A3

Hi Diggler,
Just to give you some more to think about this is the way Swedenborgians see God.

DIVINE NATURE
Divine Love and Wisdom continuously creating and maintaining what is created.
The Divine Itself is the unity of love and wisdom. Whilst in reality one does not exist without the other, our intellectual mind sees them as distinct. Divine Love, being the very substance of creation, is invisible; Divine Wisdom, which gives form and direction to Divine Love, is visible in what is created.
United Love and Wisdom is not static but a source of power which continually creates and sustains what it has created. The closest example that we have in this world is through the heat and light of the sun acting together and providing the power for sustaining natural life. The Divine is outside the constraints of space and time, which exist only in this natural realm, and our own reflecting on the Divine nature must recognise that this is so.

We are receivers of life which is constantly flowing in. Actually i'll follow up with our idea as to what it means to be human, here goes.
OUR NATURE
We are each a unique soul (receptacle) receiving and responding to the Divine Life which animates us. We are finite spiritual beings born with a material body in order to function in this natural world. As a unique soul formed at the time of conception, we each continuosuly receive the Divine Life of Love and Wisdom enabling us to live as feeling and thinking beings. As the highest form in creation, we have the ability to reason and make choices about spiritual matters as if we had our own life. The true person - the spirit - is immortal and on discarding the material body we become fully conscious of the spiritual realm. This is verified [not proven] by the millions of people who have had a Near Death Experience. The qualities of love and related intelligence - our ruling love - that we have made our own in complete freedom in this world remain with us and become the basis for our spiritual development to eternity.
Adrian

Megatron

If you are defining god in that manner just for the sake of argument, that's fine, but there are many other ways as well... for example, one possibility is that God came after first cause, but still created the planets and stars.

(Don't ask me why anyone believes that, but it's been mentioned, and it's just as valid as the idea that God is the first cause.)

The two (First Cause and God) are not necessarily entwined.

But then again, I'm an atheist... I don't really care how someone wants to justify either one, because I think it's insanely improbable to begin with.

Draygomb

Diggler

The significance of square circles is that they prove that things that have selfcontradicting definitions don't exist.

Therefore, Any god, that has a definition that is selfcontradicting, doesn't exist.

Now to me there are 2 things a god must be in order to be worthy of worship and they are The First Cause and Conscious. But since those 2 things are mutually exclusive there are no definitions of god that I feel would be worthy of worship.

Draygomb

Zero

I define God that way because to me that is the only way something could be worthy of worship.

There are indeed many ways to define god. One may for instance define god as pizza. This would make god exist and hey maybe pizza is worthy of worship. <img src="graemlins/notworthy.gif" border="0" alt="[Not Worthy]" /> But then again, it's really only worthy of savoring.

Plus my definition covers all of the most popular definitions.

Diggler St.

Draycomb:

A god existing and a god worthy of worship are different arguments. The argument is that of existence, not worthiness of worship. Please explain why God must be conscious. Because...

Consciousness is the subjective attentiveness of mental events. We are aware of many things (thoughts, motives, perceptions, and feelings) that are presented to consciousness depending on the attention they are given.

Attention is the concentration of consciousness by providing heightened sensitivity to a certain stimuli in awareness.

Example, your watching football (Green Bay Rules!!!!) an individual might be aware of people discussing in the next room or the smell of beer. At some significant instant the smell of sex is unconsciously given perceptual connotation and the said attention shifts, bringing the sex into the nucleus of awareness, or consciousness. One of the functions of consciousness, by this, appears to be to monitor the person and the surroundings, and control thoughts and behavior.

Much of the time response to events in the environment and within ourselves is automatic which suggests learning without consciousness. It is when important choices are to be made is when consciousness becomes practical by devoting additional cognitive resources to information that may be principally significant.

Discussed in the experiments on split-brain individuals:

If a perception does not go to the left hemisphere (center for speech) the individual says they are not conscious of it. However, the right hemisphere is aware of it and can respond accurately.

Example, if a person was asked to use an object to open a lock he would be able to accurately perform this task with the left hand. However, the person will not know what the left hand is doing. Telling us that we may become conscious of something only if the information about it reaches the circuits that control speech in the left hemisphere.

Consciousness of the right hemisphere is mostly disjoint from that of the left; the right forms an unconscious mind for the left. Furthermore, the right hemisphere has an unconscious knowledge of the stimuli that is presented to it.

Example (again?):
"He-Man describes an example of flashing a portrait of a nude Smurfet among a series of mundane pictures to the left or right hemisphere of a female donkeys. When the picture is shown to the left hemisphere, He-Man laughed and identified the picture (the nude Smufet). When it is shown to He-Man’s right hemisphere he says he saw not a damn thing but still laughed. So we ask him, why did you laugh? He-Man being such a smart guy explained it to me...
“It is imperative to observe that my hemispheres are not completely disconnected. The right hemisphere can inject ideas into the left through the brainstem. Split-brain heroes, such as myself, experience these communications as inexplicable premonition from the unconscious. “
What does this have to with anything? Well first, the human mind is capable of completing tasks unconsciously. Who’s to say “god” didn’t? Consciousness is a property that of terrestrial life. So in that you are stating God must be alive/mortal, or at least alive enough to evolve into consciousness. Strange, the Big Bang has no consciousness and it seemed to be able to give us plenty. Please explain your definition of first cause and consciousness. For what I understand first cause is not human or mortal and consciousness is a property of that of a mortal. We perceive consciousness because of our brains, so then does “god” have a brain?

Diggler St.

Blu,

I like the way you explain things, you got any references on your theory. I'd like to read it!

Draygomb

Diggler Not if one thinks that only those things worthy of worship should be called God.

Not Prince Hamlet

I agree with Diggler. By need to have some kind of common definition. If everybody redefines "God" to mean whatever they feel like, then no wonder there is so much theistic confusion.

"I saw God today!"

"You saw our Lord and Savior? Where?"

"Lord an-- What are you talking about? God is a kind of fish."

Jeff

Diggler St.

Draygomb:

The sun is worthy of worship right? It gives us the light that produces life. Also, if it decides to get too big it will kill us. Power to give life and power to take it, just like the theistic god...right? Now we have another god on our hands since its worthy of worship...only...its not conscious and it is only a product of the first cause so...again,

Please explain your definition of first cause and consciousness. For what I understand first cause is not human or mortal and consciousness is a property of that of a mortal. We perceive consciousness because of our brains, so then does “god” have a brain? <img src="graemlins/banghead.gif" border="0" alt="[Bang Head]" />

Datheron

Diggler St.,

Just scanning through the posts until I hit upon this interesting quote:

I think you have hit the nail on the head precisely. As a matter of fact, people used to worship Sun the God; as I recall, such a God was Apollo. They also worshipped many other Gods at the time, those that are, of course, worthy of such attention - love, beauty, war, seasons, etc. In other parts of the world, other natural forces were worshipped - wind, rain, lightning, etc. Of course, I'm referring to Greek/Roman and Native American mythology respectively.

But the point is that Gods are made from what people deem "worthy of worship"; another way to put that would be of the unknown, i.e. the God of Gaps. We can see here that if we defined God to be the First Cause, then obviously he is "worthy" of worship, regardless of whether he factually exists. Throughout history, that is reason enough for worship, and history has proven that Gods conceived in this fashion usually don't survive, swept away by....let's just say, a perverse sense of evolution.