Determinism - just another theory?

I don't agree with this statement

How in this pantheistic view is God and love not illusion as well? Since we're living an illusion and God as you claim, the former seems like it necessarily is illusory, and the latter, love, like suffering, is a subjective experience.

Is there a supernatural aspect to your pantheism? What differentiates God from the Universe?

Most processes, particularly those that are extreme, are multi-faceted in how the brain and body react to them. Some people like to experience a fine line between the sensations, but I think if we're to view it from a perspective of all that encompasses pain, most of us who say things like "I enjoy pain" are saying so in a relative sense. Usually during acute painful experiences, once nociceptors signal painful stimuli, the brain releases endorphins to activate opiate receptors and thus provide pain relief, probably in part, a reason opioid drugs are so difficult to quit for many, but I digress... This is why in extremely painful experience, people will go into shock.

I find that most people who say "I like pain" and deviate from the norm usually are coupling it with a pleasureable activity and it's primarily about that activity, like they enjoy hardcore sex or playing tackle football or something like that. So they may like pain to an extent but I doubt the football player who can appreciate being "blown up" on a crossing route being tackled is looking to get his arm broken, or the sub in the bedroom who likes a whip on her ass is looking to land in the emergency room requiring stitches.

Not saying such people don't exist at all, but they would be more than deviations from the norm in behavior and more like outliers and perhaps might even have disorders and stuff.

Given your perspective on the illusory nature of our reality, and given that, presumably there is no such thing as objective reality attained with our senses, why do you feel terrible for these children starving to death?

 

To a violent psychopath, murdering someone might feel as good as I would feel winning the lottery. It's subjective. We decide as individuals, and as a collective, what is right and wrong. Collectively we still feel murdering pigs is okay, where as to me it is not different than murdering a human.
Why do you disagree with my original statement?
If there is an objective difference, who decided it?

Nothing differentiates God from the Universe.

Maybe they are illusion! I will have to wait until I die, and get back to you. I will think more on it, and maybe get back to you sooner, as well.

Well I don't disagree with any of this. But still, someone can end up in the emergency room and still choose not to "suffer". Suffering is always a choice.

Because they believe the illusion is real and so ARE suffering.

The thing about the illusion is that we(God) are creating it. We feel like it's something happening to us, because we feel we are separate from God, but that is incorrect. I choose to want freedom and ease and fun for every sentient creature. That is the reality I want to create.

 

The feelings associated with them might be subjective, but those are objectively different experiences.

I don't get what you mean by who decided it? They are different observable phenomena.

I don't follow where the illusion part of all this comes in then.

 

That we think we have no control over it. That we think we are not creating it. That we think death is the end and that anything in this Universe can hurt or harm us.

Well so is going on a rollercoaster and watching a film...
I wasn't saying they were the same experience. I was saying that there was no objective right or wrong/good or bad involved, until we decide so.

 

I admire the tenacity of you two.

I think that as humans, we don't like the idea of objective truths, or one truth. Of course, there can be many ''truths'' that seem real to us at the moment, but I don't know if that's actually reality.

What is truth? What is reality?

Oh, the endless possible ''arguments.''

 

Heh, I like "arguing" it, mostly because these thoughts are new to me. And sure, someone can say "no, I don't think we are part of God and aren't eternal, you can't prove we are", and I can't (and don't want to) argue with that... but I want to make sure there are no "mistakes" within my beliefs... such as, with warped Christianity, "God is all loving but he also made hell and will send you there if you don't do what he says".. which is just.. I don't know how someone can believe in that.

 

I don't know if hell is really anything more than an eternal place without God. I wonder if ''heaven'' is sort of an expansion of space, and the early prophets of the Bible, didn't know how to interpret the message they were receiving. Heaven has been described in the Bible, but I can't imagine that it's a place where there are eight goats, with eight eyes, or whatever it states. lol But, I believe both ''places'' exist, but it doesn't drive my faith. I've been reading the Bible again, and I bought a companion guide to help make sense of what I'm reading. It's a complex book, not meant for us to agree/disagree with, but maybe just learn from...and it's comforting to know that the people mentioned throughout the Bible grappled with the same things we do, today.

 

As I mentioned before, we can only have this discussion from a corporeal perspective. Death is obviously the end of the body, what are the grounds, particularly from this perspective, we have to attempt to conjure up anything beyond that or that there is anything beyond that for certain?


While feelings can be subjective and I'd even grant you perceptions are filtered, I don't consider reality illusory, it's the only experience we can ascertain with verifiable objectivity.

We discern between various stimuli because it can harm us if we don't. I'll take a calculated risk with sleeping with a cat or a dog in my bed over sleeping with a shark in a pool. We have choice, (perceived) control and can create within a limited scope of reality but it's just that, limited. It's not as if I wish that tomorrow you and I spend the day? on Saturn and that overnight, the atmosphere is going to be made hospitable for us and that we'll teleport there to fulfill my fantasy.

I think you probably don't mean some of your statements so literally, and I'm not trying to be obtuse, but I don't think it really gets us anywhere on such topics when languages gets too flowery.

 

Yes, I don't think there's much more we can say. Just to recap the main point I was making, because I actually forgot what I first was responding to: God "allows" what you call evil, because s/he knows it isn't real, it's part of our game and even though some of it may seem beyond our control, it isn't, and we can change it, if we want to. And that is free will.

I do enjoy our entirely different perspectives and your ability to discuss it without being rude.

 

We can never be apart from God, if we are a part of God.
Not knowing that is, perhaps, hell. But it doesn't make sense to me that that would ever be an eternal state. Heaven is here and now, and always : )

 

It is not just "what I call evil". It is a argument which has existed long before you and I were born and you are well aware there are many instances in the world that exemplify it.

 

Sorry. I meant what everyone calls evil.
I don't know what when I was born has to do with it.

 

If we can't hope to answer arguments and questions from before we were born, we may as well give up on thinking about anything.
What a silly thing to say.

And I don't like you telling me what I am well aware of. I am well aware of what I believe on the matter, and I don't see evil.

 

It's mostly a turn of phrase, maybe an American thing but it suggests this conundrum has been pondered over for many centuries.

I have no specific text that I can point to, to verify the legitimacy of this following statement but in the overall arc of Philosophy of Religion, I actually think the Problem of Evil was one of the cornerstones which led some theists towards ideas like Pantheism.

 

You don't like me telling you that, but you have no problem with acts of torture, murder, rape?

 

I think it's an absurd argument. First, you have to define evil. And that whittles down to even such things as little white lies and stealing peanuts from the grocery store. And how God is supposed to stop all of this from occurring. I suppose since he is God, he could just create an alternate universe every single time a human being does something wrong in which it never occurred, but what would be the point? Why would God create a world that he totally controlled? And in what sense would people truly enjoy living in it, since they would have no choice but to enjoy living in it?

Which brings up another question...which is, would it be evil in God's eyes to be sad in God's perfect world in which nothing ever went wrong? You see, this is actually the most perfect of all possible worlds when you really consider the alternatives.

 

I think it's an absurd argument. First, you have to define evil. And that whittles down to even such things as little white lies and stealing peanuts from the grocery store. And how God is supposed to stop all of this from occurring. I suppose since he is God, he could just create an alternate universe every single time a human being does something wrong in which it never occurred, but what would be the point? Why would God create a world that he totally controlled? And in what sense would people truly enjoy living in it, since they would have no choice but to enjoy living in it?

Which brings up another question...which is, would it be evil in God's eyes to be sad in God's perfect world in which nothing ever went wrong? You see, this is actually the most perfect of all possible worlds when you really consider the alternatives.

 

Your prior arguments earlier were a strawman fallacy, which is why I didn't bother to respond after the 2nd time of you claiming you understood.

And likewise with good, so we either toss all concepts out and that God is negated or we go through logical argument and that God is negated.

 

Your arguments were ad hominem, so I didn't respond to you, because you didn't comprehend what I was saying.

Better yet...why didn't God just program us all from the beginning so we couldn't commit any evil acts? Would that be "good"? Would we still be human? Probably not...would it be good? Would it be good if we were beings only capable of doing angelic things all of the time? Would we all be happy, or would it be a different kind of happiness? Or maybe is there some reason why men have a choice?

 

I think it would be more helpful to define 'good' and anything that lacks goodness that should be present is by default, evil. Just my opinion.