Here, essentially, is how I understand God:
https://www.blatner.com/adam/consctransf/processimplicat.html
Whether or not such a God is comparable to a Space Bunny, I’ll leave to individual interpretation.
sasquatch
Okay, wait. If there is one sasquatch, there will be many sasquatch. There will be, or will have been, enough sasquatch to sustain the species for at least some period of time. There is not just one singular sasquatch (or Loch Ness monster for that matter) that is hundreds of years old.
Unless they are Sith Sasquatch and there can always only be two.
chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.
sasquatch
Okay, wait. If there is one sasquatch, there will be many sasquatch. There will be, or will have been, enough sasquatch to sustain the species for at least some period of time. There is not just one singular sasquatch (or Loch Ness monster for that matter) that is hundreds of years old.
Unless they are Sith Sasquatch and there can always only be two.
Or they’re like the phoenix, existing one at a time, the parent dying as it gives birth to its child.
Maybe a Highlander Sasquatch.
chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.
sasquatch
Okay, wait. If there is one sasquatch, there will be many sasquatch. There will be, or will have been, enough sasquatch to sustain the species for at least some period of time. There is not just one singular sasquatch (or Loch Ness monster for that matter) that is hundreds of years old.
Unless they are Sith Sasquatch and there can always only be two.
Yes, more than one: sasquatchi. I don’t think there are so many of them now. I hope to meet one someday.
The blue elephant in the room.
Perhaps an individual sasquatch pops up occasionally via time travel.
"Close the blast doors!"
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Perhaps an individual sasquatch pops up occasionally via time travel.
It would make sense that no one could find sasquatch if it/they had a TARDIS with a properly functional chameleon circuit.
JEDIT: Now I’m thinking of different sci-fi scenarios involving sasquatch.
chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.
Which is why the duck was set up as the less preposterous example. You start adding new roles for God and it just gets further and further out there.
But it’s not adding new roles, but a fundamentally different conception of God. Whether one finds any particular asserted attribute of God to be implausible or absurd can be discussed. Some claimed qualities will be more like feathers and bills, but we must also be on guard not to dismiss possible attributes just because we don’t like them.
You’d started on this point earlier. i.e. Just take a conception of God, strip out all the stuff you find implausible, and what you’re left with is a concept of God that works for you.
The trick is, with me, if I strip out all the stuff I find implausible, what I’m left with no longer qualifies as a god in any sense. In fact, I’m pretty sure what’s left is just a squirrel. You know, mammals being less offensive than birds and all that 😉
I’m not saying strip
That’s disturbingly hilarious.
The blue elephant in the room.
That’s disturbingly hilarious.
You should watch Arrested Development if you haven’t yet.
There was plenty of derision and mockery about God in the Religion Thread, but it stayed in the Religion Thread. This spilling of it out into the rest of Off Topic is bothering me because I can’t purposefully avoid it when it pops up in random places.
That is, people can believe what they want to believe, but derision about something to which I believe as strongly as I do is annoying when it’s not compartmentalized to a space where it belongs.
So, in church? (See what I did there?)
But seriously, you have an unusual definition of derision and mockery if you think there was any just now in RT.
The blue elephant in the room.
There was plenty of derision and mockery about God in the Religion Thread, but it stayed in the Religion Thread. This spilling of it out into the rest of Off Topic is bothering me because I can’t purposefully avoid it when it pops up in random places.
That is, people can believe what they want to believe, but derision about something to which I believe as strongly as I do is annoying when it’s not compartmentalized to a space where it belongs.
So, in church? (See what I did there?)
But seriously, you have an unusual definition of derision and mockery if you think there was any just now in RT.
I just need to stay out of this thread for a while. All the jokes and whatnot about religion seem to be getting to me, because I feel I’m developing a shorter fuse for it. =\
Sorry.
chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.
I don’t know what you’re upset about, if you’re upset about Dom’s joke in the Random Thoughts thread, that joke wasn’t even about religion. It was about Jay, putting his actions in a religious context. It was satire, and wasn’t anti-religion at all.
This would all be so much simpler if you were able to communicate exactly what you’re upset about.
Sorry I saw RT and thought of a Star Wars reference. May Jesus forgive my sins!
😉
I thought he was referencing Russia Today. If you want some good religion jokes watch the Bill Maher documentary Religulous. It’s hilarious, and I don’t even like Bill Maher.
The Person in Question
What the hell are you talking about?
I’m confused too, although I don’t really stay up to date with the religion thread so that may be part of it.
I stay up to date and I still have no idea what he’s talking about. No one is mocking religion in this thread.
This seems to be true.
Anybody have any thoughts on pantheism?
Pantheism might’ve been swell at some point, back when the static universe theory held sway. In light of Big Bang cosmology, though, and the heat death of the universe? I don’t see the appeal.
Panentheism’s what I go for.
I think this is more agreeable.
https://www.blatner.com/adam/consctransf/processimplicat.html
A lot to like here as well.
However, I think there is still some complication in understanding the ‘mind field’ which pervades all reality. It’s more simple to consider that since all things have the same soul (consciousness, God, etc), the mind is merely the beliefs and assumptions that divide and limit all beings. The impetus to overcome these limitations is what drives the mental evolution of life. The article uses the concept of ‘lure’, which serves a similar purpose.
I like to think of a person’s beliefs like their ‘mental DNA’, in that they’re mostly rubbish surrounding relatively few provisionally useful instructions for operating in a universe full of other beings with rubbish instructions. You could remove most of a person’s actual DNA without adversely affecting their physical body at all, and by intelligently changing the parts that actually work you could do things like eliminate aging and susceptibility to disease.
Removing much of a person’s mental DNA would probably have much the same effect. As the code got more simple, variations between minds would necessarily decrease until there is no mental DNA at all, no beliefs or assumptions to get in the way of unfiltered experience.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
Seriously though, for me, for one to say that I ought to be skeptical and realistically more than zero percent uncertain of the existence of God and whether He cares, it is akin to saying I should treat my relationship with my wife as though we barely even met. My relationship has long since evolved past that point, and I’m longing to learn more and grow, and I want to be closer.
I love my Father, and He loves me. I am special to Him. But so are you. I can not question His existence because that question has already long since been answered. I have other, deeper questions that have also since been answered, and yet more questions that yet have not been.
I know it’s probably infuriating to have a debate with me about His existence, but it made me shrug when I thought about why I, for myself, would need to question it at this point. There are other more meaningful things I want to explore.
chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.
Oddly you probably get the most understanding from me. I get being certain, and that certainty, while being unusual, isn’t actually terribly interesting to talk about. At least in your case, your certainty leads to interesting follow-on questions, though 😉
That said, we should all be careful not to interpret other people’s descriptions of their own faith, or lack thereof, as an attempt to convert others to their point of view. There is valuable stuff to learn from other people’s religious viewpoints, whether you agree with them or not.
At least in your case, your certainty leads to interesting follow-on questions, though 😉
To some degree, I can not answer some of those follow-up questions in a meaningful way, because 1) I have not crafted what sort of response I might give, especially to suit this sort of audience, and 2) certain answers that readily come to me assume certain truths that people call into question. And I can not convince people of those truths. I can only convey them and let the seed sprout or not.
That said, we should all be careful not to interpret other people’s descriptions of their own faith, or lack thereof, as an attempt to convert others to their point of view.
True. Though, some people do present themselves as though their opinion is the correct one.
…and that probably also includes me.
chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.
Text format, loss of subtle nonverbal cues, and all that. I never thought you were trying to rope us into anything.
To some degree, I can not answer some of those follow-up questions in a meaningful way, because
(…)
2) certain answers that readily come to me assume certain truths that people call into question. And I can not convince people of those truths.
(…)True. Though, some people do present themselves as though their opinion is the correct one.
…and that probably also includes me.
When you use words like “truths” to describe your beliefs, is it difficult not to think that you present your opinion as the correct one.
To some degree, I can not answer some of those follow-up questions in a meaningful way, because
(…)
2) certain answers that readily come to me assume certain truths that people call into question. And I can not convince people of those truths.
(…)True. Though, some people do present themselves as though their opinion is the correct one.
…and that probably also includes me.When you use words like “truths” to describe your beliefs, is it difficult not to think that you present your opinion as the correct one.
Clearly. And I think chyron (and CatBus) explain why that isn’t problematic.
The blue elephant in the room.
It is tho