What is GOD anyway?

Not so.

No, there is only far more to existence than we know of it.

 

In my view God reveals Godself in what we interpret as the laws of physics.

Our laws of physics are our feeble efforts to represent natural forces and constants mathematically.

We of course still have so much to learn...but what we do know is this...our universe seems to be 'simplex' ie complexity arises from initial simplicity, for example the universe (with its stars and planets and lifeforms) originated from a superheated sea of quarks...the laws of physics (including gravitation and quantum inderteminancy) turned this chaos into well us....

Secondly of course this universe seems remarkably well tuned to produce living organisms...its a fact that the most common elements in the universe after hydrogen and helium are oxygen and carbon...the building blocks of life as we know it.
Our type of star...a G7 class star...is among the most common type of star...and pretty much every star has a planetary system...
The list does in fact go on and on....

Now of course this might seem remarkable to us...that life is statistically speaking...abundant in the universe...some might say well life will find a way to exist even if the laws of physics were different...this view attractive as it is...is incorrect...life depends on some very fine tuning indeed.
Some might say life is a happy accident...again for the same reasons above this is unlikely.

The laws of physics are the mind of God...so I believe/infer anyway...

 

PS

The most common chemical compound in the universe.....is water.

Odd huh?

 

god is what more people pretend to know more about than anyone ever possibly can, perhapse more often then in any other context.

it is a word too often used by people in a way that denies their own connectedness to the real spirituality, great and small, beyond the familiar box of physical tangability.

=^^=
.../\...

 

Even if that were true, water is still a very tiny fragile component of our solar system. Have you ever seen the comparison picture of earth and the sun to scale? Earth is like a grain of sand next to a baseball sun. The sun is nearly 75% hydrogen (a component of water but definitely not water) and helium.



Think about the percentage of life in our solar system as if it was a tiny speck on a baseball, and that baseball was a tiny speck on another baseball representing the major mass of the solar system. Do you think God consciously decided to create properties of the universe that would require massively humongous, mind boggling enormous, gigantic amounts of matter or energy to support a tiny speck of life? Not to mention that he then had to wait 10 billion years for life compounds to arrange in the right order and then another 4 billion to evolve into intelligent life. Why? Why would a God who is the master and creator of properties torture himself with 14 billion years of boredom before he gets to watch men kill each other in his name? Why? Please come up with one logical explanation for God designing it this way.



I think you are right on the money with your 'simplex' explanation but then you contradict that by believing that primary simplicity came from infinite complexity.

 

Indeed Relaxx it is true that hydrogen and helium account for 99% of the mass of the solar system, but to be fair thats because of the sun, which accounts for about about 99% of the mass of the solar system....

You say...
"Think about the percentage of life in our solar system as if it was a tiny speck on a baseball, and that baseball was a tiny speck on another baseball representing the major mass of the solar system. Do you think God consciously decided to create properties of the universe that would require massively humongous, mind boggling enormous, gigantic amounts of matter or energy to support a tiny speck of life?"

I certainly do....stars have to big basically...otherwise the nuclear reactions needed for fusion could not begin and stars would never shine...and if stars have to be big then lots of matter will be needed to make them.

In fact the universe contains far more matter than can actually be observed, we call this Dark Matter...it explains why galaxies dont fly apart...

By the way it is true that water is the most common compound in the universe, we infer this from spectroscopic analysis of the galaxies and clusters...besides hydrogen as we know is the most common element in the universe, oxygen the fourth most common, its not surprising really then that water is very common, being an oxide of hydrogen.

But anyway...the nature of God itself is another matter entirely...I just happen to think the universe is incredibly peculiar and the more you know about it the stranger it gets....carbon is the only suitable element for life forms....oh people talk about silicon based life but these people are rarely chemists....who know about silicon and its limitations.
Yet stars all over the universe churn out trillions of tons of carbon every nanosecond, far more than silicon, far more than vanadium or lead or bismuth or titanium or chlorine or gold or almost any other element..(I know stellar nucleosynthesis explains how, but not why, before anyone tries to 'educate' me lol)..isnt that odd?

I do not see why you think I belive that primary simplicity was born out of infinite complexity, unless you think I think God is infinitely complex...which I dont necessarily concur with, I am not a christian or even a theist...

My conception of God is that the nature of God transcends my cognitive capabilities, in short I cannot understand the nature of God, but I do sense something behind the veil of reality, purpose is the best word I could use.
The mind or will of God reveals itself in nature, in us, in everything.

Thanks for your reply, I have enjoyed responding to your reasponse!

 

Moxdragon:

Purpose behind reality? Why? Why not sheer inexorability? Why not anything at all that happens to compose it? Does 'god' really transcend cognition?

And how do midichlorians fit into all of this?

 

I just think it's interesting that any time someone tries to put a definition or attribute to God and how God works it becomes very easy to logically debunk said definition or attribute.

MoxDragon, you stated that "The laws of physics are the mind of God", this is suggestive of a complex consciousness, that's what a mind is, but when I questioned the logic of that Gods mind and creation you said "God transcends my cognitive capabilities". So which one is it? Do you believe that God is a complex consciousness that created the laws of physics and nature or do you just not know what God is?

Anyone who attempts to define God in any way must be prepared to face the scrutiny of logical examination.

Of course it seems particularly convenient that water and conditions on earth creates life. No matter how unlikely or likely the odds, it happened. If it happened to not happen nobody would be around to think about why it didn't happen. By the miracle of 4 billion years of natural selection, we exist to ask why. And my question is, if it is a result of consciously created laws as opposed to naturally created laws, why not consciously create something better instead of promising something better to a world of suffering?

Any notion of a conscious and physically influential God just does not make sense or fit the order of this world or universe. It just simply doesn't!

Now if someone was to insist that the laws of this universe are a product of a conscious God then this world is literally, and I mean literally proof that God is at best an imperfect being. And in being an imperfect being it is incapable of providing a perfect world thus the promise of heaven is a lie and God is not really a God but something else.



If a midichlorian could be proven then that would provide some evidence that a greater consciousness does exist. Unfortunately, like Gods they are works of fiction and man's imagination and nothing more.

 

Relaxxx says...
"Now if someone was to insist that the laws of this universe are a product of a conscious God then this world is literally, and I mean literally proof that God is at best an imperfect being. And in being an imperfect being it is incapable of providing a perfect world thus the promise of heaven is a lie and God is not really a God but something else."

Hmmm...now lets see...why is the universe not perfect?

It is absolutely perfect for its purpose...

For life to live other life must die, your interpretation of 'perfect' seems to betray a human ideal....

You think that death and suffering and flaws in the grand design?

Not so....without death there can be no life, the second law of thermodynamics baby...

You think murder and greed are flaws in the grand design?

Not so....they are aspects of human nature produced by evolutionary principles....the selfish gene...the law of the jungle.

When we start saying God likes this or hates this we get into serious trouble...what we must do is decide what we want, the law of the jungle or the laws of society.

You cannot blame God for anything that happens, because 'good' and 'bad' things are subjective experiences, what is bad for one nation/person/species may be good for me and mine.

Now I do not know what God is exactly, and I never pretended to...all I am saying is that the laws of nature are remarkably fine tuned and simplex, life is abundant in the universe....stars are massive conglomerations of hydrogen undergoing nuclear fusion, they are quite simple systems, other than bathing lifeforms in energy what other purpose could they serve?

Name one.....of course not all stars feed living things, but in the same way that given the range of parameters of nature all things that are possible must in fact exist at one time, so do a wide range of stars, still, the vast majority of stars are main sequence stars and potential life supporters.

It is refreshing to have a discussion with someone on a forum without the tiresome point scoring and egotism...thanks Relaxxx!

 

Dejavu says..
"Purpose behind reality? Why? Why not sheer inexorability? Why not anything at all that happens to compose it? Does 'god' really transcend cognition?"

I sense purpose behind nature.

Not design....what creationists call design is really simplexity, chaos and order, the universe and all it contains forged by the parameters laid down by the laws of physics interacting with matter-energy.

There is no such thing as coincidence as any chaos mathematician will tell you....

And yes God does trancsend my understanding of God, I am a talking ape, only just out of the trees, what the hell do I know about almighty JA LOL?

 

Ya know Ja be no big. Bumbaclot dream for no wise ting.

 

In caucazoid please hehe....

 

It's a matter of opinion I guess. Sort of like you see the glass is half full, I see half empty.

I don't see it perfect for life. Life is fragile and finite. Try asking a dinosaur how perfect they think earth is. Mankind will likely have a similar fate, that is if we don't kill ourselves first which is probably a more likely fate.

Even if I was to concur that the laws of the universe are perfect for the eventual formation of finite periods of life, is the universe perfect for God?


[font=&quot]And I don't believe they are perfect, they are what they are. If they were perfect I shouldn't be able to imagine a better one. It's not like we can compare multiple universes and laws of nature and choose a winner. I am very glad that the laws create life but I am not grateful, that would suggest something did it for me.[/font]


I was hoping someone would comment on my statement about why would God torture himself by waiting 14 billion years to see man. After all, religions have this arrogant idea that God has created all of this for man. I had hoped you would say maybe 14 billion years is nothing to God, to which I would reply, then 60 years of a human life would be like ultra nothing to God.

 

Relaxxx....the dinosaurs died out so we may live...

The mammals were kept in the holes and trees and in the darkness, until the ecological niches the dinosaurs occupied, became vacant.

What makes you think man is the zenith of all creation?

Man is just another link in the chain...and yes one day there will be no homo sapiens sapiens...we may have evolved into something else...or nuked each other into oblivion...so what?

Life is a stream...it flows and changes...the universe cares not for individual species...everything changes...and it must...anything in stasis cannot evolve or change or learn or adapt....

God has not waited approx 14 billion years for man!

It is a mistake to think humans are the be all and end all of this vast universe with its 100 billion galaxies!

God did not make the universe for just humanity!
Now that is a perverse idea!

 

God is not human.

 

Is that not what popular religions suggest? The book of genesis?

So God did not intend to create man. What then is gods intention, is there a final solution? Is God perhaps creating another God? If Gods must be created by Gods who then created the first God?

 

God is an albino, squirrel that is also a midget. With only one leg.

 

Moxdragon

If there really was a purpose behind nature, and not just more nature, you would not have to assert such a thing

lol.

 

The purpose behind the universe is life...I assert that nature is purpose manifest!

How we laugh....

 

"Is that not what popular religions suggest? The book of genesis?

So God did not intend to create man. What then is gods intention, is there a final solution? Is God perhaps creating another God? If Gods must be created by Gods who then created the first God?"

Popular religions mean nothing to me in the empirical sense, I care not what the bible says or koran says or torah says...they just happen to have some truth...not all of it by any stretch.

The nature of God is unknown, the reason for life may simply be that life exists for the sake of existing...perhaps God is growing godlings...perhaps when theists describe us humans as the children of God, maybe they are onto something...not just us though...I would say.