What is God?

[Athena]

It appears we need a different thread and I don't want to loose the line of reasoning begun elsewhere, so I am beginning with by quoting Wyoguy and my response to what he said, that Matt did not think belonged in the previous thread. Like do have agreement about what God is and what is the bases of morals?

Quote: Quote by: wyoguy Matt, I'm sorry that it looks like we're straying off-topic, but I'm wondering if it is common amongst agnostics to believe in this innate understanding of moral law and also that there are inherent consequences upon breaking them. Talk about leaps of faith.... where does the secular evolutionist point to on human DNA and say; "There... there is the knowledge of good and evil"? When, in the course of history does he say that this trait evolved? Can she direct us to any species in the animal kingdom, outside of humans, and show evidence of binding social contracts that are completely contrary to natural selection? I think that this is what defines an agnostic... someone who can't believe in a deity that they can't experience with their five basic senses, but doesn't want to admit that, to be consistent with evolution via natural selection, we should be grinding up the flesh of the old, infirmed, and unwanted to fuel our vehicles.

We point to the DNA and say, there is the order of living things, which is within the order of the universe. Morals are compatable with the order of the universe and that which is immoral violates the order of the universe. This is the reasoning that makes homosexuality such a hot issue. Is homosexuality compatible with the laws of nature, or does it violate the laws of nature? This is just an example, and I don't mean to debate homosexuality in this thread, so please start another if you want to debate homosexuality, rather than the nature of morals.

We expereince nature with our 5 basic senses, and they are very limited and we can be deluded. God and the world of Nature must be one. What is it we can not experience? What is illusion and delusion and can we always trust our perceptions of experience? The limits of our brain reduces our consciousness to particulars and we can not precieve and comprehend the whole of the universal, so in away we do not directly experince God, but as we experience nature with our limited 5 senses we are experiencing the particulars of God through our own limited consciousness.

If I have a vision, or spontaneous awareness, am I experiencing God? Say I realize, on a quantum physics level, there are no distinctions that we call reality, everything is just energy. Is this a possible understanding of God? How about Eisnstein going to sleep with a mathematical problem on his mind and waking in the morning with the solution, was he experiencing God? When we write and feel inspired, are we experiencing God as did people of old? When we have a spontaneious awareness is this as Joseph Campbell suggested, an experience of God, which is then related in stories we call mythology? Has God spoken to everyone, only people understand differently so their stories vary? How sure can we be of such things?

[isaone]

wyoguy There is so much misinformation and slanted point of views in your post that I will not even start .

Athena it is an interesting question. We spend a fair amount of time debating and discussing the existence of God yet for the level of agreement on what God is we might as well be discussing the FSM.

It is actually my position that since the attributes and motivations of God are admitted to be unknowable by even those who are Theists, that the term God is really meaningless. Of course this can be useful as each person projects their own semi defined understanding on to the term. If it were more clearly defined then many would have to stop believing.

To use the term God for ;

• Those who believe that God started everything then took a vacation (Deists)
• Those who believe that God is everything and not conscious in any humanly understood sense (Pantheists)
• Those who believe in the literal Christian God (Fundamentalists)
• Those who believe in the Christian God but feel God is not omnipotent (a solution to the problem of evil)
• The Jewish God (Jews)
• Allah (Muslims)
• .....

Is really to use a word that has no meaning in order to discuss nothing at all. Truly from this point of view the terms Atheist and Theist and Agnostic become interchangeable. Non of them mean anything since they all depend on the definition of God. One undefined term in any relation which depends on that term always creates an undefined result .

[Athena]

How about, everything is energy. This energy can take many different forms. On one level we have atomic particles that form into atoms, and atoms become elements, and some of these elements have the quality of live. Of those energy forms that have life, there are various degrees of consciousness, and perhaps humans are God's consciousness? Perhaps from the original energy, it is all God? Reality might be an awesome kaleidoscope, and the kaleidoscope might be God.

The point of discussing this is to better know our reality, and we need better know our reality, so we can make better judgements. In another thread we are complianing about a man putting God above all, but really what is the wrong of this, unless something is wrong with his understanding of God?

[SoylentGreen]

Could we also define god as lack of knowledge. That which we don't understand we assign to god.

[HelioPrime]

That definition would fail when applied to someone who feels certain they know God. Any question that can't be answered wasn't meant to be known in the first place.

[Calam]

Ooh! The nature of morality! My favorite. *rubs hands together*

Gosh, where to begin...

It's not enough just to ask "where to morals come from". Presumably they were on sale at Wal-Mart, but I guess they had a backorder and don't sell them anymore. I think China has it all now, but they aren't making it available...

But no, seriously. Where do they come from? They obviously exist because we have to define them.

If morality is contingent on truth, and truth is both unchanging and a solid fact, then there is a correct form of right and wrong morals. There is, in fact, a right and wrong that closest corresponds to reality, and that is the one we should attempt to seek.

[SoylentGreen]

Quote by: HelioPrime That definition would fail when applied to someone who feels certain they know God. Any question that can't be answered wasn't meant to be known in the first place.

I was meaning it more in the sense of things we do know. Like once we didn't know what caused thunder and it was assigned to the gods. Now we know and it no longer considered a god in action.
When someone close dies and we grieve the religious find comfort in god because we don't really know what happens after death.

[Calam]

You're implying that divine entities are a scape-goat. And they often are. But, if they are real, the fact that inexplicable events are attributed to them doesn't invalidate them.

[SoylentGreen]

Quote by: Calam You're implying that divine entities are a scape-goat. And they often are. But, if they are real, the fact that inexplicable events are attributed to them doesn't invalidate them.

In answer to athena's question , as an athiest I give an answer to what is god.

[HelioPrime]

Quote by: SoylentGreen When someone close dies and we grieve the religious find comfort in god because we don't really know what happens after death.

And then someone who experiences a ghost or near death experience would speak out and say they do know thus affirming an afterlife for those who listen to the telling of that experience.

[Charlatan]

Well I, formerly being an evolutionist bent on the big bang theory, am now believing that there was a creation, and let me speak for now as if there was a creation. For something to be created by a Creator, they have to be able to create. To be able to create you need creativity. To have creativity you need a 'mind'. To have a mind, you must have at least a subconscious, so God has at least a subconscious, but how did that come to be? To have a subconscious you need to have it for a reason, as nothing has survivial instinct without needing to survive, so, God needs to survive. If He didn't need to survive he wouldn't have a subconscious as the basic working conditions for a mind would not be required, and anything that is not required doesn't go into a working mind. So God could be endowed with a subconscious because of other reasons, maybe He evolved into a mindful thing from a distant end, which means that He had to start somewhere, so what was the criteria for God to 'start'?

For things to begin on earth they need to be done so, otherwise also done so for evolutionary purposes other than what the creature needs, so take away a need to survive and you have something that is anti evolution, and seeing as how God didn't need to survive because he is powerful enough to create things, and you are left with something that doesn't need to evolve. So why would God evolve from something that doesn't need anything to something greater than us, which I think you will agree is very evolved compared to the other things around us.

Over time everything evolves in some way or another, so God might have had billions of eons to do just that, which means the time for evolving was there. We don't know when the 'anything' after all. So God would need what to 'start'? How can something starting with nothing really have any power? Something that starts without a conscious but having power is what I would refer to as the big bang, so what would grant wisdom and power without having any... substance? God must have made Himself, as if God was endowed with these things, there must have been a donor, so if we go up the chain to find the 'real God', there must be a criteria for these things to manifest.

So what would cause a God? The universe could not cause a God because all the metoers and black holes and suns, the only sources of energy as far as I can see, cannot create something that thinks or has powers. So then God, having created everything then, might be the last descendant of a race that did have a big bang and has risen to power through scientific study of the manipulation of the forces that surround us, that can bend and use energy, and was evolved from some other place. That means God is a scientist from another era, otherwise you are saying that He appeared out of nowhere with a mind and powers, right? So God is the Sum of another peoples science, right?

Ok now onto how He evolved. Because to spark life you need water and gas, as far as I know. The gas and water give things the substance to develop, so there could have been a big bang long ago that created things that evolved and then died off having reached their conclusions on the cosmos and now be in spirit form watching us, but how does a spirit come to be. I think you will agree to a point that God is a spirit? Well if we take a embyo, and then the fertilization, does a spirit zip in there before the baby is born? No, a spirit therefore is evolutionary, right? There is nothing magical about fertilization is there? Then when we die the spirit keeps on functioning inside of itself because it is electircal energy, or energy that defies flesh and bone and blood. Does it move around? What is stopping it if it is alive without a body? If it wasn't alive it would cease to exist, but let's say it is 'alive'. How would it roam? How would it evolve into being though if there is no need for it? It must be energy of some sort coming from our bodies, enegy that we haven't discovered yet, but might if given enough time and research, so seeing as how there is no spirit coming into the body, it gorws with us. I mean to say that a spirit is made before hand for the body is absurd, as that would require God to make spirits and instill them into eggs, which means that there would be a difference between a unfertilized egg and one that is fertilized at a later date, which means that we would notice something being dead or alive without sperm, unless sperm is the soul entering the egg? Nonsense really, so a soul must grow with the body, for reasons unknown to us, but with time we could isolate and identify this 'energy', of course.

What evolutionary purpose would a soul have though? Maybe it is purposeless and keeps going regardless of whether the body is alive or not, for unknown reasons, in th form of our 'Creator scientist spirit' because that is what He intended for us? So what gave Him a soul? Evolution of course, born from a womb also without magical interference, and then 'flying' over to us to make us using the energies that He discovered with His evolutionary path.

So to figure out what God is, we need to understand a soul. What is a soul? Is it excess mental energy that escapes the body? Is it what is released when the shock of death comes over us? What gave God a soul? If He had one world conscious just like us, and all the constituents of the universe, just like us, there are rather invisible forces and enegies at work too, if you believe in magic, so magic could be the unseen things left over from the big bang. This could lead to all the unexplained phenomena that is all over the world, and to God's soul, which can tap these forces, as can other people. So to say that God is magic is incorrect, to say that God wields magic is correct, and that magic could be coming from God to preserve our souls after death.

Maybe the world will be revealed as other forces have been done to this day. A big bang is a messy business, and just because our five senses don't percieve a force doesn't mean it isn't there. All forces though must be from the big bang, and being outside our scope we will maybe one day understand them, but will toy with them as we begin to. God though has had a lot more time to ananlyse the world and has come from somewhere else to 'play games' with us. I am sure that we could understand these things if we devoted enough time to them, and were using more of our brains to do so, such as this God has had time to do.

[SoylentGreen]

Quote by: HelioPrime And then someone who experiences a ghost or near death experience would speak out and say they do know thus affirming an afterlife for those who listen to the telling of that experience.

And if someone chooses to believe it , then that is their problem.
There are enough out there who say they know , Yet still the question arises.

[Zhavric]

Quote by: Athena We expereince nature with our 5 basic senses, and they are very limited and we can be deluded. God and the world of Nature must be one. What is it we can not experience? What is illusion and delusion and can we always trust our perceptions of experience? The limits of our brain reduces our consciousness to particulars and we can not precieve and comprehend the whole of the universal, so in away we do not directly experince God, but as we experience nature with our limited 5 senses we are experiencing the particulars of God through our own limited consciousness.

Horrible argument.

"Our senses are faulty so god is real."

Is that really what you wanted to say? Really?

[HelioPrime]

Quote by: SoylentGreen And if someone chooses to believe it , then that is their problem. There are enough out there who say they know , Yet still the question arises.

Wether it is a problem or an answer depends on the audience. If we ask the general population of volcanvo (primarily non theists) then it's a problem. Yet if we used the same experience among an audience composing of a group of church goers from (insert church of choice) then they would probably arrive at a different view.

[Dr_Acula]

Quote by: Athena Stuff

Our universe is what we percieve. We can''t deal with anyithing else. If a god exists outside of what we can percieve, then it doesn't matter.

[SoylentGreen]

Quote by: HelioPrime Wether it is a problem or an answer depends on the audience. If we ask the general population of volcanvo (primarily non theists) then it's a problem. Yet if we used the same experience among an audience composing of a group of church goers from (insert church of choice) then they would probably arrive at a different view.

And fair enough to them.
But when asked what is a god then the answer to me is as i stated.

[SecondMessiah]

IT
It knew. It wanted change.
A multitude of dimensions exploded into reality.
It screamed in confusion and grappled with the input.
In Earths dimension the big-bang occurred and it tried to understand.
It reached out and influenced the smallest of matter and waited.(Using the WEB)
Now there was time it had to wait for all its influence to take shape.
Eventually galaxies and the one containing Earth.
It created life and helped it evolve.
When it could not stand the pain of life on this planet it started evolution again.
Dinosaurs were one of the casualties.
On Earth as on all life containing areas it focuses sometimes on the highest species and communicates through it.
To lead the species on and to influence their development.
Always it will focus through male and female parts simultaneously unless the highest species reproduces asexually.
When alive this creature represents it on Earth.
Treat it carefully for the male is the bringer of life and death and the female the same.
You harm them then you harm the species.
You help them then you help the species.
Thus I recognize teachings of messiahs/prophets such as Mohammed, Jesus and Buddha and the wisdom they brought to their times.
This is unfair. Now we have a ground rule - by how much it is unfair. Interesting. E=MC2+D where D is the amount of unfairness. Bingo. If this ever means anything to anyone then keep reading.
Understanding Basics of Webs.
All D forms webs through all matter. These webs are flow channels of energies. These energies are of various types as listed below.
1. Deceleration
2. Acceleration
3. Water
4. Trees
5. Life forms
The understanding of the energy can only come about by observance.
The deceleration type of energy causes illness, accidents, bad luck. Passing through a web node of this type can cause any object or person to be influenced.
The acceleration type of energy causes good health, good luck, healing. Again this energy type can be focused in any location where web is present.
Water is found by dowsers because the attuned stick moves when the "interference" in the web is found at water.
Trees are listed because of there age old ability of manipulating energy. The trees are fighting a war. They, as a general species, are being annihilated all over the planet. Find any accident black spot and it can usually be traced to a tree. This doesn't apply to all - but a lot. They achieve it by manipulating the D-web.
Web Theory over. Now read on.
Most buildings are simple to understand.
Simple that is if you can understand A-type and D-Type energy flows in rooms.
Here's a quick lesson. Pool. Two cushions and into the pocket. That's how flow can be within a room. A surface of a room will either reflect or allow passage of energy lines.
Plastered walls and ceilings will show cracks in 20 to 30 yr old buildings along energy webs that pass through the building.
Victorian buildings, because of the dimensions used, are some of the finest buildings for research. The Victorians built to precise dimensions for optimizing energy flows. Buildings are hampered by wood chip on the interior walls. This has the effect of short circuiting the filters of the building and also flashing the power on and off. Not very good for the occupants in comparison to what it could be.
Most buildings will have a line in and out of both A-type and D-Type.
They do both have there uses.
A-Type Web
Healing area of house. Ensnare whole house in web of A-Type.
D-Type Web
When brought into proximity of A-Type it causes acceleration of flow in both Types. Use in conjunction with A-Type with constraints.
When a building is constructed it will house events that will generate energy the building will absorb. The energy is then channeled out the building into its respective web. The more a building is designed around this function the more it is able to perform this function.
Web exit lines are on exterior walls of houses or on ground floor floors. When these concepts are understood it can be observed that the older the building the more this is used in the structure and also how it has modified structures.
Egyptian pyramids are the ultimate in technology of structure and amplification techniques through orientation and critical dimensions. Most Egyptian methods can be superseded by modern construction techniques and materials. Dimensions and orientation techniques are now far in advance.
As mass construction techniques have evolved and the need for a building to be a place of habitation, unlike Egyptian pyramids, the shape and flow patterns are vastly different.
Medieval churches are halfway between pyramids and Victorian buildings. The construction of Victorian times was greatly influenced by numerology. Most of the effects of this influence have been to augment the focusing of rooms to optimize A-Type energy flows.
Placement of objects and structures containing wood, flowing objects (gas, water, electricity, heat, light) are important.
Separation of window and floor wood must be maintained if wood window sill exists.
Picture rails are important and if window separation, with paint, is maintained picture rails can easily be separated.
Enhancement of wooden areas in buildings increases flow. The light interference pattern acting as a filter in the room spreading and orientating the flow out the room.
At this stage it can be seen that laying a building out to conform to its optimum is very difficult.
Some early 60's buildings have the optimum shape but have been over stocked with utilities. Difficulties arise around sewers, gas pipes, air vents, windows, doors, electrical fittings. Most 60's buildings are networked with more electrical fitments than necessary or compatible with flow enhancements. These buildings flow layouts are excellent and require little modification.
When completed a buildings enhancement capabilities can be improved immensely.
This can only benefit the occupants.
Fades of colours improve flow by increasing or decreasing flow. Black and white are poles of circuit.
Red should never come in contact with black. This controls health and well being. Recommended in bedroom, living room, hall.
Blue is related to cleansing and recommended for kitchen or bathroom.
Yellow should never come in contact with black. Related to healing. Never use in bathroom and be careful in kitchen. Recommended for bedroom and living room.
Green is used to isolate objects (electrical fittings, wood etc) to reduce interference at surface where light reaches. Fading between black and green is highly recommended. Recommended for kitchen and wherever needed.
Once a circuit is completed in any room flow is augmented throughout the connected rooms. Any failure in colour rules in any room within the building will have negative effects in those rooms. When all rooms are complete building will take approximately 2 years for flow to reach upper limit. Size of building controls this limit.
Because of its plastic content gloss paint should be used. This is the key to the circuit as it isolates the rock of the building from the light affected internal surfaces. It is made from something that used light to exist, like wood, and when exposed to light causes d-flow modification with more acceleration and deceleration.
Brown should not come in contact with black, yellow.
Gold should not come in contact with red or black.
Brown should come in contact with red and green.

D-fields can be observed most easily on open, cropped, grassed areas. Weeds will grow and debris will align along the web lines. They are easy to follow when you know they are there. In cities patterns on pavements and roads are there. Again if you look. Go study.

This theory, based on many documents and years of study gives one of 3 conclusions.
1 It is the ravings of a mad man
2 I have discovered a new force in nature
3 God exists because of this evidence.

I choose to believe 2 and 3.
I am currently gathering together the best photographic evidence I have and will post my pictures.
Here is a link to a small pictorial study of local churches with their faults listed.
Masterpage

[HelioPrime]

Quote by: SoylentGreen And fair enough to them. But when asked what is a god then the answer to me is as i stated.

Sounds good. But your definition (by your own definition ?) doesn't apply to everyone. In other words you can't say the dictionary should change God to meaning lack of knowledge nor say another persons definition should be your own.

[Athena]

Quote by: Zhavric Horrible argument. "Our senses are faulty so god is real." Is that really what you wanted to say? Really?

You did not quote me. I did not say "Our senses are faulty so god is real." Your reasoning is in error, because those are your words not mine.

[SoylentGreen]

Quote by: HelioPrime Sounds good. But your definition (by your own definition ?) doesn't apply to everyone. In other words you can't say the dictionary should change God to meaning lack of knowledge nor say another persons definition should be your own.

Equally no one definition can apply to everyone . So we are back to square one. What is god. And if not one definition can be given as universal then we simply lack the knowledge to define it.