Ted Hoffman

You are welcome
Backwards, or forwards, its all an illusion. We are all evidence of Gods omnipotence. Just like knowledge and ignorance both represent states of the human brain. Two valued logic (true or false, positive or negative, zero or one [in computation]) are all attempts at constructing a reality that we can grasp tenaciously. But even as we discover matter and antimatter (backwards and forwards) we realize that besides electrons and protons, we also have antiprotons and so on and it remains tenuous.
So, Amos, there is no such thing as getting it backwards unless you want to limit yourself to a mortal mans way of perceiving life.
God is thinking (the act), that is correct. He represents what is possible. What we can do. Thus the portentuous nature. We are thinking matter unlike God. God is thinking but he is not thinking matter. Though he is both thought and matter.
Now we are on the same page - but only halfway. Because of "continuity". That word implies that the extent of Gods abilities is contigent upon our capabilities. That "continuity" only applies with respect to our understanding - not Gods actual abilities.
I agree.
God is attention. Attention cannot pay attention.
This is what the mythmakers wrote. The weakness of their story was their inability to overcome the pitfalls of anthropomorphisms.
Beauty is no more real than pain is real.
You said earlier:
You have therefore contradicted yourself. But that is ok with me, but I dont know about you since you seem to be applying two valued-logic in your thinking. Which has true or false propositions that are mutually exclusive.
I have heard people state that whereas beauty is subjective, pain is a brute fact. You have stated insread that pain is an illusion, while beauty is not.
No more than a rock needs to liberate itself from rockiness. To emancipate ourselves from our delusions is to deny our humanity. Our very essence.
We are a facet of Gods omnipotence and neednt feel inferior. The east is not better than the west and the south does not need to mature to be the north.
Its the eternal search for a stasis. The flux, which we are part of, should not influence our image of what will constitute a mature version of us.
The sage flows with the stream, but does not go where the stream is going.
Eden is the mythmakers fantasy of our vaunted beginnings. Its an effort to force us to gaze at what they imagined to be the beginning of the stream. We are all part of God, we dont need to mature. A toe aspiring to be an eye, is a toe deluded.
Eternity is a concept that we have developed from our temporal existence. Its a magnification of time. But time is just a dimension and there is nothing special about an endless amount of time.
Its all an illusion.
The subconscious mind is material and hence temporal.
Its the quest for understanding. Its imagination, not the subconscious mind. Neurones firing indeterminately (events are indeterminate at the subatomic level). If we attach the results of mental images to our emotional psyche, we make it the subconscious.

Wiploc

How do you figure this?
crc

Wiploc

Seems obvious to most of us that we have free will. Therefore, for most of us, if the FWD is to be defeated, it must be defeated on other grounds.



I'll bet they all do. Every response you've ever
heard could be reduced to one of these five moves:

1. God's not all that smart.
2. God's not all that strong.
3. God's not all that good.
4. We don't really suffer.
5. Logic is the wrong playing field.

Mostly they use #s 2 and 3. Always they hope not
to be caught; they don't want you to realize they've
just said god isn't perfect.

crc

Darth Dane

"I'll take the challenge



I am also content in saying just this
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Am I to assume that this was your solution to the "challenge"?"


No, this was not a solution. However I claim that it is possible.

Where in the example we are to discuss, do you disagree with me?

What Good didn't come out of Hitlers presence on earth?






DD - Hitler Spliff

Amos

Not all is an illusion because there must a reality of which illusions are a reflection. You can't say that ignorance is equal to truth because without truth ignorance cannot conceived to exist except in relation our extractions of truth. This same is true with life and eternal life wherein life is the illusion that is extrapolated from eternal life and so without eternal life neither life (your "true") nor death (your "false") can be conceived to exist. Hence, when we reside in eternal life (heaven) we cannot die! Rather, and that is how the old goat herders put it: "you shall not eat it or touch it lest you die." In other words, only in our conscious mind can right and wrong, and hence pleasure and pain, be conceived to exist.

Same is true with Love (agape=eternal bliss) from where we extract finite love (eros) which finds its opposite in hate.

Same is true with Light (celestial) from where we extract the light of common day which finds its opposite in night (this light must be created before the light of common day can be conceived to exist (cf. Gen.1 and 14). Light is love and love is the continuity of life. Both light and love are the continuity of Love and Love is the continuity of Life eternal.

Same is true with omniscience from where we extract the science of the day and the antiscience learned when things went wrong.

Same is true with Beauty from where we extract the beautiful as reflections of truth as juxtaposed with the profane. Beauty is the continuity of truth and truth is live itself. Beauty is light and the profane is darkness.

So God is not thinking because omniscience requires no thought. To be a Freethinker means that we do not have to think because we 'know' and are gnostic by definition. Agnostics must think or they would be gnostic and if this is not true speach is absurd.

You wrote: Now we are on the same page - but only halfway. Because of "continuity". That word implies that the extent of Gods abilities is contigent upon our capabilities. That "continuity" only applies with respect to our understanding - not Gods actual abilities.

Maybe I agree. God can be no greater than me and I can be all that God is in me if I come to realization that I AM [God]. "To know the depth, width and breadth of the Lord God" which is me in the image of God.

God is not attention but God just is and we (in our human condition) are tentative and therefore pay attention.

Our humanity is not the essence of our being but God the essense of our being. Our humanity is our earthly image of our essence (-hu is from -humi to indicate our earthliness) while man in the image of God is the heavenly essence of our being (if you allow me to place heaven opposite to earth). This makes our "human-ity" a condition of being while "man" is the real being that is burdended with this superimposed human ideal (idol) of existence.

The search for identity is not eternal but is temporal because in eternity we know who we are. While temporal we go with the stream and pick berries as we please. When we are eternal we are in charge of our destiny and so direct the flow of the stream (we are infallible).

We are not just part of God be we are, or at least have the potential to be, fully God.

Eternity is the continuity of infinity. Infinity has no beginning and no end while eternity has a beginning but no end. To make eternity known the temporal is needed and that is how the temporal flux is needed to make the infinite known wherein time is an extrapolation of timeless infinity.

So eternity is not a long stretch of time but the absense of time. In our right brain we are eternal because time-as-such is not known there. You are correct and our right brain is material but our soul contained therein is not material and it is in our soul that we are eternal.

Travis

It seems to me that people have come to the conclusion that God must do. Is it not that God has a choice? Is it that God must do all that he can do?

Ted Hoffman

"Must be"? Getting wishful are we? Strong feelings do not themselves the truth create you know!
On what basis must illusions be a reflection of some reality?

I never said ignorance is equal to truth. They (ignorance and knowledge) posess what is now called syndifference (difference in sameness) they are part of the same syntactic medium (the brain). We all have knowledge gaps but that doesnt mean we are all ignorant.

There is a mistake in thinking that death and other experiences of life on earth are a necessary pert of existence in every possible place or dimension. Humans are so caught up in their own experiences they cant think outside the box of life.
There is no question of "not dying". Because there will be no life as we experience it here and now. Death, as we know it, is a human experience (as living beings in the organic sense) in a world of scarcity and a world subject to laws. Self-configuring-self-processing universe.

The goat herders were trying to craft a story to impart a moral message that would make their community members subject to their deities. Hence the mythmaking.
As far as pleasure and pain, they are purely evolutionary products - in some cases abused (in the moral sense eg using drugs) in some cases helping in self-preservation (pain). In the absence of organic life (that is subject to death), they are useless and arent worthy of discussion.

Its not the same, you are reifying abstract things (emotions like love) to the level of concrete things like physical phenomena. This is likely to obfuscate matters and introduce errors in our reasoning. Energy (in its purest form - light) can neither be created nor destroyed. Love is contigent upon the existence of an emotional being. Unlike light.

Love is the preserve of humankind as an evolutionary animal - who need it for survival purposes (to keep the males closer to the female species and offer protection from potential harm from other animals besides mating needs). Love has got nothing to do with eternity because eternity does not need love. Love on eternity would thus be superfluous and unnecessary. Eternity does not need to survive.

You havent defined antiscience. We have people like Bill Dembski and Christopher Michael Langan who are using science to combat science - that is antiscience, but one who champions creationism in a strict theological sense is not anti-science: Just unscientific.

"Profanity" is entirely an excercise in rhetorical aggrandizement. Its a case of making quality/moral judgements based on preconceptions and ideological leanings. In the realm of Truth (as opposed "truth"), there is no place for profanity, casual sex, pornography or sacriledge. Because Truth concerns how things are, not how they seem.
"Is" as opposed to "ought".

The shackles of ideological underpinnings will hinder you from seeing the Truth for what it is and you will keep holding onto your perception of the truth.
In reality, you are clutching feebly at zero. Just scratch the beautiful veil of what you see as the truth and behold what lurks beneath and behind it.

I did not mean God is thinking too. I said, that very act of thinking, is God. God is not thinking like we do and he is not thought (what we think) but he is the ability to think.
Without that potential/ ability, it would not be possible to think. By flying, living, being dead, pain, pleasure etc, God embodies omnipotence. He is like a database from which we derive our abilities. Some people think of him as an undifferentiated ontological potential.
God is like the spring from which we derive what is possible.
The more we dring from that spring, the deeper and clearer it becomes.
Everything we do, we do only because they are possible (omnipotence) everything we know and think, we only do so because they are knowable and thinkable. Thinking, is therefore God - an ability among abilities.

This is a bit tangential but the opposite of agnostic is not gnostic. Gnosticism flourished during the Hellenistic times alongside platonism, essenism etc.
An agnostic can change to be a theist or an an atheist, not a gnostic - in the 21st century.

Remember, God is like a spring. The more you drink from it, the deeper, and clearer it becomes. Thats why athletes excercise. Thats why we say knowledge is power.
But people have gone as far as saying God is love. Its the pitfall of anthropomorphism and the same trap geocentists fell into: being anthrocentric in conceptualizing the universe.

I will from now onwards use "attention is God", to make my meaning distinct from "God is attention".
Just as "yellow is colour" is distinct from "colour is yellow". Forgive my earlier ambiguity please.
Incorrect. God is the essence of humanity. Humanity is the essence of our being. Just like vegetation is the essence of a plant. From God flows the essence of all things because God imbues the universe with possibilities and abilities. Humanity is just but one of them. Its arrogant for humanity to claim to occupy a closer station to God or a special one than other forms of life. Look at human claws (what we call nails) and look at the claws of a cat. Nothing special about us we are just different. Claiming a deeper, or more spiritual ontogenic depth is self-serving and selfish on our part.

Remember, God is the sum of all superpositions in a quantum wavefunction. All of them occupy an equal status, whether the wavefunction collapses or not.
You just said our essence is God. The above statement implies a binary dichotomy in our essence (earthly and heavenly?).
Please explain because I find that inconsistent. And the bifurcation somewhat abtruse.

Interesting spin. I see, unlike magnetism and a magnet, humanity can not be split from man. Without man, there is no humanity. Remember, we have evolved. We had to "travel" to reach here. Its not a property that existed independently of us. It was a potential and we achieved it.

In eternity, we can not know who we are because there is no spatial dimension in eternity. One can only be one with eternity, but they can not be IN eternity as distinct beings.

In eternity, there is no destiny because there is nothing beyond what eternity is. If there will be an ubiquitous "chi" flowing, we will be part and parcel of it, not IN it - we will be it. If there are berries, we will be the berries. We wont be able to pick because there will be no temporal dimension in time. There will be no change.
In this world, everything changes, nothing perishes. In eternity, nothing changes. Its the ultimate.

I agree somewhat. Though we dont need to put an effort "to be". We still remain what we are in our potentialities in spite of what we perceive to be out status or achievements. Just like a dog the size of a mountain, is still a dog.
Eternity has a beginning for temporal beings only. Infinity is what can not be measured or perceived by us because of our ability to count or measure. That has no effect at all on whether or not what we describe as infinite actually is infinite in the objective sense.
To limit actual facts to human definitions of size is not advisable.

This is true, just as unreality is required for an understanding of reality. Darkness and light, pleasure and pain etc.
See, you contradict yourself again. An absence of time cannot have a beginning.
Eternity is infinite. Infinity is just but one property of eternity. Infinity is not eternity as you have noted - that is still correct as far as it goes.

We are not eternal. We are temporal beings with the potential of being in a state called eternity. We dont need a soul to be in eternity. A soul is a construct of the mythmakers in an effort to understand the human psyche. They were ignorant and scientific, but they tried.

Amos

Whatever exists in the imagination must exist in reality as well? For examply "pink" and "unicorns" in which a unicorn is yet another figment of our imagination that reflects a reality which is the undivided mind of the animal man.

Exactly and we as humans can become eternal and consciously aware that we are part of that self-configuring universe and only if we are not part of this is it thinkable can we can die.

I love the goat herders. They knew that God is just a concept needed for us to figure out who we really are. The moral message was given to provide a stream of consciousness against which liberation is found from the imaginary (not evolutionary) idea of pain and suffering. Remember here that the goat herders coined the concept God for us to find ourselves on the other side of oblivion where there is no pain and suffering (sic). This is clear from the fact that the fall of man did not occur until Gen.3

Yes but I am suggesting that we create life out of light through love that becomes fixed in eternal life and in that way becomes the continuity of Love in infinity. The short term here is that God is Love and Lord God is Life. As humans do we take from this infinite Love to procreate Life (eternal) that in turn is maintained by the light of common day in combination with the work of human hands -- wherein we are guided by the pleasure pain principles. So it is easy to say that life is an illusion and that we cannot die except to this illusion, but that does not change the fact that we are living beings of which only our temporal life is the illusion (and therefore eternal life is real). To me that is what these sheep herders were pointing at. In other words, for "realization" to be possible there must be something that can be realized and this is the same thing as saying that before life can be an illusion there must be something it is a reflection of.

Well, eros is an extrapolation of agape and needs hate for protection just as all opposites need each other to be made known. Eternity does not need love but it needs Love or the love/hate relation could not be conceived as an opposite to Love ("emnity between your offsrping and hers").

Don't really have a definition and I see creation as the leading edge of evolution.

As an ethical relativist I would agree with you but cultural taboes are needed to form a stream of consciousness against which liberation must be found. The taboes are just thrown out like fishing bait to cath the entire ego consciousness and so to arrive in the realm of Truth from where we direct our own destiny wherein profanities cannot be conceived to exist.

Thinking is a human activity and God is omniscient. It is because we have sight of that omiscience that we are motivated to think. We think in our left brain where we are 'like god' while in our right brain we are omniscient and are God.

But I am not talking about the -ism because by definition a gnostic cannot strive to become what he already is. In other words, you can't unlearn what you already know and if you can you did not know but may have just had some wrong opinion. Is this not the whole secret behind omniscience?

No, we are the spring and just have to convert base metal into gold. Exercise is like thinking and we can't purify base metal into gold. Maybe "flesh is flesh is flesh" will serve me better here.

Never! Humanity is the essence of our individuality wherein we have personhood. This is later called "the son" but not until after it has been raised and placed subservient to "the father," who is the essense of man. You seem to place God outside of his creations while I place God inside creation as the very essence of the created with the son serving as the modifier to change the image of God through the ages (or we could not be infallible).

It is not arrogant because just as the lion king we must defend our own territory. Our dominion is ours and the lion king's dominion is his. We must compete in a changing biological environment and it is because of this recognition that we have advanced as a civilization. To put it another way, the lion had his change and he ended up what he wanted to be or he would have been something else. We did it our way and have the goat herders to thank for their insight by which we were mesmerized to follow a dream!

It is a simple division between our higher order consciousness and our lymbic system. In our right brain (for simplicity sake) we are God (heavenly) and in our left brain we are human (earthly).

In eternity we know exactly who we are and we are only temporal because we do not know who we really are. So to know the depth width and breadth of the lord our God is to get to know our right mind wherein we are omniscient (the right side of the boat is where the big fish are).

True, no destiny because no future. Only the eternal moment wherein the future comes our way . . . but comes notheless!!! I mean if we are in charge we just as well have things come our way. Eternal life just means that we are resident of our right brain because we have made it ours through understanding of who we are, and that is the ultimate aim of our earthly pursuit.


You confuse eternity with infinity and I stated that infinity has no beginning and no end while eternity has a beginning but no end.

Infinity needs a denominator and since God is infinite and at the same time I hold that we are God, I must present you with a way to justify that we can be[come] the continuity of infinity (since it had no beginning).

So then, if we are temporal in our left brain but eternal in our right brain we must journey through life from our left brain to our right brain wherein we are eternal and so become the continuity of infinity. Of course we are eternal and only have to realize that we are. Just because we may never realize this does not mean that we are not eternal because realization requires something to be realized before it can be conceived to happen.

Eternal life, now, ends when we physically die which means that heaven and hell are both states of mind wherein we are either "one with" to "torn by" the eternal mind that resides within us. This metaphysical realization can transform the physical composition of our body . . . or at least, it can change how our body responds to external forces upon the body (hence no sickness or pain in heaven).

Sorry for the long post IronMonkey. Please reduce it where you think you can. I did.

Family Man

It isn't the assumption that we have free will that makes this question-begging -- it is that they assume God exists. In order to defeat the POE in the case of a perfect God -- we're in agreement that the POE doesn't apply to an imperfect God -- they have to demonstrate an argument that doesn't assume God's existence. For example, as I noted before, if an argument could be put forth that free will could only exist with a perfect God, and prove that free will exists, then the POE would be defeated. That is an argument that wouldn't assume God's existence. To simply say that God exists and that he wants us to have free will is question-begging.

Family Man

Let me use the analogy of a trial to illustrate the points I've been trying to make in this thread. I hope this will make it clear that the FWD is inadequate as an argument.

Let's assume I'm on trial for murder. As such, I don't have to prove a thing -- and neither does the FWD. I could simply poke holes in the prosecution's case enough to create reasonable doubt. However, if I can't do that I should probably consider a defense. And in doing so, I'd better back up what I have to say, even if I don't have to prove it.

Clearly, the FWD doesn't even try to poke holes in the POE. It is a defense.

Let's say my defense is that Joe Blow is the real murderer. Clearly, I couldn't just stand up and say, "Joe Blow is the killer" and sit down. No one would consider that adequate because we don't really have any evidence Joe did it. It is clearly question-begging.

This is exactly what the FWD defense does. It tells us God exists and he wants us to have free will without giving a single reason why that might be so. This is clearly question-begging also.

In my murder defense, I'd better be on point. It wouldn't do me a bit of good to point out that Joe has a shotgun if the victim was killed with a 22.

This is analogous to my second point. The FWD doesn't respond to the point of the POE: a god that allows evil through free will is still allowing evil. Ergo, he can't be perfect.

Finally, in my murder trial, I must produce enough evidence for people to reasonably conclude that my scenario could be true. Please note: I'm not saying I have to prove it, and I'm not saying the FWD has to prove anything either. But it does have to at least have some plausibility.

Thus, it does my defense no good to point out that Joe Blow had both motive and the means to be the murderer if he has been in jail for the past five years.

Similarly, the FWD doesn't give us any reason to believe that its assertion is true. If, in fact, free will is defined to mean that a conscious outside entity is not controlling our thoughts and actions, the lack of a god would explain free will better than a perfect god that sacrifices his omnibenevolence through inaction.

I hope this demonstates that while the FWD doesn't have to prove anything, it has to do considerably more than simply assert an unproven and unevidenced truth.