Kayevcee said:
Did you know that the Jewish name of God (which I won't mention here out of respect since we have at least one here with us), loosely translated from the Hebrew, means "I am that which is"?
I tend to consider sentient life as a sort of experiment, still connected to God as I understand Him (for lack of a common gender etc etc) but not under control- sort of like the experiments involving self-constructing circuitry some AI developers like to run. Determinism (which seems to be what your second paragraph is discussing) strikes me as incompatible with the idea of free will and thus, aside from the odd message of peace to nudge us away from armageddon, we're free to find our own path and hopefully not balls it up completely.
Did that make sense? I dunno. Every time I close my eyes I see the words "thermohaline circulation" dancing in front of me. I'm maybe not in the best place to discuss the permutations of omnipotence.
-Nick
Yes, I am aware of what the name means. I am actually from Israel and have been exposed to the three most common monotheistic religions there, mostly due to my mixed heritage.
However, I will say that I have lost you. I don't know what exactly you're trying to tell me.
If life is an experiment, uncontrolled as it is, then there was still a will to set it in motion. I am not aware what determinism means so I will not comment on that, but I will say that what drove me to my conclusions was the simple fact that energy is indestructible- all that is exists forever in many different shapes, perhaps infinitely-many. Being indestructible is in itself an absolute property, but that applies to the simplest form of energy, and this can never quite be reached by human nor science since you can always simplify and cut into parts further the makings of the whole: science has witnessed the phenomenon of a single photon shining on two different areas. A photon, mind you, is the most basic form of light science acknowledges. It is the whole that is God. Any one form can be degraded and simplified, altered and recycled, but it can never be destroyed. Anything that is is imperfect, degradable, and therefore mortal. God, in this instance can be the infinite-many forms and sum of all that is, again, and this is why God is immortal.
I do not dispute that there is a whole or a universal truth, but only any mortal interpretation of it, as none could suffice. I consider it to be very pompous to claim to understand God, so I will not ramble around trying to convince you that such a being exists, though I would say that I believe that the sum of all things does exist because I believe something exists. I also believe that the sum of all things cannot have a mortal, biased judgment if it is to be any wiser than us mortals (and it must be, being infinitely knowledgeable at the moment of consciousness). The truth we all revolve around, and I call it God, can never be understood, and nor can a will or wish-list such as the ten commandments be derived from it without polluting its pure potency with bias. This is what creates dogmas of violence, sin, and guilt, telling people they are not worthy in the eyes of infinity, in the eyes of the truth, in the eyes of God. God cannot judge because God is the sum of all things. If there is something absolutely wrong to God, it will simply not exist due to God's infinite power. The inability to calculate and comprehend infinity has led to calculus. I will apply the same logic of limits here: where God is beyond us all, I would say that we should all write our own holy scriptures, whatever makes sense to us that is the manifestation of decency, and strive our best to reach it. In calculus, we get sufficiently close to what we want by taking the limit sufficiently close to a destination. That is mortality. It is the best anything that exists can do.
We cannot define ourselves from the perspective of God because we are not equipped to understand infinity. If anything, I would tell you that any holy scripture attempting to tell me what God is has failed my sense of logic, and this is why I label myself as a part of no religion or school of thought. I am, instead, selfish. I am concerned with myself and with understanding myself for the benefit of myself, ultimately. I do not lie to myself by trying to glorify anything. I believe the first interpretation of God to get it right will not face any arguments because it would make perfect sense to everything. We have not experienced this yet, and the mere fact that there is a duality in the monotheistic religions, where good and evil can exist, have gotten it wrong because they are biased. I know that no one can be completely objective, so I know that no one can know what God is or what it wants. This is a very powerful statement. I am free from such spiritual tyranny, not God's, but humans'.
