Wanted: Honest intelligent productive thinking to resolve the issue God exists or not.

a reply to: Never Despise

Then say Chernobyl is a mere illusion of the past. Then how can that be used to change the amount of suffering (resulting deaths, physical injuries, increased cancer rates, reduction in life span, increased nuclear reactions and radiation that poison the environment) in the future.

If the”illusion” fantasy is the reality, it could be used to change the future.

Chernobyl is not an illusion of the past. Chernobyl is the reality of the past that shapes the realty of the future that causes measurable impacts and nuclear reactions.


Or can you cite how the “illusion” fantasy can be used to change the future quality of life from something like past events at Chernobyl.

a reply to: neutronflux
This is not about healing.

originally posted by: Itisnowagain
a reply to: neutronflux
This is not about healing.

What does this have to do with healing...

Chernobyl is not an illusion of the past. Chernobyl is the reality of the past that shapes the realty of the future that causes measurable impacts and nuclear reactions.


Now. How can the fantasy of the”illusion” of the past be used to say change the amount of radiation at Chernobyl in the future?

a reply to: Itisnowagain

An “illusion” your powerless to change is “reality”

originally posted by: neutronflux
a reply to: Itisnowagain

An “illusion” your powerless to change is “reality”

What is happening is happening......this is reality.

Of course I can't change reality.......

originally posted by: Itisnowagain

originally posted by: neutronflux
a reply to: Itisnowagain

An “illusion” your powerless to change is “reality”

What is happening is happening......this is reality.

Of course I can't change reality.......

Then how is the event at Chernobyl not real.

a reply to: neutronflux

It's real.

a reply to: neutronflux
Who said it wasn't?

a reply to: Itisnowagain

Then what BS are you spouting as applied to Chernobyl, and how can it be used to change the amount of radiation at the site of Chernobyl in the future.

Einstein Relativity is just a “theory” but gives accuracy to GPS satellites.

Now cite a working example of your “theory” and how it can be used.

originally posted by: Never Despise
a reply to: Itisnowagain
That's the one. Thanks muchly.

So then, when you’re in the way of waking up and finding out who you really are, what you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now.
Alan Watts @ same page as the last quote.

Dear Never Despise, you tell me:
"I would never say things "don't exist." However, I believe that nothing has independent self-origination."

Just take the word/concept existence, it has to do with a collection of existing things.
Now, in that collection, there has got to at least be one entity that is self-existent and permanent.

Do you see that?

originally posted by: Never Despise
a reply to: Pachomius

Thanks for your interest. In a way, the concept of "existence" can be defined so many ways that it's very hard to give a single definition IMHO.

You wrote:
"Existence is anything at all we experience, like for examples, the nose on our face, the moon and the sun in the sky, and babies and roses in the neighborhood."
I see no reason to deny this definition.

I would never say things "don't exist." However, I believe that nothing has independent self-origination.

For example, on the conventional level, a leaf and a tree are not the same thing. But the leaf depends on the tree for its existence, and the tree cannot exist without leaves either. Both depend also on sunlight, nutrients in the soil, fresh carbon dioxide to breathe and so on. If you follow the chain all the way, each "thing" is a kind of open-ended phenomenon dependent on other open-ended phenomena, in a web of interdependence.

This includes stuff like the "self," which can seem closed off and seperate from the rest of the universe. But in reality it is open-ended and connected to the vast web of reality in a variety of ways (through sensory input, through output in the form of will, through dependence on the body, which in turn depends on external food and water, and so on).

In regard to the chicken/egg problem, the fact is that God made the first chicken already with an egg inside.

God in concept is the permanent self-existent creator cause of man and the universe and everything transient with a beginning.

And the evidence is everywhere, like chickens are everywhere and humans are everywhere, they are all evidence to the existence of God.

originally posted by: violet
a reply to: Pachomius

No idea if He exists or not, but who were his parents? Who begot them and so on. Chicken/Egg.

a reply to: neutronflux

Dear Neutron, we meet again and I was almost despairing that you would be gone forever from my thread here.

Itisnowagain and Never Despise, they seem to be of the huge Hindu thinking school about illusion.

But aside from that purely inside psychology of taking things to be illusion all inside their mental psychology, they live exactly like you and me, namely, they also quarrel over money and over even such mundane things as for example, in India they are zealous with their national pride - don't say anything in their presence to the in effect so much as a bit of slighting their national pride, like questioning their vaccine against the Covid-19 pandemic.

a reply to: Pachomius

Dear Pachomius,

Things certainly exist. But what is at issue is the WAY they exist. Are there ultimately seperate things that exist completely apart from other things? I say no. All things exist in a way that makes them dependent for their origination and continued existence on other things that act as causes and conditions. The sum total of this network of mutally dependent things is reality as a whole.

I am curious as to why you think existence itself implies that something must independently exist. As an analogy, consider three sticks propping each other up in a tent-shape. They are all standing up, but no single one of them could stand in that way without the others to prop it up. Reality as a whole is, in my view such that things certainly exist, but they all depends on other things for their existence. No single thing can exist in total isolation.

Dear Never Despise, please, forgive me, but just choose one thing that you care we discuss about, is that all right with you?

Should you ask me to choose, I will choose...


Are you of the idea that all existing things are into some kind of democracy, so that there is no one single pernanent self-existing entity that is above them all, which all are not this one single permanent self-existent thing, which I call God, in concept as the permanent self-existent creator cause of man and the universe and everything transient and with a beginning?

originally posted by: Never Despise
a reply to: Pachomius

Dear Pachomius,

Things certainly exist. But what is at issue is the WAY they exist. Are there ultimately seperate things that exist completely apart from other things? I say no. All things exist in a way that makes them dependent for their origination and continued existence on other things that act as causes and conditions. The sum total of this network of mutally dependent things is reality as a whole.

I am curious as to why you think existence itself implies that something must independently exist. As an analogy, consider three sticks propping each other up in a tent-shape. They are all standing up, but no single one of them could stand in that way without the others to prop it up. Reality as a whole is, in my view such that things certainly exist, but they all depends on other things for their existence. No single thing can exist in total isolation.

a reply to: Pachomius

OK this is a really hard question to answer. I do believe in a kind of God but for me it's not rational. It's something I feel, something I pray to from the heart and not from the head.

At the same time I am trained in Buddhist philosophy and even spent some years studying at a temple in Asia.

From a Buddhist perspective everything is mutually co-arising. There is not a detached creator God.

To compound matters I was raised to study both Buddhism and Christianity in some depth by my parents.

So I have a kind of schizophrenic approach in that I really "feel" God with my heart but "think" like a Buddhist.

In Buddhism there is a tradition called "noble silence" and the idea that certain questions are unanswerable and should be met with silence. From a Buddhist perspective I treat the concept of a Western God as somehow outside the framework.

I know this probably doesn't make much sense.

I chose to answer your posts from a Buddhist perspective. From that perspective there is no one entity that created all the other entities.

The God that I pray to is not something I address intellectually. Prayer just flows from the heart. But when I rationally conceive of the universe I do so in Buddhist terms.

Dear Never Despise, I am asking you whether you are of the idea that all things in existence are into some sort of democracy.

I think no.

From my honest critical thinking, all things in existence are under at least one permanent self-existent entity, and everything else not this one entity comes from this one entity, I call this one entity God, and I define this God as follows:

God in concept is the permanent self-existent creator cause of man and the universe and everything transient and with a beginning.

Please forgive me, try to employ honest critical thinking, to answer the question: Is there one God or everything in existence is into some kind of a democracy?
.

originally posted by: Never Despise
a reply to: Pachomius

OK this is a really hard question to answer. I do believe in a kind of God but for me it's not rational. It's something I feel, something I pray to from the heart and not from the head.

At the same time I am trained in Buddhist philosophy and even spent some years studying at a temple in Asia.

From a Buddhist perspective everything is mutually co-arising. There is not a detached creator God.

To compound matters I was raised to study both Buddhism and Christianity in some depth by my parents.

So I have a kind of schizophrenic approach in that I really "feel" God with my heart but "think" like a Buddhist.

In Buddhism there is a tradition called "noble silence" and the idea that certain questions are unanswerable and should be met with silence. From a Buddhist perspective I treat the concept of a Western God as somehow outside the framework.

I know this probably doesn't make much sense.

I chose to answer your posts from a Buddhist perspective. From that perspective there is no one entity that created all the other entities.

The God that I pray to is not something I address intellectually. Prayer just flows from the heart. But when I rationally conceive of the universe I do so in Buddhist terms.

a reply to: Pachomius

There’s a concept derived from the philosopher Arthur Koestler based on the holon/holarchy system... holon being another word for an entity.

To explain this concept: The holon for example is a Solar System and it is a member of the holarchy, a Galaxy.

Or, a planet is a holon and the solar system would be the holarchy.

A human is a holon in the holarchy of the human race.

link

What is holarchy?

In 1967, Arthur Koestler put forward a theory of holarchy (The Ghost in the Machine) that seemed to underpin how natural systems are organized. He coined the term “holon” for an entity that was whole in and of itself and also part of a greater whole; a whole-part. He suggested that we are organized, in embedded or nested degrees of increasing complexity. Each whole becoming part of a greater, more complex whole. As letters make up words, and words make up paragraphs, and paragraphs make up pages, and pages make up books, so too are we organized psychologically, physically and socially in ever increasing complexity.

A lot of your ( and our) ideas have been already developed by past thinkers.

This concept has been developed further in a scientific-metaphysical system known as Integral Spirituality popularized by the well-known metaphysical philosopher Ken Wilber.


I derived from this theory and my own deductions the concept relating to God what I call his systems

For example, Karma is one of God's systems. God is his system. One can't separate God from these systems.

God and his systems are one.



Another inference about God from traditional religion.
God can't be confined by his creation.

Example: Moses asked to see God. God said. Okay. Look at the mountain and if it remains firm then you will see me.
The mountain imploded and was destroyed. He did not see God.

If the mountain remained firm then that would tell us God can be confined by his creation but the fact that it imploded into smithereens is an allegorical reference telling us God CAN'T be contained in his creation.

Further Explanation: God can't be confined by anything because if he were then everything in the immediate environment would have to be destroyed and then the apparent thing that contained God would be destroyed next and nothing would remain.


Indulge me a bit of theology for the record. A caveat to this is:

There is a tradition that God indeed can be contained but ONLY in the heart of his lovers or true worshipers. Whoever they are.

a reply to: Pachomius

In regard to the chicken/egg problem, the fact is that God made the first chicken already with an egg inside.

God in concept is the permanent self-existent creator cause of man and the universe and everything transient with a beginning

I think your idea here is valid and can be empirically confirmed by science itself. For example, creating rather from a female womb into some created matrix( gestation) that can substantially replace a female womb( now called exogenesis )thereby allowing creation outside a vacuum of ordinary human progenerating.

They say soon that will be a viable possibility as it's been done with animals.

So certainly, God as super scientists some time in the distant past in creating humans could have easily made us outside the vacuum of the normal human progenerating process—sex.

All he needed was one man or woman cloned or even a few and from there could have got the ball rolling. His systems would take over and he could have gone and had a cup of coffee and just watched.

Hmm...Imagine having a cup of coffee with God.
Wow, that would be some badddd coffee

Bad in a good, as in awesome sense.

a reply to: Pachomius
Dear Pachomius,

I wouldn't call it a democracy, but it's not that there is a creator God sitting above or outside of His creation.