Does God Exist?

Evidently you have not stopped invoking your good.

So you claim.

It may not be easy to balance side by side with a cliff. I said being green not being with a shade of green.

 

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whether or not there is a god, is NOT the important question.

this is BECAUSE we do not NEED a 'boogieman' to be better off NOT causing harm.
we do not need a boogieman to KNOW we would be better off not causing harm.

if there want to be one or more gods or god-like beings, that's fine too.
love them and be loved by them as you and they see fit.

what IS important though, is that we would ALL be FAR better of, even and perhaps especially, in THIS life, to avoid causing harm.

 

You are right---because philosophy has been largely trapped in the rationalist objectivism created by the combination of Post-Planter Culture ethics, and Greek rationalism. Martin Heidegger was on the right track when he said that we need to go back to the roots, even before the Greeks. We have to break down dualism, and the group ethic. There are churches that are trying to explore the value of the individual over the institution. The latest Pope is making moves in that direction with the Catholic church.

But remember, when I said transcendent earlier, I was referring to the mind as being able to transcend the past, present, and future, even though the only thing that truly exists is a single moment of now. This is much more simplistic than the religious concept of transcendence----yet it subtly may be more profound...

 

Do you know how to protect yourself from harm? An inert rock is a master of avoidance as far as activity goes but damned if someone didn't trip over it. The important thing is how you are. A mind without anxiety is kind and the weight of meaningful arbitration leaves no room for peace. If you've a bone to pick you are dangerous to my flesh.

In the question is there a god or is there good,
Vision is the greatest need. Our protections extend naturally to those we call ours or our own. It is not important to sort out the good from the bad or the helpful from the unhelpful but to be safe and nourished and then comes higher ideas of fulfillment. It is important to know what is height and depth and width so you don't inadvertently fall into holes. Good and bad take care of themselves as having and being are the same. You are alive or you are not.

 

We simplify, become profound, by remembering that in us is all meaning. To transcend means to go beyond the perception of. Perception is not knowledge but can lead to it. Knowledge is being shared. We share our thoughts.

 

Yes---that is right. But to go deeper, there is Berkeley's, esse est percipi (existence is perception).

Then you responded to my post in the other thread---

to which I responded,

Which leaves us stuck in a 'Chicken or the egg' scenario, for which comes first, the perception, the intention, or the conception? Because we have it stuck in our heads that in order to be conscious (whether conceiving, intending, or perceiving) we must be conscious of something.

We could argue that conception comes first, because after all, the word itself is based on the feminine root con~ which is directly related to the Indo-European roots gen~ or gene~ which has all kinds of words connected to creation, procreation, and the fertile powers of the universe (for example, con~ is directly related to the generic and acceptable anatomical word in Welsh, 'cont,' which in English has the same meaning but a whole different connotation when you replace the 'o' with a 'u.'). And of course we conceive babies before they become physical.

But the problem becomes sticky when we try to conceive of something without having some form of perception to base it on. And yet the implications of the double slit experiment, which science tries every which way to sweep under the rug, is that intention is what gives position to particles, turning them from etherial waves with no beginning nor end, to physical particles---and yes, elementary particles, atoms, and even molecules have all been shown to act just like light in the double slit experiment.

(And as I said in that thread:

…But seriously…)

Sartre demonstrated quite effectively in his 'Being and Nothingness' that for any consciousness there is an implied self-awareness--an implied, 'I am thinking' before the 'I think, therefore I am.' This self-awareness, whether actual or implied, must therefore be the arch-conception, or primal conception.

And so here we are, some 2300 years or so after Aristotle, and still we have not advanced beyond what seems to us to be a primitive metaphysics----where everything is a subjective (hupokeimenon). Aristotle didn't create this understanding, he just rationalized it, for it was already built into their language. The concept of chance for example--automaton--in Ancient Greek is the same word we use for a seemingly self motivated and self propelled mechanical robot. Something that happened by chance happened by the actions of some subjective self-will. If a rock came crashing down a mountainside, by chance, it was the result of a subjective will---something with an intention. (Luck on the other hand to the Ancient Greeks was the result of random events without any final goal or end, i.e. no intention.)

Who is this subjective actor? This is the same question as, who is this great observer that instantaneously determines the position of all quanta that is to be the particle of all reality as we perceive it? Aristotle called it mind (nous). But if this is the same mind as the subjective mind of the individual than our own subjectivity once again becomes lost in that great collective outside world that is the manifesting objectivity.

Perhaps it was this losing the subjective to the greater objective that trapped Western thought so deeply into the side of objectivism

Yet we cannot deny our own subjective part in this cosmic play of subjectivity. The scientist who intends to measure the position of a particle in the double slit experiment directly changes the reality of that wave-particle, even when he/she does not observe the results (as occured in one variation of the experiment where the results were recorded but were purposely not observed).

Yet reality is composed of not just one giant quanta whose position is determined by that one cosmic observation. It takes countless quanta, many of which collapse to the particle state, but many more which do not, and continue as wave---stretched from its birth to its death. (And since mass is neither created nor destroyed, those quanta that collapse into particles in a specific position, must then return back to a wave state state at some point after that moment of now is gone.) And yet each quanta is on its own unique path through all time and space, and reality would not exist without its uniqueness.

Therefore we too must exist as unique individuals, the individual subjective, experiencing the cosmos from our own perspective, our own path. Separate, yet a part of the great objective---which is nothing more than a collective of countless subjective actors---yet somewhere within that, there must be that arch-conception---that initial self-awareness---even if it was nothing more than an infinitely small spark of awareness, from which all subjectivity arose. Yet for there to always be a now filled with all the particles in position----then this primal subjective must continue on, for how can material existence have left its mark on the present from a time when even no conscious entity (as we perceive it) existed.

 

If you got through Being and Nothingness and understood it, you're a better man than I am. But this is an interesting point, getting at the left-brain, right-brain interplay that underlies our encounters with reality. For those in whom the left hemisphere is dominant view "I think, therefore I am" as a logical syllogism to play with. But at a deeper level of the psyche, we may be intuitively aware of another meaning, the primal self-awareness that you mention. Consciousness is a primal awareness. Philosophers of strictly analytical bent, like Gilbert Ryle and his atheist disciple, Daniel Dennett try to reduce it to behavioral terms and feel very confident that they have it by the tail while their babblings betray a fundamental lack of comprehension. Analytical behaviorism began as a reaction against Cartesian dualism--the mind-body dichotomy--which was admittedly a dubious proposition. Yet with all the razzle dazzle of logical argumentation and scientific hocus pocus to exorcise the "ghost in the machine", the phenomenon of self-awarenes eludes them.

 

I can't say that I have gotten through it---because it is so long, and I don't have the time. The first time I tried to read it, many many years ago---I did not have the patience for it. But in more recent years I have tried to make time to read it, and I find it very fascinating, but I come to different conclusions than he does from his premises. When I have time I try to get further towards completing it. but I have read a large bulk of it, and enjoyed it quite a bit, and filled it with all kinds of my own notes and thoughts. I wish I had the time to sit and finish it.

 

I haven't read being and nothingness at all which may be an advantage having never been convinced but I am challenged at the thought or disagree with the idea of primal conception put forward as I think there was an unobserved observer or awareness in the form of intensity before self awareness or it's adjunct intent. I have nothing to base this on other than my own history. I began as conception, but not mine.
There is an impulse or locus of heightened tension that seeks equilibrium.
The question which came first chicken or egg is an order that cannot be established with just the two coordinates, chicken and egg. I call those three coordinates at large thought word and deed. When I mean begins and proceeds thought word and deed. I mean begins with a nondescript impulse which is then articulated into a working symbol.

 

I haven't read being and nothingness at all which may be an advantage having never been convinced but I am challenged at the thought or disagree with the idea of primal conception put forward as I think there was an unobserved observer or awareness in the form of intensity before self awareness or it's adjunct intent. I have nothing to base this on other than my own history. I began as conception, but not mine.
There is an impulse or locus of heightened tension that seeks equilibrium.
The question which came first chicken or egg is an order that cannot be established with just the two coordinates, chicken and egg. I call those three coordinates at large thought word and deed. When I mean begins and proceeds thought word and deed. I mean begins with a nondescript impulse which is then articulated into a working symbol.
So rather than I think therefor I am, I am motivated or animated and therefor I think I am.

 

Thought of that earlier today...i think, therfore I am...how odd you post it here today....about as basic and simple as anyone can get....I am back to Dr. Suess....lol

 

So what you are saying is that in the beginning there was motion. This makes sense for you, as there was motion that was not of your own at the time of your conception. But what of being itself; what of all of existence? What motion could have occurred when there was nothing?

From a materialist standpoint, the answer seems easy, The Big Bang. But it does not answer the problem, what caused the big bang, so then we decide on perhaps the collapse of a previous universe, which then begs the question, how did that begin, and so forth---back to the problem of the chicken and the egg----and again the answer---oh, another chicken, but that doesn't matter.

So if we assume for a moment, that at some point, there was a void, an absolute nothingness------what would have moved?

 

But the universe goes on and on. Think about it. If the universe ends, what's on the other side? Many religious folks think it's the big daddy in the sky. But what's there with him?

The universe goes on and on and on which, take my advice, you don't want to think about after inhaling a HUGE amount of hashish. I don't now, but I did decades ago.

 

and this is just one universe....and there are infinite number of those....lol

 

And here's another paradox----if the universe goes on and on and on---and yet according to Einstein's Theory of Relativity, all time and space is an infinitely small flash at the speed of light, how does that infinitely small flash stay infinitely small if the universe is infinite-----don't think of that while tripping on shrooms...

Not to mention Moonglow's infinite other universes...

 

Not what I mean to say.
Since the question of this thread is does god exist,
I not trying to address a question of a beginning but identify a pattern of current emergence or emerging current to affix ourselves in this space and time or our current position being a proposition of ever coming and going forth. I also suggest that it moves in one spiraling direction , from nucleus to periphery in a redundant fashion, both inhalation and exhalation. When I say nucleus to periphery I don't mean to suggest something encapsulated but something in the form of a wavy membrane. The leading edge becomes peripheral becomes leading edge and the sense of definition or sense of beginning and end comes because there is a high and a low slack at tide change, or a small gap to be bridged in the synapse.

I am personally unaware of a time when I was not nor can I imagine not being but there are stories. As you may have heard me discuss before time appears to me to be a concentric radiation and the past and future are artifacts or images fashioned of current emergence. The more experience life has the more far ranging or futuristic our ideas. The more far reaching our gaze to the heavens the more ancient the light and the more ancient the light the newer this moment.

 

i think time is some sort of loop .. like it goes in a circle with no real beginning or end.

i also dont think you'll ever witness the exact same events if you make it "all the way around" the loop cuz of relativity and all that .. very hard to explain but ive felt it before

 

I think that none of us really have a fucking clue, all we have our own personal experiences and opinions that they have shaped.
Beyond that it really is anybodies guess.

Just by virtue of our senses and how limited we actually are when it comes to accurately perceiving the "true" nature of our reality and existence it begins to become silly with all the grandiose ideas and ludicrous extrapolations that get accepted as "fact"...

multiple universes...pfffff, show where or how
black holes????...... ain't found one yet, sure there are things that we think might maybe kinda sort of fit with our math, but still no real prize discovered
(just examples)

and I know it's not a popular opinion around here, but out of all of you guys, thedope is actually the only one who makes the most sense and reasonable cases, but sadly most of you are too entrenched and invested in your own opinions to notice that.

 

If you scribe the route of of the earth through space it appears as a spiral, not a closed loop. Like the rotation of the earth makes it appear there is a day and a night and we think there is definitely a distinction between the two of course somehow discounting the dawn and dusk periods, or the high and low slack times.