6 ms·

My religious belief is based on several categories in this post - the universe is created by God's observation of it, as God's experience, and this universe exi

by meric 10y ago

My religious belief is based on several categories in this post - the universe is created by God's observation of it, as God's experience, and this universe exists [in comparison to God] as much as our own experience of our reflection is real. And God is the ultimate reality, and our reality is merely a reflection of Him/Her. I.e. By analogy, As a man observes himself in the mirror, a reflection is created. And since all the intelligence and conciousness on Earth is part of this reality we experience, and Earth is such a small part of this reality, being more stars in the universe than sand on Earth, this reality is very intelligent and conscious. And this only illuminates and reflects the eternal and infinite power of God, the One, the most High.

WhitneyLand 10y ago
If you travelled back in time to ancient Greece, what would say to people who described polytheism with great reverence and said they believe in Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades because they represent the ultimate truth?
- OtterCoder 10y ago
  I'd say the same thing I say to atheists who are convinced we are in a simulation: "That's one way to look at it."
  - cLeEOGPw 10y ago
    Then you sound condescending and all-knowing, when the real answer is - we don't know. It may be AI, it may be fluctuations, it may be some experience based thing, they are all different and are not "ways of looking at it". Don't pretend to know more than you do.
- catawbasam 10y ago
  Look past the labels and you will find some familiar ideas: "The life of the unmoved mover is self-contemplative thought ("νοήσεως νόησις (noeseos noesis)", i.e. "thought of thought").[1][2] According to Aristotle, the gods cannot potentially be distracted from this eternal self-contemplation because, in that instant, they would cease to exist." from Wikipedia on Aristotle's Metaphysics
  - redial 10y ago
    Was that supposed to answer op's question?
    - catawbasam 10y ago
      It was meant as a suggestion to Whitneyland that many religious traditions, including ancient paganism, contain ideas in common with some recent religious thought. They aren't necessarily as fundamentally opposed as they might appear at first glance. Also, while they clearly pre-date modern ideas of science, the thoughts of a person like Aristotle are worthy of consideration.
      - redial 10y ago
        If everything can mean anything, then yes, they are all equal. And no one is discounting Aristotle, I don't know where you are getting that idea.
- meric 10y ago
  I wouldn't, history clearly shows God intended their descendants to believe in his oneness, I lift not one finger and their idea of how the universe came about grew to God the One over time, on no action on my part. There's no need to proselytise IMO, and when I talk about it, it's more for sharing intellectual curiosity.
  - WhitneyLand 10y ago
    >their descendants [came] to believe in his oneness Not all of them did :). Also I understand you are not trying to proselytize, we have the same motivation in commenting. I am still curious about the other possibility - If you travelled 1000 years into the future and found no one believed in God anymore than we believe in Zeus: Would it bother you to live a lifetime of staying silent, or being discriminated against by nearly everyone as being a crackpot?
    - meric 10y ago
      It would not bother me at all. I would not try to convince them (what I mean by not prosthelyzing) but I won't (or cannot ;) keep silent on purpose.
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  The way Greeks treated their polytheism is very different from the fundamental Christian attitude towards God. You should had predicted this if you were actually gave a sincere thought to the matter instead of just repeating this atheistic arguments.
  - redial 10y ago
    > The way Greeks treated their polytheism is very different from the fundamental Christian attitude towards God. That is his point, why would you choose a christian point of view instead of a greek one, besides personal preference?
    - fiatjaf 10y ago
      The Christian point of view sort of encompasses the Greek one. It's an insight on top of Greek religion, not against it. It is more complete, makes more sense in general. I'm sure many smart Greeks would agree with it if they had known it.
  - WhitneyLand 10y ago
    I'm not repeating anyone else's arguments, the thought just came to mind. Also, I didn't say anything about atheism. Finally, I do give sincere thought to these matters and try not to ever be disrespectful of anyone's belief system. Sorry if you felt that way.
    - fiatjaf 10y ago
      I know you think the thought just came to your mind, but it is so repeated that I think it came not from your pure experience and thinking. I'm sorry if I offended (and keep offending) you, also. Also, although you didn't say anything about atheism, you surely are an atheist, right?
jordanlev 10y ago
I appreciate your explanation and have a question for you (and I mean this with genuine curiosity): what about where God came from then? Is he/she/it a reflection of some other entity's perception? Or does it just not matter (like, this God is a singularity of cosmological understanding -- it is not possible to know what's beyond that level)? This same question can of course be asked of any explanation of how the universe came to be (religious, scientific, or otherwise)... which is what makes this question so fascinating to me. It makes me realize that some things just can't be understood by causal logic alone.
- meric 10y ago
  Sometimes things like numbers, which we cannot observe in the real world, have implications for the calculations we do make. We cannot observe them, and yet they have real implications for how we do things. And yet, where did mathematical laws come from? It's almost as if they're more discovered and remembered than invented...timeless, and everywhere. And that's how I think God is. It's the unified theory of everything for me. EDIT: removed imaginary it was distracting the point
  - SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
    Im pretty sure calling them "imaginary" was meant to be a slur when they were first invented, and is exactly not meant to help us actually understand them. I prefer "complete numbers", cause they're the algebraic closure of the reals.
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  I think of it like this: It's fairly straight forward to build the other numbers from a starting value, 1, but defining 1 itself requires a full understanding of the infinite structure, and the other things it can build. So you can view 1 as both more basic than the other numbers and also more complex than any of them. Similarly, the argument would be that God is both things: nothing but the fundamental notion that the universe does stuff (or is), and also the full complexity of structure built from that fundamental doing. In the same way that mathematics ultimately tried to eat its own tail -- using advanced theory and structures to loop back and define its base structure -- science is attempting to tell the story of how a singular type of fundamental perturbation self-acting can give rise to the plethora of structures and phenomena we see, and must inevitably do so. That we keep running in to the same sorts of definitional loops, fractal structures, notions of duality, etc across both efforts suggests something of the nature of God -- or at least the computational structure of the universe we live in, as it is built atop a singularity. Getting a little further afield -- modern physics suggests that reality can be interpreted as a quantum computer operating on universal scale and timelimes, so in a very real sense, we're just a subset of the singularity computing. I would argue that many primitive people intuited this fact before we had the terminology to really articulate it, and that we see this splashed across religion, covered by later political additions.

by meric 10y ago

WhitneyLand 10y ago

If you travelled back in time to ancient Greece, what would say to people who described polytheism with great reverence and said they believe in Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades because they represent the ultimate truth?

OtterCoder 10y ago
I'd say the same thing I say to atheists who are convinced we are in a simulation: "That's one way to look at it."
- cLeEOGPw 10y ago
  Then you sound condescending and all-knowing, when the real answer is - we don't know. It may be AI, it may be fluctuations, it may be some experience based thing, they are all different and are not "ways of looking at it". Don't pretend to know more than you do.
catawbasam 10y ago
Look past the labels and you will find some familiar ideas: "The life of the unmoved mover is self-contemplative thought ("νοήσεως νόησις (noeseos noesis)", i.e. "thought of thought").[1][2] According to Aristotle, the gods cannot potentially be distracted from this eternal self-contemplation because, in that instant, they would cease to exist." from Wikipedia on Aristotle's Metaphysics
- redial 10y ago
  Was that supposed to answer op's question?
  - catawbasam 10y ago
    It was meant as a suggestion to Whitneyland that many religious traditions, including ancient paganism, contain ideas in common with some recent religious thought. They aren't necessarily as fundamentally opposed as they might appear at first glance. Also, while they clearly pre-date modern ideas of science, the thoughts of a person like Aristotle are worthy of consideration.
    - redial 10y ago
      If everything can mean anything, then yes, they are all equal. And no one is discounting Aristotle, I don't know where you are getting that idea.
meric 10y ago
I wouldn't, history clearly shows God intended their descendants to believe in his oneness, I lift not one finger and their idea of how the universe came about grew to God the One over time, on no action on my part. There's no need to proselytise IMO, and when I talk about it, it's more for sharing intellectual curiosity.
- WhitneyLand 10y ago
  >their descendants [came] to believe in his oneness Not all of them did :). Also I understand you are not trying to proselytize, we have the same motivation in commenting. I am still curious about the other possibility - If you travelled 1000 years into the future and found no one believed in God anymore than we believe in Zeus: Would it bother you to live a lifetime of staying silent, or being discriminated against by nearly everyone as being a crackpot?
  - meric 10y ago
    It would not bother me at all. I would not try to convince them (what I mean by not prosthelyzing) but I won't (or cannot ;) keep silent on purpose.
fiatjaf 10y ago
The way Greeks treated their polytheism is very different from the fundamental Christian attitude towards God. You should had predicted this if you were actually gave a sincere thought to the matter instead of just repeating this atheistic arguments.
- redial 10y ago
  > The way Greeks treated their polytheism is very different from the fundamental Christian attitude towards God. That is his point, why would you choose a christian point of view instead of a greek one, besides personal preference?
  - fiatjaf 10y ago
    The Christian point of view sort of encompasses the Greek one. It's an insight on top of Greek religion, not against it. It is more complete, makes more sense in general. I'm sure many smart Greeks would agree with it if they had known it.
- WhitneyLand 10y ago
  I'm not repeating anyone else's arguments, the thought just came to mind. Also, I didn't say anything about atheism. Finally, I do give sincere thought to these matters and try not to ever be disrespectful of anyone's belief system. Sorry if you felt that way.
  - fiatjaf 10y ago
    I know you think the thought just came to your mind, but it is so repeated that I think it came not from your pure experience and thinking. I'm sorry if I offended (and keep offending) you, also. Also, although you didn't say anything about atheism, you surely are an atheist, right?

jordanlev 10y ago

I appreciate your explanation and have a question for you (and I mean this with genuine curiosity): what about where God came from then? Is he/she/it a reflection of some other entity's perception? Or does it just not matter (like, this God is a singularity of cosmological understanding -- it is not possible to know what's beyond that level)? This same question can of course be asked of any explanation of how the universe came to be (religious, scientific, or otherwise)... which is what makes this question so fascinating to me. It makes me realize that some things just can't be understood by causal logic alone.

meric 10y ago
Sometimes things like numbers, which we cannot observe in the real world, have implications for the calculations we do make. We cannot observe them, and yet they have real implications for how we do things. And yet, where did mathematical laws come from? It's almost as if they're more discovered and remembered than invented...timeless, and everywhere. And that's how I think God is. It's the unified theory of everything for me. EDIT: removed imaginary it was distracting the point
- SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
  Im pretty sure calling them "imaginary" was meant to be a slur when they were first invented, and is exactly not meant to help us actually understand them. I prefer "complete numbers", cause they're the algebraic closure of the reals.
SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
I think of it like this: It's fairly straight forward to build the other numbers from a starting value, 1, but defining 1 itself requires a full understanding of the infinite structure, and the other things it can build. So you can view 1 as both more basic than the other numbers and also more complex than any of them. Similarly, the argument would be that God is both things: nothing but the fundamental notion that the universe does stuff (or is), and also the full complexity of structure built from that fundamental doing. In the same way that mathematics ultimately tried to eat its own tail -- using advanced theory and structures to loop back and define its base structure -- science is attempting to tell the story of how a singular type of fundamental perturbation self-acting can give rise to the plethora of structures and phenomena we see, and must inevitably do so. That we keep running in to the same sorts of definitional loops, fractal structures, notions of duality, etc across both efforts suggests something of the nature of God -- or at least the computational structure of the universe we live in, as it is built atop a singularity. Getting a little further afield -- modern physics suggests that reality can be interpreted as a quantum computer operating on universal scale and timelimes, so in a very real sense, we're just a subset of the singularity computing. I would argue that many primitive people intuited this fact before we had the terminology to really articulate it, and that we see this splashed across religion, covered by later political additions.