There’s the irony. We seek a way to define who we are in the hopes it will solve some puzzle or give us a new insight. When all along, there is only what is, and we can only find ourselves where we are.
1 Like
[quote=“mriana, post:40, topic:10479”] The idea of a god visiting is part of the human condition.
[/quote]
I agree, but that also means there is a part of the human condition that does not accept the idea of a visiting god.
As to the propensity for anger, it seems that theists on the whole are much more prone to anger and violence than atheists.
Millions of theists have died defending the concept of a god.
No atheist has ever made war defending the concept of a god.
Where does that leave the human condition?
Interesting discussion - the biggest problem with the concept of God is the total lack of evidence - a big fat zero
The problem becomes bigger when we consider the size and scale of the universe - it is one thing to live in the middle ages and prior, to think of a King like God who looks down upon us, because well, we are soooo important, aren’t we?
But how powerful a being has to be to be able to create such a huge universe?
The only way it makes sense is if we are living in a simulation, that everything we see is in a computer and then “God” becomes this 18 year old geek!
It is quite easy to see that WE made God in our image & the Christian and Islamic God is none other than their local King/Dictator - he was their template for God.
I hesitate to include Judaism here because I think Judaism is closer to Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism and the like - Teacher/Student faiths, not Master/Slave religions
.
But anyway the original intention of this question is to make people understand that we are ALL Idolators - that was the original title of this thread but the system, for some reason, would not let me use those words
As I wrote, for Christians, God must come down as this Jesus - young, tall, blond, blue-eyed handsome guy with a straight nose and must answer to the name Jesus and do some magic and miracle
It is quite clear that WE made God in our image, not the other way around
Our Hindu Gods look like us, they dress like we used to do back in the day
The best example is the Buddha - he was born in Nepal, he would look like any Indian or South Asian person you might run into but if you visit the Chinese or Thai Buddhist temple, he looks like them! And we know the Buddha did not have oriental eyes nor look oriental
They remade the Buddha in their image
I sometime wonder if someone forced them to recreate the Buddha as he is supposed to look, a man with a brown darker skin tone, they might actually reject him
I would love to ask Christians or if they are any Christians on this site - what if God came down as a brown man and says his name is Rama - would you accept him or reject him?
The trick here is obvious - Christians would be caught in a no-man’s land - I assume most, if not all, would refuse to give an answer
.
Muslims escape this “God made in our image” bit by saying God does not have a form but here again they run into a problem - how would God show himself or herself or itself then? Must he, and it is obvious it must be a he, Muslims are the most sexist people on the planet, come down as some sort of bright light and speak with a booming voice?
And yes do some magic, miracle
.
Pathetic really. Sometimes I pinch myself, am I really living in the 21st century and these are the top religions of the day? What does that say about ourselves?
That would be a real god.
What about the god in people’s heads?
That’s a very real thing. Or?
I believe that the concept of an “Unseen Great Power” is an engram in the hominid brain. This evolved from the first ape (hominid) who took a weapon to defend his troupe during a thunderstorm. He looked up and saw great bolts of fire slice through the sky accompanied by great noise and to top it off the Unseen Power threw water and made him and his family miserable.
The earliest God was a threat and that triggered his fundamental fight or flight response.
Exactly, but that’s not god visiting anyone. A human concept won’t visit anyone. The only one visiting would be the one who finds themselves where they are, which doesn’t need any math.
Quite true.
Atheists have been murdered by theists for not believing. The human species is a war like creature that hates based on the colour of skin, eyes, or any other feature. They can’t see they make up concepts and expect those concepts to be real.
Which is basically what I’ve said. The idea of a deity is no more than a human concept.
We are primitive, but then again, what does god need with a physical form even, much less human created numbers.
We have gone from animism to anthropomorphism. People can’t seem to live without worshipping some figment of their imagination and giving it power. Everything from the sun, to cats, humanoid invisible beings.
1 Like
That is why I stick with Mathematism
Mathematicism is ‘the effort to employ the formal structure and rigorous method of mathematics as a model for the conduct of philosophy’.[1] or else it is the epistemological view that reality is fundamentally mathematical.[2]
The term has been applied to a number of philosophers, including Pythagoras[3] and René Descartes[4] although the term is not used by themselves.
The role of mathematics in Western philosophy has grown and expanded from Pythagoras onwards. It is clear that numbers held a particular importance for the Pythagorean school, although it was the later work of Plato that attracts the label of mathematicism from modern philosophers. Furthermore it is René Descartes who provides the first mathematical epistemology which he describes as a mathesis universalis, and which is also referred to as mathematicism.
Mathematicism - Wikipedia
So you make mathematics a god.
1 Like
No, I don’t believe in gods…
It seems to me you sure treat mathematics as a god.
1 Like
I treat mathematics as the impersonal but knowable “language of the Universe”, not the mysterious language of an “unknowable personal god”… difference.
The wiki link is careful not to make bold claims like Write4U does. It says “despite its defects” about the Principia, and “attempts” about one of the others, and other qualifing terms. I can’t take Write4 seriously because he doesn’t use terms like that. He is a mathematism fundamentalist, saying the universe is knowable, ignoring the incompleteness theorem and all of the unknowns. Saying that we will know something that is currently unknown has no place in scientific methods.
1 Like
I appreciate your conservative outlook.
My question is if we need to know everything? Even if there are multiple dimensions, do we need to worry about those dimensions that do not affect our reality/.
What we do know is that human symbolic math have proven to be remarkably effective.
If we replace the term “number” with the more generic term 'value", we are able to find an unlimited supply of values that are functional in our reality. and allow us to measure and codify our reality. Tegmark believes that just a few additional equations may complete a library of our effective knowledge of the universe.
God can come to visit you, the most important thing he might met you and you don’t know. For Jews some rabbias have said some people in the bible were god in disguise. They say Daniel is host for God like Jesus. Jesus isn’t the only time God came here. He has been with Abraham and Sarah with his two angels. Some people in the bible who were witnesses have been by some believed to be God hiding. You don’t know some person you walk cuold be God and he has met you. he is mysterious and why he is God and no other God has done what he has done.
Those are great stories, but I think they are allegory. Frank Schaefer has a story of being upset about something, and he’s staring off at the void, when his grandchild puts her hand to his face and gets his attention. He looks her in the eyes and “sees the face of God”.
It’s human connection but it feels like something bigger, and it sort of is. When we lack the language to describe our experience, we make up words like God.
3 Likes
Here we go again. They are all just stories with allegory, like Lausten said.
1 Like
It’s funny to see what an unknowable Supernatural Being is going to do with us in the future!
As if we are important to the Universe. We’re important to ourselves. That’s why we invent Gods that love us 
…
I’ve been out for awhile, but it’s definitely comforting to see that Write4u, with near mathematically certainty, posts the same thing over and over, like a pulsar emitting a beacon of shortsightedness! I completely understand where you’re coming from.
I used to really really want things to be like you describe. But once you realize that the limits of the human mind apply to math as well, then you start to realize there’s more to it. In fact there’s no It. “It” is a human construct. “The universe” is a human construct. That doesn’t mean math isn’t important - it’s the best tool we have! But it’s just a limited tool, created by limited strands of the universal mind. The only suggestion I can give write4u (and others) is to pretend that there actually IS a god and try to think about things from that perspective. You’ll find that the distinction between “this” and “that” and “before” and “after”, “true” and “false”, etc. are just limited tools we use to work the mud so to speak. Anywho, see ya later.
2 Likes