Atheism vs. God-Belief (the final debate).

Originally posted by SoulReaper
reply to post by Mykey057420

 

why do you assume the "existence of free will"?

just curious, what leads you to the conclusion that if indeed man is created, that he has a will which remains separate, independent, and un-influenced by the one who created him??

Soul

You got me. It's a postulate I simply prefer,(emotion) to the alternative. Perhaps it would be better described as "The appearance or illusion of free will." I just don't perceive any evidence for being influenced by this deity. If you write out a random number generator 1 to 1,000,000,000 for instance. Surely, you know all the probable outcomes being the genius you are. But with 100% accuracy can you say what number will pop out? The universe obeys mathematical laws, why do you suppose that is? If you were the master programmer of the cosmos, would you put on a puppet show? Or let chaos reign and see what emerges? I choose Chaos myself. Or someone is choosing it for me....

Originally posted by NewAgeMan

Originally posted by sacgamer25
If you think being addicted to love is crazy, please don't try to help me, nor should you try to stop me. Because is love is for me no one can stand against me. God is love.

Isn't it, isn't HE funny though? Don't you think?

You're nuts, and so am I (see the link in my signature for more - but I can see you've already joined the cause and that you're "all in" for the love of God and the brotherhood of man => [moves pile of chips forward])

Nothing else makes any SENSE! So it's the joke that once you get it on one level just keeps getting ever funnier, until you're left with an ultra-rational smile (for no reason at all).

Crazy truth, willy to go mad if need be only to be real and true as we were intended to be, not unlike little children.

You're absolutely right, we will fight the concept until we become consumed by the world or we realize that nothing else makes since. The world sucks, just in case anyone wanted my opinion. But love, its love, how do you describe God/Love?

Originally posted by sacgamer25

Originally posted by NewAgeMan

Originally posted by sacgamer25
If you think being addicted to love is crazy, please don't try to help me, nor should you try to stop me. Because is love is for me no one can stand against me. God is love.

Isn't it, isn't HE funny though? Don't you think?

You're nuts, and so am I (see the link in my signature for more - but I can see you've already joined the cause and that you're "all in" for the love of God and the brotherhood of man => [moves pile of chips forward])

Nothing else makes any SENSE! So it's the joke that once you get it on one level just keeps getting ever funnier, until you're left with an ultra-rational smile (for no reason at all).

Crazy truth, willy to go mad if need be only to be real and true as we were intended to be, not unlike little children.

You're absolutely right, we will fight the concept until we become consumed by the world or we realize that nothing else makes since. The world sucks, just in case anyone wanted my opinion. But love, its love, how do you describe God/Love?

I don't understand why many equate God with love... Perhaps it is so, but I could just as easily equate God with Boredom. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I'm sure I do more "work" out of the latter, than the former.

Just laying out some more puzzle pieces in preparation for Part Two of the argument I'm hoping to successfully put forward here in this thread.

pay it no heed at this point.. (I have a lot more work to do to make the whole presentation).

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by vethumanbeing

 

Even iguanas seek out the best and the most comfortable and satisfying rock to lay upon however docile and slow to move they may appear.

Extremely quick witted as well; to walk past them use a stick and flip them over onto their backs. The kind human will return them to original position (belly down) after safely past, escaping blisteringly fast and furious verbal repartee.

reply to post by Mykey057420

I'll bet when you're really working hard at something with a lot of focus that you enter into the flow experience of creativity and of the master performing an art of some kind, when the boredom completely falls away and you are immersed in the subject-object relationship, nothing but a focal point of awareness.. are you then not in love at that moment in relation to what you are attending to? this could equally apply to an efficient flow of an action on a factory floor as it could performing some physically challenging feat or any other optimal human experience.

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by Mykey057420

 

I'll bet when you're really working hard at something with a lot of focus that you enter into the flow experience of creativity and of the master performing an art of some kind, when the boredom completely falls away and you are immersed in the subject-object relationship, nothing but a focal point of awareness.. are you then not in love at that moment in relation to what you are attending to? this could equally apply to an efficient flow of an action on a factory floor as it could performing some physically challenging feat or any other optimal human experience.

In those moments of extreme scrutiny of (craft?) reality falls away, time ceases to be experienced; as it is no longer percieved conciously AT ALL. The focus is so pointed the physical environment that surrounds falls away. For me, when it happens, the conscious disapears and I am left with a creation of some kind usually 2D format that expresses my subconscious perfectly. I suppose I dismiss the "real" world as 'unreal' a fake, and trust the subconcious to be true. Out of body experiences more worthwhile symbolically as teaching mechanisms; some would call these dreams of a Revelatory Nature (like John of Patmos!--just keeping on topic snicker).

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by Mykey057420

 

I'll bet when you're really working hard at something with a lot of focus that you enter into the flow experience of creativity and of the master performing an art of some kind, when the boredom completely falls away and you are immersed in the subject-object relationship, nothing but a focal point of awareness.. are you then not in love at that moment in relation to what you are attending to? this could equally apply to an efficient flow of an action on a factory floor as it could performing some physically challenging feat or any other optimal human experience.

Oh yes I agree! It happens, but it is rare. Not every labor I endeavor in creates such emotion... and I'm not sure this is the only "universe" or clock out there. I'm more sure "God" has made many on a quest for something...and I'm not arrogant enough to assume this particular one is the first, or the last. The idea, that man is the be all end all of his endeavors just doesn't sit well with me. Neither does the idea that it is "love" manifest... It seems juvenile... I would like to think an eternal being is beyond most emotions. Hell... I only see one outcome to everlasting life, and that's everlasting boredom.

reply to post by bb23108

Originally posted by bb23108
I always found it interesting that Adi Da stated in the beginning of his very first book this:

"Throughout my life, I have been moved to Communicate (or to Reveal, to Transmit, and to Awaken) the fundamental Source and Substance and Condition of True Humor to others."

A pretty tough mission in this world, I would think!

Originally posted by NewAgeMan

One Reality (even if it has many dimensions). One God. One Condition. One Spirit.

If intelligent design can then be shown, according to a downward causation with consciousness and not matter as primary - the implications of this are very deep and very very profound in regards to the whole field of experience here and everywhere and at all levels as a cosmic consciousness of which human consciousness is an integral component.. like a heart of the world, yet nowhere in particular as a non-local phenomenon.

Absolute love is absolute forgiveness is absolute liberation.

Once we come to see and recognize loves reason, and everything else's absurdity by comparison, well then how can we NOT laugh at our prior ignorance and absurdity?

We must watch then our action, and what it is that we are creating in ourselves from moment to moment so that what was purely ego-driven can become the action of healing that leads to peace and happiness as our native state of mind and being or as we truly are, in God.

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
So...by "final debate", did the OP mean "final rehash of a rehash"?

edit on 19-3-2013 by AfterInfinity because: (no reason given)

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Final debate, meaning case closed. Whew what a relief finally.

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by AfterInfinity

 

If you have nothing whatsover of value to offer, and no specific question of any kind, then please save the snide remarks, thank you.

No, no, AfterInfinity has much to offer. Love vs Tryanny is one of the best threads to come along since well, my own (The Age Old Question) Two longest threads ever in the very recent past. Not snidely just sometimes 'plays' the skeptic; and why not. I play as well, to expand an arguement or to bring enlightenment. This thread is special.

Re: Partnership with God

Martin Buber, generally considered the greatest Jewish philosopher of the 20th century, believed messianism was Judaism's "most profoundly original idea" (Lowy 47-70) The "coming of the Messiah," understood literally by Jewish people for centuries, was for Buber, a non-observant but pious Jew and a socialist, a metaphor for the advent of messianic age, to be brought about by God and man. As Buber saw it messianism was Judaism's gift to humanity

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessey, a Christian philosopher (a Jewish convert) and contemporary of Buber's, described the emergence of the messianic sensibility, "Unlike other tribal or imperial people the Jews broke with the narrative that life and death, peace and war were inevitable cycles. Instead of merely longing for a lost golden age, they staked their entire existence on a future reign of righteousness and peace" (Cristuado 247). The historian of religion Mircea Eliade has noted that human beings from the beginning of history have been haunted by the mythical remembrance of a pre-historical happiness, a golden age -- thus we harbor an abiding nostalgia for paradise. Judaism was the first religion to convert this nostalgia into the belief that this mythical paradise will be realized in history as the Kingdom of God on earth. History is the realm of redemption.

According to messianic thinkers, both Jewish and Christian, our state of conflict with the world, our mortality and suffering is not a permanent human condition but is a result of our historical estrangement from God. The Kingdom of God, the reunion of God and humanity, is the remedy: "For the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea" (Isaiah 11:9). Buber emphasized that this was not a matter of gradual progress but something "sudden and immense" (Lowy 52). In Isaiah God says, "I create new heavens and a new earth." The long awaited age of peace and happiness is called the "day without evening" in Eastern Christianity, thus connoting a state of immortality. Even in the Indian Vedas we find evidence of the messianic longing in the symbol of a new beginning also connoting immortality, "the eternal dawn." The messianic age is universally described as the union of heaven and earth.

More than any other religious Jewish thinker, Buber placed the active participation of human beings -- as God's partners -- at the heart of messianism. "God has no wish for any other means of perfecting his creation than by our help. He will not reveal his Kingdom until we have laid its foundations" (Farber 90). In the early 1920s Buber stated, "We are living in an unsaved world, and we are waiting for redemption in which we have been called upon to participate in a most unfathomable way"

from the site linked in my signature
Eco-Doom or Redemption: The Mad Movement and the Sixties' Counter-Culture Project

Originally posted by vethumanbeing

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
So...by "final debate", did the OP mean "final rehash of a rehash"?

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Final debate, meaning case closed. Whew what a relief finally.

To be fair we still have to show that an argument in favor of intelligent design or intentionality in the creation of the Creation, including our own, by a fully informed, infinitely intelligent eternal Godhead, is capable of blunting and rendering permanently obsolete, any counter-argument in favor of random coincidence "by accident", for it to be considered "case closed", but I think we might get there yet anything's possible and given enough time, actual.

reply to post by vethumanbeing

Final debate, meaning case closed. Whew what a relief finally.

Far from closed, actually.

I'll continue to do my best, but it remains to be seen what the other side of the debate will come up with, if anything, in opposition, to counter the argument for intelligent design by a fully informed, infinitely intelligent, first/last cause (Alpha and Omega).

At the very least it ought to be interesting..

reply to post by NewAgeMan


It is interesting that you quote from Jewish/ Christian text or sources and yet attempt to promote an "all-inclusive" redemption.

No true Jew or true Christian would describe such a redemption, rather that the redemption is reserved for the "people of God", the "children of the inheritance", those who are "born of God", the "faithful", the "sons of the kingdom".. ect, these people of redemption are called by many names and will be made into a holy people, set apart by God, a remnant of Grace.

It is not a process of exclusion where people are forcibly separated from the Love of God. Rather all are considered already by nature children of wrath, consigned to futility. From out of all of humanity, God then overcomes our failings with his love and as many as are appointed to eternal life are included under his grace.

Thus redemption is a process of inclusion whereby some are "saved" from their default path and set upon a righteous path according to Gods will.

One really can only object to such a redemption if one thinks that man is the center of the universe and that God must respect the will of the creature or that the creature himself is some how deserving of favor or can cause God to be under some obligation to him.

If one sees God as the center of the universe, then all things work together for his glory and we as men of flesh and bone exist only for his purposes, whatever that might be. This is however a difficult doctrine and even some of the disciples who sat under the teaching of Christ himself said "who can listen to this" and left him to go their own way.

Soul

NewAgeMan, this post of yours is fascinating. It is taking me some time to get through it due to being busy, but am really enjoying what is being presented here:
www.abovetopsecret.com...

P.S. When is the next hockey timeout so I can catch up?

P.P.S. Still am not buying the Consciousness as Creator presumption, but still very interesting video links on Quantum Theory and Consciousness. That everything is a modification of Consciousness does not mean it was created by Consciousness. But regardless, Consciousness is the senior Principle, Reality Itself.

reply to post by SoulReaper

The love and redemption of God is and must be all-inclusive and as partners with God in spirit and truth we must come to recognize, acknowledge and answer God's calling to do our part, and you're right that God is the cornerstone and the rock of the foundation as the first and the last, the Alpha and Omega.

But first we need to recognize that God is indeed the center and the source and his love the reason as a common basis upon which we can all (or most of us) agree.

True believers, to begin with, need to be in one accord, sharing in the one Spirit of truth, love and life who is also the Christ as God-consciousness i.e.: not separated either from God or one another.

Strange how the only opposition I'm encountering here is from a fellow God-believer.. oh the irony.

reply to post by NewAgeMan

The love and redemption of God is and must be all-inclusive and as partners with God in spirit and truth we must come to recognize, acknowledge and answer God's calling to do our part, and you're right that God is the cornerstone and the rock of the foundation as the first and the last, the Alpha and Omega.

Redemption? From what? And what is our part, exactly? What is our obligation in this game?

Strange how the only opposition I'm encountering here is from a fellow God-believer.. oh the irony.

Don't count me out yet.

Originally posted by NewAgeMan
reply to post by SoulReaper

 

Strange how the only opposition I'm encountering here is from a fellow God-believer.. oh the irony.

LOL!

Originally posted by AfterInfinity
reply to post by NewAgeMan

 

Don't count me out yet.

I knew that was coming! It must have been some non-local consciousness happening!