greed can cause an asteroid to plow into planet Earth. Neither do I believe that GOD will reach out and stop an asteroid already in motion to hit Earth. Although, there may be a spiritual hierarchy in place that does protect and guide us.

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by adjensen

 

I am a non-pantheist because, as I said, from a scientific point of view, it is a logical impossibility.

From a scientific point of view, for many scientists, the idea of a creator god is a logical impossibility: Creating something from nothing, having no beginning or end.....etc.

Actually, science has nothing to say on the subject of God, because it is limited by Methodological Naturalism to only those things which are observable and measurable, and, being supernatural, God is not within the purvey of science. However, as I have done earlier, science can definitely refute claims about God which intrude on the natural realm, which pantheism does, so science can be used to disprove pantheism (though it can't be used to disprove other impressions of God which remain in the supernatural realm.)

And, yes, science is very much interested in the question of creating something from nothing. Richard Dawkins called the author of A Universe from Nothing, Lawrence Krauss, a modern day Darwin for putting the final nail in the coffin of theism with his proof that the universe could pop into existence from nothing.

Unfortunately, Dawkins either hadn't read the book, or didn't understand it, because it wasn't out for a month before Krauss was excoriated by a philosopher of physics in the New York Times for not proving any such thing, and Krauss was forced to admit that he was wrong and had chosen the title to be controversial.

But it is very much a subject that science is interested in. I'm currently reading another book on the subject which just came out, Why Does the World Exist? by Jim Holt, which mixes physics, philosophy and other fields in its survey.

reply to post by windword


when did i say "bored?" i meant tied down, limited. So does God get limited by laws of space time or still omnipotent?
And could you elaborate on the spiritual hiearchy that protects and guides. What is that?

reply to post by adjensen

Who said that it would or that I care whether you read the Bible or not? I simply brought it up because the non-cyclical nature of the universe is germane to the subject of pantheism

How so? If GOD is all that is, and all that is ceases to exist, then GOD also ceases to exist. This fact doesn't negate the idea that GOD and the creation are one and the same.

It is a fact that the universe is expanding, and that this expansion is at an increasing rate. Once again, here is your proof. The remainder is derived from that evidence, period, end of discussion.

Not by a long shot! Here's your proof.

Clearly, further advances in fundamental physics are required before it will be possible to know the ultimate fate of the universe with any level of certainty. However, scientists generally agree that this fate will depend on three things: the universe’s overall shape or geometry, on how much dark energy it contains, and on the so-called “equation of state” (which essentially determines how the density of the dark energy responds to the expansion of the universe)

If the geometry of the universe is “closed” (like the surface of a sphere), then there are two main possibilities, as has been mentioned in the section on Accelerating Universe and Dark Energy. If the universe has a large amount of dark energy (as recent findings suggest it may well have), then the expansion of the universe could theoretically continue forever. If, however, the universe lacks the repulsive effect of dark energy, then gravity will eventually stop the expansion of the universe and it will start to contract until all the matter in the universe collapses to a final singularity, a mirror image of the Big Bang known as the "Big Crunch”, somewhere in the region of a hundred billion years from now.
[snip]
One possibility is where the acceleration caused by dark energy increases without limit, with the dark energy eventually becoming so strong that it completely overwhelms the effects of the gravitational, electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces. Known as the “Big Rip”, this would result in galaxies, stars and eventually even atoms themselves being literally torn apart, with the universe as we know it ending dramatically in an unusual kind of gravitational singularity within the relatively short time horizon of just 35 - 50 billion years.

www.physicsoftheuniverse.com...

reply to post by adjensen

science can definitely refute claims about God which intrude on the natural realm, which pantheism does, so science can be used to disprove pantheism (though it can't be used to disprove other impressions of God which remain in the supernatural realm.)

Can science disprove the intervention of your Old Testament God? Can science disprove that Jesus was God in the flesh? Nope!

Science can't prove that pantheism, if that is what I'm describing, is false, because GOD is the natural realm! Science reveals the nature of what is, GOD is what is.

If science is to find a way to create something out of nothing, will that disprove GOD existence?

reply to post by logical7

because a non concious God is as good as not having a God.
Either we concious beings were created by a concious Force conciously or we accidently evolved into concious beings. Only one option allows for a God.

Because only a conscious being can serve you, right? There couldn't possibly be an unimaginably intricate system for detecting and serving the needs of every ecosystem developed by such a divine principle, could there? There couldn't be a system with built in contingency plans, formed naturally of the laws of its very existence!

Your mind is restricted by your understanding. You have not met nor studied such a being or principle, and so you cannot grasp it. Hopefully, one day, you will begin to see.

Originally posted by windword
reply to post by adjensen

 

Who said that it would or that I care whether you read the Bible or not? I simply brought it up because the non-cyclical nature of the universe is germane to the subject of pantheism

How so? If GOD is all that is, and all that is ceases to exist, then GOD also ceases to exist. This fact doesn't negate the idea that GOD and the creation are one and the same.

That's why pantheism can't be right -- if the universe was cyclical, and had no beginning or end, then there would be some wiggle room because it could theoretically not be a created object (though I still wouldn't agree that it was valid) but if the universe has a discrete beginning or end, that's not the case, because something cannot be the source of its own creating.

It is a fact that the universe is expanding, and that this expansion is at an increasing rate. Once again, here is your proof. The remainder is derived from that evidence, period, end of discussion.

Not by a long shot! Here's your proof.

www.physicsoftheuniverse.com...

I punched that website into archive.org and it was posted in October, 2010, prior to the 2011 study I cited. His views may have changed since then.

I'm off to a Christmas concert with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law, have fun.

Originally posted by logical7
reply to post by windword

 

when did i say "bored?" i meant tied down, limited. So does God get limited by laws of space time or still omnipotent?

Once again, this questions seems to indicate a human emotion of frustration. If GOD exists as all that is physical and all that is spiritual, and is constantly moving and changing, timelessly, then I don't see how it could be limited in anyway. The laws of the universe are the expression of the music and the rhythm that the universal body of GOD dances to.

And could you elaborate on the spiritual hiearchy that protects and guides. What is that?

This theory of mine accounts for individual spiritual experiences of divine intervention, from which all religions are based, our place in the cosmic community and help from hypothetical space/inter-dimensional brothers.

Originally posted by windword
Science can't prove that pantheism, if that is what I'm describing, is false, because GOD is the natural realm! Science reveals the nature of what is, GOD is what is.

I think that you're confusing terms there, but yes, pantheism can be proven false if it is proven that the universe is a created thing. If the universe is eternal, then maybe, but as things stand now, the consensus is that the universe is not eternal -- there was a time that it did not exist (not even the component matter of the Big Bang or the fundamental laws of physics.)

If science is to find a way to create something out of nothing, will that disprove GOD existence?

Not really, because you can't prove a negative, but it would certainly change a lot of people's minds on the subject of whether God is a necessary being.

reply to post by adjensen

That's why pantheism can't be right -- if the universe was cyclical, and had no beginning or end, then there would be some wiggle room because it could theoretically not be a created object

Not necessarily. If, on some level, the creation were aware of its origins (which is very possible, if the creation is the creator) then there would be a capability of reverting to the original form. Now, say there were several sections performing this cycle in a staggered effect - visualize a spiral, if you will. A circular spiral. A spiral that loops around and feeds into itself. At the same time one level is ascending, another is ascending below it, and another is feeding back into the original essence, before individualizing again. Even as one returns "home", another is leaving "home" and beginning the cycle anew. And vice versa.

That's the best way I can explain it to you. If it still doesn't make some kind of sense, then you are fighting it, and I cannot help you. Please feel free to ask more questions if you desire clarification for the purposes of understanding this point of view.

Originally posted by wildtimes

It's my kind of thing, too. I was born in the late 1950's, and by the age of 12 or so had determined (internally) that I believed in Reincarnation (with no prior exposure to it); that the soul is on an endless journey, and we are here TO LEARN what "GOD" is.....

I was born pre 50s. Reincarnation came to me naturally at the same age of 12.

I remember at age 5 being in church with my grandmother. She was Catholic and trying to raise me Catholic. Even at that age - - I stood up on the pew and said to her: "Does God need all this?". Meaning all the physical ornateness and pomp and circumstance.

Even at that age the concept of physical and physical needs associated with God seemed wrong.

I truly believe our natural state is an energy consciousness - - - that physical is something we choose to experience.

That we are all connected to an original Source of energy consciousness. I will call it the Source. But I will not call it God - - as I believe that is misleading - - in that man created religion and the God of religion.

reply to post by Annee


You stole the term "Source" from me, if I remember correctly. I don't mind - I enjoy it when people actually use words with intention, knowing exactly what they're saying as they say it. Far too often, words just come out and are wasted.

reply to post by adjensen

That's why pantheism can't be right -- if the universe was cyclical, and had no beginning or end, then there would be some wiggle room because it could theoretically not be a created object (though I still wouldn't agree that it was valid) but if the universe has a discrete beginning or end, that's not the case, because something cannot be the source of its own creating.

The accelerating universe theory isn't brand new, This new study only states that the acceleration is faster than expected. It doesn't disprove a new kind of singularity "big bang," the black hole theory within the expanding universe or the Torus universe model.

If GOD is everything and everything ceases to exist then so does GOD. Perhaps GOD can die.

If GOD is a phenomena that arises out of being everything, which I believe to be the case, then GOD can be self realized and self created.

Either way, it leads us to the same question, "Does GOD exist?" not so much how does GOD exist. If GOD does exist, then who created GOD?

You have labeled my belief as "pantheism." But I'm not sure that's an accurate label. Pantheism is a creed, an agreed upon theology of the divinity of nature and the acknowledgement of all gods. I'm not exactly aligned with that.

You seem to think that If the universe ceases to exist this proves that God exists. It doesn't. Personally, I can't believe in a GOD that doesn't exist as one with creation.

Never the less, God within the universe or God outside the universe, GOD still isn't a person. There is no scientific evidence that a GOD from outside the universe put on a skin and bone puppet suit to be able to emote about to talk to people of a certain time and place on planet Earth. If this is your definition of GOD, then you can label me an atheist in your book. I don't believe in the biblical God.

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by Annee

 

You stole the term "Source" from me, if I remember correctly.

I don't mind - I enjoy it when people actually use words with intention, knowing exactly what they're saying as they say it. Far too often, words just come out and are wasted.

Well Yes! - - it helps with understanding in a forum to use same terminologies. That's why I chose to adopt it for ATS.

But - I was born 66 years ago having OBE's (at least from first memory) and have always known a connection to something beyond physical. As a child assimilated into God belief - - I thought it was God. But that just didn't ring true for me. Source is not a new terminology to me. But it is a good one. And I thank you

reply to post by wildtimes


God to me wildtimes is an idea to describe intelligent powers beyond our range which can be detected or clearly understood with our human sensors and reasoning minds.