Is There Any Room For God In Modern Science?

If God is 'beyond definition' then it invariably follows the discussion is mute and obviously we should not consider God as appropriate for science.

The goal posts keep shifting on defining God in these threads, so we're forced to analyze a handful of varying concepts all labelled 'God' in effect simultaneously, which I believe Writer pointed out in a similar thread.

The popular depictions of the Christian Personal God are not on equal footing in terms of existing or not existing. The particular (medieval) attributes of God have been logically refuted, hence the God itself. I think it is reasonable to suggest that if a theist is purporting that we can know a personal God, the burden of proof is on them as has been suggested numerous times in these threads.

If God is 'beyond description' though, it's intriguing to me why anyone would devote themselves to a particular religion, or why something like say Scientology faces more derision than other religion/cults. It's strange to me that many, perhaps even most worship and dedicate a significant portion of their lives to the ideals and myths of peoples of a completely different culture, place, time and world.

 

When Advaitins say god is inconceivable, they mean that god is not a kind of final idea or something like that which the mind can arrive at. Similar in a way to Zen, where speculation regarding the nature of the absolute is discouraged.
However, since Advaita Vedanta comes from the Vedic tradition, they do have to accept some definition. Thus Brahman is said to be Sat Chit Ananda, usually translated as being, consciousness and bliss.
The thing is, this is not a description of an ordinary mental state. It isn't something that can be arrived at by logical thought. You can't think your way into nirvana.

Both Hindu and Buddhist yogas and meditation techniques etc are meant as means by which this experience may be had.

On your last point - I wonder, because it seems to me that the religions most people follow have been part of the culture of their part of the world for so long, and have been through so many permutations, that they don't appear alien. Try telling an Italian catholic that his religion isn't firmly rooted in Italy for instance.
And that's a big part of why people follow particular religions, because they have grown up with it and never get as far as questioning their conditioning.

 

That's a good point, I am viewing this phenomena from the perspective of a land that is only 240 years old (figuratively speaking) and not tied to a steeped history of tradition and religion. However, The irony in all this, is as you had previously dedicated a thread to, fundamentalism has such a strong following and perhaps origins of sorts in the US.

You think the global interconnectivity of the internet will change this?

My thought being that people will be exposed to varying beliefs and what not that they may have not otherwise had available to them in the past.

 

Yes I'm sorry - I meant to mention the case of the US but got distracted. It's a unique thing really the way Christianity has gone over there. If you compare it with other places that were colonized by Europeans such as Australia, it's true that they retain Christianity, but it's a much lesser deal than in the US where it seems to have taken on a virulent new life.

In Brazil, it's different. There you have the Unionista Vegetale and other syncretic churches who use ayhuasca

The Europeans who colonized North America took their religion with them and it's spawned a new form of it really from what I can judge. Very different from the way Christianity is in Europe. But some of the early settlers were extremists. Puritanical and narrow and strict. In the early days they set the tone I think, and later on I believe there was a kind of rough frontier kind of Christianity for a while.

Generally I think it's very difficult for people to free themselves from these old patterns of belief. They run deep in people. I've experienced it in myself in the past.

I think the internet has the potential to change many things. Pre internet if you came across a reference to something, it was off to the library or the bookshop, and often it was difficult to get good basic info on stuff. Now it's just a click away. So certainly the potential is there for people to explore many forms of beliefs, philosophies and so on. The question is are people in general educated enough or have the interest to look into things. Some people yes. The masses? I just don't know.

 

Is there any room for God in modern science?
We can't even agree on what the question means!

 

God can at least be defined as something indefinable, then, for clarity's sake.

There should be a sticky rule on these boards that when asking questions about God, God be defined by you in your original thread. I would love to have clear concise debates about "God" (whichever God you're discussing.) I can't be bothered with these endless meandering threads that go all over the place and are all exactly the same, though.

 

As long as it's a theory then it is not a fact. A Scientific Law would be something that could be considered fact (and even then I'm still open to a Law being broken). A Scientific Theory is a hypothesis that has yet to be disproven. Natural Selection has been a theory for 156 years. In the grand scheme of human evolution, I would call that a rather short amount of time. How many years was it a "fact" that the Earth was the center of the solar system, only to be disproven? I'm not saying that Natural Selection will or won't be disproven...however, I do feel that the Scientific discovery of Kundalini would be much evidence that evolution is actually programmed already into our DNA, which would definitely shift our views about Natural Selection.

Theory: a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained.

Fact: a thing that is indisputably the case

 

Speaking of Einstein, he was one of the prime people to be discussing the notions of Synchronicity when the term first appeared (along with Carl Jung, who coined the term). Synchronicity is a key feature to Magick. When it is Working, the Synchronicities increase exponentially.

 

I have explained countless times that I choose to not share my personal life anymore on this forum. Why would i waste my findings on some public forum? I will wait to find an open-minded and yet serious Scientist in person to establish real studies, not some cyber-study involving complete strangers who are skeptical and many who aren't even Scientists. Even the ones who are Scientists still don't deserve my findings as they claim to be non-biased but it's painfully obvious that they are very biased.

Every time i get asked this question I am going to remind Writer that he is also withholding his own personal information from me that i asked for.

I use this forum to openly discuss the philosophies. It's all far too important for me to waste the findings on this forum.

 

This makes it seem that you're saying that you can simply reduce anyone to a formula. If everyone is so predictable, and can be completely known via Math and Science, then you should be able to describe every detail of where their life will go from this point to the point of their death, and it should be completely accurate. And it should be repeatable from person to person.

You can never truly know another person completely.

 

Never thought of it as Magick, although thinking about it, I can see how it is relevant to "creation"
I don't think we will ever have the ability to turn someone into a frog though

The bible does say that "God created man in his image" or have we, man, created "God" in our image

 

The movie Lucy does this very well on the increase of the % of the mind used. Slightly OT but a good movie

 

If you had enough knowledge of this person, I imagine the prediction could be pretty accurate. I think you would need to know some variables though that are only internal to this person, and could only be inferred. Isn't this the basis of forensic psychology?

 

Have a look at Bruce Lipton-Epigenetics He shows a link to what you have mentioned about the master of our own body. He is a bit of a character,very passionate but explains Epigenetics pretty simply.

 

Terence Mckenna was the first to point out to me that the Hermetics and the Alchemists had this "brother" relationship with God. It simply is about being a co-creator of reality with the divine, rather than being ruled by a fatherly figure.

Magick isn't turning somebody into a frog. What you said is exactly what Magick is. Using your imagination to picture and go through the feelings of it happening as if it already has happened, shifting your frequency, until you bump into that manifestation in surface reality.

 

But what if there's a whole side to themselves that they are not showing to you? What if you just think you have a thorough amount of knowledge about them? You can't predict via a formula how somebody will turn out. At any moment they could choose some path that goes completely contrary to what you thought them to be.

Forensic psychology is dealing with the actions of others after they have already occurred, not prior to them occurring.

 

But, if it is a person who is the observer, and they have a certain leaning, they are playing a part in co-creating the result.

 

Yes, there are going to be some variables that cannot be known, but a good deal of forensic psychology involves constructing a personality profile of the suspect, and using it to predict future (criminal) behavior.

"Keep people off-balance and in the dark by never reavealing the purpose behind your actions. If they have no clue what you are up to, they cannot prepare a defense. Guide them far enough down the wrong path, envelop them in enough smoke, and by the time they realize your intentions, it will be too late."
--Robert Greene, "The 48 Laws of Power"

 

But there's still agreeability. Doesn't the method have as much to do with the outcome as anything else? I imagine that if the same people who agreed upon the method were also open minded enough to shift their collective method to a Magickal Method, and shifted their focus from an objective impartial "let's see what the objective findings are" to an agreed upon decision of what they WANT to happen, that the results would be very much aligned with what they chose or wished to happen.

 

The methods provide parameters and control over the experiment to give the ability to isolate variable(s), eliminate bias, allow for repeatability ergo falsifiability , so causation and/or correlation can be determined.


If you are doing a test in hopes of what you WANT to happen, then clearly you are presenting a bias. I'm starting to think you don't even care about magick, that you just have a few idols who were into it and it gives you a launching point to be contrarian to science for whatever reason. If I'm mistaken, provide a testable method we can do or something, otherwise I don't really care to discuss magick with you.