Amos

Hang on a second Datheron, before God can exist there must be a living body wherein God exists and whereoff God is creator (remember here that God is of the living and needs life to be made known). The "created" is the existence and the image of the created is provided by the "creator."

Omnipresence demands presence first, omnipotence demands potency first and omniscience demands science first. Maybe I should take you back to Gen.3 where the TOK was desirable for gaining wisdom, which now means that without the TOK there can be no wisdom because the TOL (of omniscience) will be empty and void of wisdom.

Ignoratio elenchi we called it in Port Royal. It is actually quite simple because the passing of time is allowed to occur and the observance of space is obviously visible. The only difference is that we must be suspended in the eternal passing of time. Since the temporal increments of time are only present in our left brain we must become right brain oriented.

Amos

[ January 20, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Datheron

Amos,

So are you suggesting that without our existence, God cannot exist?

.....uh....I'm not too sure what you're rambling on about here, but no, I do not accept the TOK story, so moot point.

Oh, really? So if we shift gears to our right brains, we're able to step outside time and think in a non-temporal fashion? Fascinating, very fascinating.

Amos

Yes, that is what crucifixion and resurrection is all about. The ego (TOK) was crucified and later recalled in the upper room (TOL). It is in this manner that ascension into a higher level of consciousness was achieved. This event is normal and native to man and religion today actually hinders the natural flow of this event while it was meant to intensify this mysterious ar-one-ment of the left and right brain (metamorphosis).

Amos

[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Kenny

Hi GP,

So much for a hit and run

You do it like this, except that you replace all the “{“ with “[“

{quote}Hello{/quote}

This should turn out to look like this:


Well, like I said, I do not believe that it is technically correct to say that God is the creator of his own thoughts. God’s thoughts are dependant on God’s mind, but they follow as an immedient consequence of God’s self-awareness, rather than being something which God “creates.”

For us, as finite thinkers and perceivers, yes, the passing of our thoughts helps to create the subjective perception that time is passing. I do not believe that this is applicable to an infinite mind comprehending itself, however. For such a mind, all of its thoughts would be present to it “at once” in an eternal “now.” Since I already had a lengthy discussion on the issue of whether it is coherent to conceive of God as transcending time on the link I provided you, I am not interested in repeating that discussion at the moment.

I don’t know of any links, but if you can get a hold of some works on systematic theology and look up such terms as “God’s decree,” “God’s will,” etc., I’m sure you’ll run into a statement to this effect eventually.

Well, this is the problem of evil, which is of course, another huge topic to delve into. For now, consider that, in the end, (when its entire history is played out and the Christian notion of redemption is taken into account), this universe might be the one in which God’s love is best exemplified, that perhaps God permits certain evils, even a great deal of evil, so that greater goods might result.

I don’t think we can fully picture it, anymore than we can picture four dimensions, but to me the concept of perfect self-knowledge is not difficult to understand. God possess certain attributes, among which are consciousness. As an infinite conscious being, God knows all of His own attributes exhaustively. This means that God knows both the goals He wishes to accomplish and the best way to accomplish them.

God Bless,
Kenny

Kenny

Premise 3 follows from the definitions of maximal greatness and maximal excellence. Consequently, it is really only the first premise that you are denying (that maximal greatness, defined in this sense, is a coherent property). Of course, I’m not surprised that as a skeptic, you would deny the first premise. However, I would point out that it is no less presumptuous to deny the first premise than it is to affirm it. As to the question of whether or not we are begging the question, if I am doing it, then so are you. I don’t believe that moral perfection is arbitrary, but that it is grounded in God’s essence which could not have been otherwise. You may assert the contrary, but unless or until one of us comes up with an argument that the other finds convincing (or at least should find convincing), we are left with a standstill.

I think that this is where the doctrine of divine simplicity comes into play. As a necessary being, all of God’s attributes are interrelated and presuppose one another. God’s omniscience, for example, is directly related to His omnipresence, and vice-versa. It is impossible to alter one attribute without compromising all the others. This means that God has to be the way that He is. He could not have been any different. So, the doctrine’s of God’s necessity and God’s simplicity imply the denial of the assertion that God’s moral nature could have been different from the way it is. Now, as finite beings, we might not be able to understand fully how it is that all of God’s attributes connect in the way they do, and thus not be able to fully comprehend why God must be a certain way rather than another, but that says nothing against the fact that God’s nature could not be different than it is.

To illustrate something like this, consider the amazing fact that Pi (in base 10) is equal to 3.14159... I mean, why not 3.14157... or 3.15612... or something? I can conceive of the conceptual possibility of Pi having many different values. However, is it logically possible that Pi could have had a different value than the one it does? The answer is no. Pi’s value follows as a necessary consequence of the definition of Pi and the mathematical structures involved. There are no possible worlds where the ratio of circle’s circumference to diameter equals something other than 3.14159... because that is something which follows from the very essence of what it is to be a circle. Likewise, there are no possible worlds in which God’s moral nature is different than it is, since God’s moral nature follows as a necessary consequence of all the essential characteristics which define God.

There may be a new type of relationship in which God is now involved resulting from His choice to create and love person X, but there is no change in God’s essential nature.
No, it is simply a new way in which God’s perfection is expressing itself. God is no more “perfect” as a result than “before.”

How does that follow?

God doesn’t change in His essence, rather, God’s essence, which includes perfect love as an attribute, continually expresses itself in different ways, because it is the nature of love to express itself. Love gives itself away because that is the nature of love, but God’s love does not increase in its qualitative perfection or decrease in that perfection as a result.

God Bless,
Kenny

[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: Kenny ]</p>

Theli

So if heaven/earth/hell are just mental states and not excact places. And "god" is a judge who decides where a person should end up, depending on that persons actions. Is it not possible that "god" is nothing more than the human conscience in form of an authority figure and hell is really the feeling of guilt?

Just a thought.

Amos

Double post sorry.

[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: Amos ]</p>

Amos

Very much so, and God is the judge and will judge depending upon our actions! But God is not our conscience because our conscience is religion based and must be deeply entrenched into our soul (as if written in stone upon our subconscious mind) where it serves as an anvil when we violate the commandments as set out by religiuos indoctrination. The anvil serves a purpose and our violations of the law serve a purpose and both are needed for the creation things and ultimate conviction of sin. The concept sin is the coming together of a positive with a negative and is needed to co-create and pro-create and later be convicted as stranger to the God that resides deep within our own mind and was the driving force behind our own existence with the question: "Who am I and what is my purpose on earth."

If God was our conscience we could never be free from religious convictions which would mean that religion could never serve as a means to an end. In fact, the oposite is true. To be free is to be without a conscience while yet know right from wrong according to natural law.

Hell is to know God while not having been set free from the law (saved sinner complex).

Bill Snedden

It seems to me that one of the very great difficulties in carrying on discussions like these is that the language in which we hope to do so seems almost completely unfit to the task. Trying to fit descriptions of an infinite being into language built on finite understanding seems hopeless at best and bordering on incoherence at worst.

The difficulty seems so great that at least one philosopher has dismissed certain arguments for theism based on what he describes as "the incoherence of god-talk."

I don't mention that as an argument, merely to say that I can understand the frustration.

Now, to my point. To say that God has "goals that He wishes to accomplish", seems to me to presuppose that there are other, possible ends that He does not wish to accomplish. However, if God's plan is an eternal and necessary part of His nature, there can be no other possible ends. There can be only one plan, one outcome, and that's it.

Therefore it would seem to me that to speak of God as "wishing" to accomplish certain things must necessarily be inaccurate at best (again, lamenting the semantic difficulties inherent in this discussion). God, it would seem, cannot "wish" for anything; all His hopes, desires, dreams, wishes, and other motivations are, have been, and will be, eternally fulfilled.

It seems to me that there are at least two ways out of this "dilemma" (there may be others, but I can't immediately think of any).

One is to retreat back into mystery. "We don't know how or why," the theist says, "but it is so, nonetheless." Unfortunately, this seems to reinforce the skeptic's "incoherence" argument.

Another seems to point back to pug846's objection that God's eternal and timeless plan seems arbitrary if it was not chosen by God. While I agree somewhat with Kenny's counter-point (that a brute fact isn't necessarily arbitrary) I do have to wonder why such a non-arbitrary brute fact should be seen as morally compelling.

Ostensibly God desires that we should follow His plan; He has decreed that those who do not should spend an eternity suffering for their choice (let's leave aside for a moment the whole predestination thing). But what reason, other than the fear of punishment, do we have for following this plan? It's existence seems to have no necessary relation to us. Even if God ostensibly created us just for that purpose, why should we care? Even more importantly, other than by simply defining it as such (which does not, of itself, supply necessary relation), why should such a choice be seen as a moral imperative?

Regards,

Bill Snedden

[ January 21, 2002: Message edited by: Bill Snedden ]</p>

Theli

Amos: But God is not our conscience because our conscience is religion based and must be deeply entrenched into our soul (as if written in stone upon our subconscious mind) where it serves as an anvil when we violate the commandments as set out by religiuos indoctrination.

Theli: I don't know about this... I mean, obviosly someone can have a conscience without religion. If that was true then I would have no conscience at all, since I deny religion.