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Do you believe in God?

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Do you believe God exists?
1) God is a being, that one can have a personal relationship. A person God. 30%  30%  [ 55 ]
2) God is an impersonal force that guides reality as it is. He decrees our laws of physics, but does not intervene to break them. 12%  12%  [ 22 ]
3) God does not exist. Reality can be explained by scientific inquiry and the scientific method in by itself. 33%  33%  [ 61 ]
4) I am not sure. There is the possibility that God does exist, or does not. We must follow the preponderance of evidence when drawing our conclusion. 26%  26%  [ 48 ]
Total votes : 186

AspE
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11 May 2016, 4:19 pm

NoahYates wrote:
That is great.. you should host a symposium on him.

That's what this is.



drlaugh
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11 May 2016, 7:50 pm

....yes she laughed and they named the baby Isaac

Thanks for the education , ideas and smiles. :idea: :lol: :idea:


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11 May 2016, 8:20 pm

AspE wrote:
NoahYates wrote:
That is great.. you should host a symposium on him.

That's what this is.

Image


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts


Deltaville
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12 May 2016, 12:40 am

Scarabola wrote:

Quantum mechanics explains the big bang, not our own existence.



Unless you have a reasonable theory of quantum gravity; that notion is utterly incomplete.

Scarabola wrote:
]

I have barely scratched the surface of this subject, but the main idea is that events are capable of happening on their own with no cause. And matter and gravity are polar opposites of each other, therefore the universe obeys the law of energy conservation by having a net energy of zero. Einstein and Hawking knew more about this than almost anyone, so I'm going to take their word for it.



Einstein never said that, and Hawking is wrong as energy must chronologically variant within any closed system (such as our universe, which is geometrically flat, with the Friedmann solution of k=0, rather than k=1 or Ω>1.) The theory is hammered by an obsolete theory of quantum gravity that cannot posit the amount of any energy within a closed system of any sort.

Scarabola wrote:

As for consciousness, I never said QM created that (but until proven otherwise, it's a possibility). Our consciousness formed through evolving a larger brain, and theories by Harris and Pinker suggest that our consciousness is just an illusion that our large brains have evolved to cope with evolutionary stresses, just like eyesight is an illusion of moving pictures and thinking is one as well.



Orch-OR theory of quantum consciousness recently received a huge boost in plausibility with the discovery of quantum vibrations in microtubuoles: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-discovery- ... rates.html . Despite that discovery, the notion of life after death via a quantum soul is still very much an open debate.

Scarabola wrote:

My question: if God exists, then where did God come from? (who created God?) If it always existed, then it contradicts the notion that "something can't come from nothing". And if it's possible God always existed, then it's possible for a near infinite number of other possible things/events to have always existed or had caused itself.


Read my finite axiom of time argument, in answering that question.


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NoahYates
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12 May 2016, 7:16 am

Woops... just realized I posted the link to the longer talk for the Kalam cosmological argument twice.... sorry about that... it was very difficult to make that post! :P


This is the link that is supposed to be underneath the short for fine-tuning in case anyone wants to investigate further into those arguments:


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts


AspE
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12 May 2016, 8:48 am

NoahYates wrote:
AspE wrote:
NoahYates wrote:
That is great.. you should host a symposium on him.

That's what this is.

...

Glad you like that one. Here is my next lesson:















































































































































.



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12 May 2016, 8:55 am


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts


Scarabola
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12 May 2016, 9:46 am

Noah, I will watch those vids soon.

Deltaville, I concede for now, and I will return after much research and education.



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12 May 2016, 1:44 pm

Been reading Alan Watts, "What To Tell Children About God And The Universe"
https://www.facebook.com/notes/alan-watts-wisdom/what-to-tell-children-about-god-and-the-universe/239561399422139/

God also likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, He has no one but himself to play with. But He gets over this difficulty by pretending that He is not Himself. This is His way of hiding from Himself. He pretends that He is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way He has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when He wakes up they will disappear.
Now when God plays hide and pretends that He is you and I, He does it so well that it takes Him a long time to remember where and how He hid Himself. But that’s the whole fun of it-just what He wanted to do. He doesn’t want to find Himself out too quickly

So If I'm correct Watts doesn't have the classic christian concept of God but a pantheistic one, God externalized/particularized himself in nature (as a game?).
I don't know what to think of it. It is basically eastern or Indian philosophy "with a modern edge"
Maybe this is positive: that in this theory there is some necessity in the proces of creation, it is not just at random that life occurs. There's a reason why (against all odds) there's life, fine tuning, etc etc
Otherwise you get Hawking c.s. with the theory of the multiverse, but multiverse explanations seem no better.
Still I don't know, everything just a dream, it goes against common sense



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12 May 2016, 1:50 pm

I would not call him a pantheist either. I would say if you had to give him an "ism" it would panentheism, which is profoundly different from pantheism. I do not think Alan would give himself a label. In fact the lectures I just linked go into that.


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts


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12 May 2016, 2:43 pm

NoahYates wrote:
I would not call him a pantheist either. I would say if you had to give him an "ism" it would panentheism, which is profoundly different from pantheism. I do not think Alan would give himself a label. In fact the lectures I just linked go into that.

But you do give yourself a label.



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12 May 2016, 3:21 pm

Oh? And what label is that?


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts


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12 May 2016, 3:22 pm

NoahYates wrote:
Oh? And what label is that?

Theist



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12 May 2016, 9:03 pm

I am a panentheist.


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AspE
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12 May 2016, 9:07 pm

Still a label.



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12 May 2016, 9:35 pm

I am fine with that... its a label I am very comfortable with.


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“In the same way that you see a flower in a field, it’s really the whole field that is flowering, because the flower couldn’t exist in that particular place without the special surroundings of the field; you only find flowers in surroundings that will support them. So in the same way, you only find human beings on a planet of this kind, with an atmosphere of this kind, with a temperature of this kind- supplied by a convenient neighboring star. And so, as the flower is a flowering of the field, I feel myself as a personing- a manning- a peopling of the whole universe. –In other words, I, like everything else in the universe, seem to be a center… a sort of vortex, at which the whole energy of the universe realizes itself- comes alive… an aperture through which the whole universe is conscious of itself. In other words, I go with it as a center to a circumference.”~ Alan Watts