111–120 of 376 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's why I say it is unsatisfying and the universe is ultimately unexplainable because either there is this final "god" and we are incapable of understanding it or there is not and there is infinite levels and we are incapable of understanding it also.
Cf. apex (e.g., YHWH) versus non-apex (e.g., the Tao) conceptions of the numinous.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It's just as much of an anthropomorphization as the article accuses traditional conceptions of God of. For the record (just to clarify the overall context), the traditional conception of God, in the Catholic view, is not anthropomorphic. From metaphysical analysis, God is the Ipsum Esse Subsistens, the Subsistent Act of Existing Itself[0]. You see this declared in the Torah in Exodus 3:14[0]. Faith only enters into…
> That the Logos became incarnate does not imply anthropomorphism. The belief that one's deity chose to assume the physical form of a man: isn't that about as anthropomorphic as you can get?
In my opinion, no.
Anthropomorphism (as commonly understood) means to ascribe human characteristics to things not human; we don't talk about anthropomorphizing your grandma, but we do talk about anthropomorphizing a constellation.
Now if you believe, like the Rawlsians suggest, that there are pre-incarnate spirits floating around and these then decide to inhabit specific bodies according to a lottery, then this is also not an anthropomorphism, but is rather a creation account of how humans come to exist.
You may not believe it's accurate, but it's still a creation account. It is no more an anthropomorphism than saying that man was molded into being from a piece of clay into which God blew his breath. That is not an attempt to anthropomorphize clay.
Finally if you believe that God literally became a man, then this is yet another origin account of a specific man. It's only if you don't believe that he became a literal man that you can speak of anthropomorphizing. Suppose he was an angel that only looked like a man, but wasn't really a man. Then anthropomorphism would be correct. But if he really was a man, and not just like a man, then it's not anthropomorphizing.
So the miracle of incarnation describes a creation account of one specific man, much like the creation of Adam from dust is a creation account of another man. If you are extending the label of "anthropomorphizing" to one, then you should also extend it to the other, at which point you've left the commonly understood meaning.
I am extremely scientific and I believe in god. Not quite Spinoza's, more of a pantheistic view. If you think about it, the universe is conscious, because our conscious minds are part of it. And it's learning about itself.
> the universe is conscious, because our conscious minds are part of it. And it's learning about itself. Yes, thank you for stating what some might consider a tautology or frivolous fact, but is actually, utterly profound. Generally, people have no trouble believing that they, themselves are conscious. But what part of them is conscious? All of it? Their toes and fingers? Clearly not...they are mechanical, I/O device…
Second, the easy, down to earth answer to “what is conscious” (iow, where do “beings” end) is where a structured perception ends. Your hand is a part of you because of a broadband link to it. It ends at the skin and hair. Lack of signal and control separates you from everything else. Organized groups have much less bandwidth and while still “pan-“, that’s much lower level of consciousness. Sometimes they synchronize well enough, but that’s just a correlation.
>For one thing, it manages to create a profound metaphysical intimacy with God without denying His transcendence. this kind of thinking which I often see when people express pantheistic views is exactly what turns me away from it. It's just as much of an anthropomorphization as the article accuses traditional conceptions of God of. I guess you can think that the universe is in some vague sense conscious, although I d…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Had a little too much of human religion? Me too. I went through this same phase, at one point I declared myself an atheist, mostly because it was an easy way to give the middle finger to my Catholic childhood indoctrination. But then I decided to dig a little deeper, and there is more to it than thinking "god" is the same as "the Easter bunny". Good luck trying to figure out why something exists and not nothing (and…
Yeah, the universe is weird, still no god needed, because gods' existence is almost as weird as particles popping in and out. Also, not particles, but fields, actually.
Why are there fields?
It's turtles all the way down, and it fundamentally comes down to "why something rather than nothing"?
Nothing has no potential to create anything because it's literally nothing. It can not have potential.
So where do these crazy forces, fields, the quantum observer effect come from, out of nothing?
We will never find an answer to that question because it is literally unanswerable.
I'm tired of these anti-scientific threads pushing superstituous nonsense as science.
Would you feel that way about an article on metaphysics or any other branch of philosophy outside of mathematical logic? How about ethics, anthropology or another branch of the humanities that isn't amenable to the scientific method? I suppose I'm asking where you draw the line between "distinct from the sciences" and "anti-scientific"?
TBF, all of those can be expressed into binary code and mathematical formulas and mathematical logic, however there does not exist proof that there exist God.
Science requires proving that something exist - not disproving that something that is made up centuries ago does not exist!
It seems like the main purpose of Spinoza's God is to have an unfalsifiable God. The problem with other Gods like the Christian God is that they tend to come with requirements about the world that are easy to disprove. For example, the Christian God is not very compatible with the existence of natural evil. By removing all of those implications and other attributes, you arrive a Spinoza's God, a God so vague / powerl…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of interest, what do you beleive in? I agree that pantheism is a misapplied psychological need, but no more so than any relgion or beleif system. I've decided that to fill this need, it is useful to choose a fundamental belief system of some sort. I have choosen Taoism and parts of other Philosophical systems, like Stoicism, where I feel there are gaps.
> Out of interest, what do you beleive in? not very much, that is to say I'm skeptical of metaphysics altogether. I'm partial to Wittgenstein's attitude, that is to say I think projects like pantheism deflate if you scrutinize them and inquire to what degree they say anything meaningful or well-defined about the world, or if they're really expressions of psychology or linguistics or desire. I do agree with you that a…
I'll try to state the thought more simply. "God" is a name we assign to the force behind the original, unexplained creation. Presently that would be the force behind the origin of this amazing universe, light, space. Maybe we push that envelope further in the future, but the boundary always exists. In our understanding there always is a 'first'. We have only the vaguest idea in a cosmic sense how that first came to b…
Is there a name for this line of thought? I’ve run into it a few times and find it compelling.