Defying the Deity by AnthonyT

I've been a Christian since I was 8 years old. My parents were sort of secular "buddhists," if there is such a thing. They didn't teach me a thing about religion my entire life.

When I was 8, I came across a very small skinny book about Jesus. I was immediately smitten. I thought he was the coolest person I had ever read of. At the end of the book, they explained he was still alive and we could pray to him. So I thought, "Yes, I want to be a Christian. I want to follow this very cool heroic person."

The problem was, I was living in a Muslim country at the time. No churches anywhere. So I was a Christian, all alone, for 3 years. I talked to Jesus, and I read my little book over and over again.

After that, I moved to a Catholic country. I met some Assemblies of God missionaries and started going to church. You could not imagine my excitement. I finally met other Christians!! I was no longer alone in my belief of Jesus as a wonderful hero. They could help me with all the difficulties I had with Jesus' teachings, like turning the other cheek and stuff.

I was immediately struck by the vast difference between Christians and the Jesus I thought we all followed. Never mind. I stuck with them for a while. During this time, I dipped my toes in some authoritarian practices they taught me, like chide my friends for "sinning" and stuff like that. (Remember I was still young at this time.) It made me feel dirty inside. Then about 10 years later, they kicked me out because I refused to ostracize someone they thought was the spawn of Satan. I couldn't cross that line.

I converted to Catholicism after that, cause they are pretty laid back compared to the AG. But pretty much only in name. So now I am back to being a Christian all alone, just me and Jesus. I like it better that way.

God and I talk all the time. I've done it since I was a kid. Think of him as an imaginary friend. Whatever.

God knows that if he ever tells me to do something against my principles, I'd tell him to fuck off. I'd still love him and all, but I'd tell him to fuck off. And if he wants to punish me for disobedience or whatnot, or send me to hell, he can heap it on. I'd rather burn in hell for all eternity, cause I'm ornery and willful and stubborn that way. But that is not the God I believe in, anyway.

The God I believe in is Jesus. The paragon of compassion and social justice I read about in that first book. That's why I call myself a Christian. If it's not something that HE would ask, then it's bullshit.

ETA: If you're asking a theological question of why a loving God would ask Abraham to sacrifice his only son, I don't know.

But here's a cheeky guess. I can only imagine that Abraham misunderstood God's request, took it too literally or something. Maybe God only said, "What if I were to ask you to sacrifice Isaac?" And Abraham, being not too bright, said, "Oh, let me take him to a mountaintop and do it to prove I am faithful." Then God had to send an Angel to stop him with, "No, you dumbass. Geez." And Abraham thought, "Oh, you mean this was only a test?" So the story got told wrong cause Abraham was getting a bit senile.

ETA2: Apparently Jewish scholars have been wrestling with the "Binding of Isaac" for a long time. Interesting reading.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binding_of_Isaac

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"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Monday, December 19, 2011 2:24 PM

FREMDFIRMA

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
Have any other religious people been troubled by these notions?

Nope.
Ok, I'll spare this much - although I am not overfond of discussing my personal beliefs.

The "Gods" of the pantheon I follow are not by any means considered all powerful, onmiscent or even anything remotely close to infallible, a practice followed as long or longer than christianity, the greeks, the vikings, shinto, voodoun - many beliefs consider their "Gods" to be in many ways as flawed as themselves, from Zeus humping everything in sight, to Thor being a tempermental jackass, Ti-Malice being a complete slacker, so on and so forth.

I really reccommend you watch The Mothman Prophecies as it might provide a lot of insight into those notions, insights like this.

Quote:
If there was a car crash ten blocks away, that window washer up there could probably see it. Now, that doesn't mean he's God, or even smarter than we are. But from where he's sitting, he can see a little further down the road.

Why assume the infallibility of your "Gods" ?
There's certainly no cause to, and some of the things in that book seem to all but admit it.

That, to think about.

-Frem

I do not serve the Blind God.

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Monday, December 19, 2011 2:37 PM

First I should open with how inadequate is my own experience and knowledge of the subject for me to comment, and hope you will forgive this trespass out of my depth.

I am jewish by birth, but taoist by choice. I've given some thought to what people say here about taoism being a philosophy. While I do not agree, it has lead me to think that it is not inconsistent with taoism to consider it non-exclusive. Many asians carry multiple faiths, as wicca did in old europe, prior to the celtic revival of the 19th c.

Still, such a matter isn't taken lightly. Any other faith would have to be consistent with the tao in order for me to believe in it, which largely means for me more specific interpretations than general tradition (chistian, muslim, buddhist)

Judaism, I'm not sure of it. Some of it will be with me always, but I cannot devote myself fully to the support of only other jews, but I can't break with it without first actually going to Israel to find for myself. I'm not sure where me an judaism stand or will stand.

All of that said, I've also thought about god, and the voice of god, and have done a lot of searching over the course of this past year on that topic.

The thing I was most alarmed to learn was that we have radically different structures of internal voices from one another. Around 10% of us have no internal voice at all. Most of us have a "reading voice" and for some of us, we have a conscious mind thinking voice which is different.

For myself, I have a reading-thinking voice, I know it is one voice, even though it sounds different, because the two cannot talk at once. It speaks when I consciously do something that causes it to speak.

Additionally, I have an unconscious voice. It is not connected to the other, as it can speak at the same time as the other is speaking. I have no control over what it says. I find this voice to be unerring in its analysis, and figure it is drawing conclusions from the sum of my unconscious mind which holds far more information than I could ever be aware of. Still, I would hesitate to think of having to take orders from it.

I don't know where this fits in to your perception of God or anyone else's. I tend to refer to the texts when I am in question on what to do. I don't admit this, because people tend to prefer that we be rational and independent and not referring to religious texts to make our decisions, but I do it because I believe that others who came before me were wiser than I am capable of being, and this is the principle idea that I have faith in.

As to the bible, I've done a lot of research on it, in part because though I am not a christian, your bible is my bible. I've read it through twice, from a very old leatherbound king james. I was distressed when I went to read it a third time, online, to discover that the text was not the same.

Some digging into this topic revealed that the bible has been edited many times, even under the name "KJV" there are many editions, with radical differences. The books included in the canonical common text have changed, as well as those in the apocryphal hidden text. The translations of prose and verse and conversions of data and names has also changed.

I suspect each of these represent someone else's version of what the true word of god is, which means that the concept is open to individual interpretation. Rather than some being true and others not, I would think that some was true for some people, an idea furthered by the revelation of how different we are, internally.

I also shudder to think that the Israelites who slaughter the children of the nonbelievers are of my faith, and so I resolve that they are not, or rather, I am not of theirs. This was what god meant to some savage thousands of years ago, but not to everyone, not even then.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Monday, December 19, 2011 4:08 PM

HKCAVALIER

Hey Anthony,

See, now you're following my old religious teachings. In the Celtic tradition, winter is a time of introspection, when Nature recedes into Herself to find the coming spring. We humans, as the conscious element in Nature, therefore must express this introspection in our thoughts and actions.

In my understanding, the story of Abraham and Isaac, like the story of Job is not really a treatise on how we puny humans should comport ourselves, but more ruminations on the nature of god. The nature of god is definitively mysterious, but stories like these can help to tease out at least enough meaning to work with.

O' course, like so many bible stories, this Abraham and Isaac stuff is way overstated, like trying to teach moral ambiguities using flash cards. I have a personal story on what I believe to be the same themes but in a much smaller context.

I spent most of my twenties involved with an abusive woman. My self-esteem was such that I thought I deserved whatever hell she dished out. The way I put it, even then, was that if she was a "control freak" I was a "controlled freak"--I enthusiastically signed up for all of it, largely, 'cause it was all I'd known up to that point.

Okay, so I started therapy and a year into it came to the conclusion that my relationship hadda go. I'd discovered things like self-respect and personal dignity and that relationship could not survive the cold, light of that dawn within me.

So, I was out in the "dating pool" after a 6 year absence and didn't know which way was up. I answered a personal ad in a local weekly and had a single, not unpleasant date with a woman named Raven which culminated in us actually making plans to meet again at her place where she would cook me dinner. I was new to dating and found all of this completely delightful in a frankly selfish and light hearted key. Whoohoo, meet people, compliment them, get a home cooked dinner out of it--what's not to love?

AS SOON as the date was over and I was walking down to the bus mall to catch a ride home, my intuition--which, since entering therapy had become extremely vocal--clearly told me to call Raven up and cancel the dinner date and never see her again. My more conventional awareness was a little bit shocked. I demanded to know why and my intuition flat out told me, "You don't get to know why--you just gotta do it." Basically the old parental dodge: Because I said so!

Now, I was already well-versed in the perils of ignoring my intuition, so I didn't need to be told a second time. Nonetheless, it bothered me greatly and I entertained every evasive pseudo-compliance I could imagine to please the intuition without being so rude or "irrational" as to call off a date I had no conscious reason to avoid. I have found in my life that "rationality" at such times is particularly useless.

So, after considerable dithering, I called her up and told her I hadda cancel. When she said, no problem, we'll reschedule, I took a calming breath and told her, no, sorry, I think it's best if I just say good-bye now and good luck to you.

Thing is, she was SOOOO gracious about it. Y'know, philosophizing about the mysteries of human communication and the fatefulness of meetings, etc. I mean, she said, to my mind at the time, ALL THE RIGHT THINGS.

I was all the more pissed off at my intuition, and confused. What the hell did I do all that for? What a jerk I was and what a saint Raven had been about it.

Well, the very next day, I came home from work to a lengthy message on my answering machine (I had an answering machine in 1992) from Raven in which she just ripped into me in foul, totally uncalled-for language, laying judgments upon my character, questioning my manhood, and on and on and on. But the creepiest, uncanny thing about it all was that she sounded JUST LIKE MY EX. She used the same phrases and she expressed the same emotions and hateful opinions of me. It was the Cliff's Notes version of my previous relationship contained in a single answering machine message!

So, I got the answer to "why?" I've learned that that's how it goes most of the time. When my intuition says "jump" my best response is "how high," not "but that doesn't make sense given my extraordinarily tiny conscious understanding of the situation."

So, Abraham and Isaac is kind of an overblown version of the same issue. Your god--your actual, irrefutable god, tells you to do a thing, you do it, because that's the nature of god. We just gotta set aside all these values we perceive to be in conflict with that voice of truth inside us.

Now, Anthony, if you have any questions about the validity of your god, I submit to you that that thing, whatever it is, is not in fact your god. Your god is your god. And you know it. Don't be calling a thing god if you have any doubt, okay?

Yes, this is a mystical understanding. You may say that the dictates of your god must always be subjected to the interrogation of your reason. But then I'd say you're not talking about god at that point. God, by definition, should be that part of us that is unerring in its discernment. If it ain't, then it ain't god and it ain't nothin' you much need to worry about defying, is it?

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Monday, December 19, 2011 4:10 PM

HKCAVALIER

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Monday, December 19, 2011 4:42 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

A Anthony a chara,

Great question about Abraham and Isaac. I believe it was a test to see if Abraham was willing. I believe it was a one time test too, I don't believe that God will ever ask anyone this question again, it was something that only happened once. And I believe that God would _never have allowed Abraham to actually do the deed because God is very clear about what he thinks of human sacrifice, he doesn't like it. But yeah, this is something I've definitely done some thinking on. My dad and I have talked about it because we find it hard to understand and make sense of and this is the conclusion we've come to.

CTS, yeah other Christians can be a pain in the rear sometimes, it sounds like those ones you knew were kind of creepy folk, I don't believe in excommunicating people, that's cruel. If you don't want them around then you can say that they should try a different church or something, I don't know, it seems like if someone was doing something really bad they wouldn't want to hang out at church anyways.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Monday, December 19, 2011 4:54 PM

Too many voices.

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Monday, December 19, 2011 5:21 PM

WISHIMAY

Too many voices? I'll second that... Couldn't begin to sum up my thoughts on the subject ta just one post.

I guarantee! I had a different religious upbringing than the rest of y'all, and that's all you get. You know the line where Mccoy says to Spock "So I have to DIE before we can discuss death?!!"

Yeah, It's something like that...

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Monday, December 19, 2011 6:55 PM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
The man was actually supposed to go through with the murder of his son, because God said so. God sent an angel at the last minute to stop him, but this loyalty test and its implications disturbed me for the rest of my life until even today.

Jesus was a person, real and whole. He was the best part of humanity IMO. Like Mother Theresa. An example of what we can aspire to in our own individual lives.
Lots of felgercarb has been heaped onto his legacy by co-scripters to influence the masses to particular ends.
God does NOT work in mysterious way IMO. God is direct. God might not let us know the overall plan, but that may be because it's all a work in progress, and no trailer for the finished product is ready.
Or it may be that God is US now, every living molecule. A walk in the skin of existence, so to speak.
I cry EVERY time I watch Book die in Serenity because his most important last message to Mal is to believe.
Believe in himself? In others? In God? All of the above?

Anthony, you know. Shed the doubt. Forget the old nonsense. You've already read between the added lines.

The atypically serious Chrisisall

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Monday, December 19, 2011 7:12 PM

In retrospect, my post is probably easily misunderstood. I was actually responding to DT's comments about the kinds of internal thought processes people have.

Sometimes, I have five voice dialogues. They argue. ._. Though I also have the narrative voice.

I don't really like religion, so I'll decline to comment further on the main topic.

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Monday, December 19, 2011 7:55 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.

"Though I also have the narrative voice." As I understand it, this is the voice one is supposed to listen to in meditative thought. This is the voice that observes, without passion and without pain.

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Monday, December 19, 2011 9:06 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

I don't know if I have a voice. I have my thoughts and my ideas, but a voice? I don't know, I mean, I guess I do, but if I do its only one there aren't many or many aspects to the one.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 12:32 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
"Though I also have the narrative voice." As I understand it, this is the voice one is supposed to listen to in meditative thought. This is the voice that observes, without passion and without pain.

The thoughts of the observer observing the thoughts of the observer. It's like looking into the reflection of a mirror. And that is about as close to religious belief that I get.

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 12:43 AM

MAGONSDAUGHTER

Anthony, I face none of your dilemmas because I don't believe in a god/creator/holy father/universal law giver. All religions are inconsistent because they reflect they that created them - us - people. That is why you get some Christians who will say that obediance is everything, because they follow the God of Abraham, the harsh, punitive, authoritative figure who hands out punishments of death and rewards those who show blind obediance, and the Christian who believes that forgiveness and compassion are everything because they follow the teachings of Jesus. That is why you have the Muslim who believes that one must wage the holy war against the infidel and the Muslim who follows a path of peace.

All people who follow a religion or are religious cherry pick their beliefs based on their own value system, or the value system they were raised with. That is why many of the laws of the Old Testament seem outrageous to us now, they were values shared by a tough desert tribe who lived harsh lives that bear no relation to our own thousands of years ago.

I think it more truthful to say that man creates god in his own image, rather than the other way around.

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 5:06 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I think it more truthful to say that man creates god in his own image, rather than the other way around.

And some people like me are too lazy to create god, so we piece together a Buffet god from gods already created.

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"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 5:29 AM

HK,

Your story made me smile. My husband and I were very amused, because we go through that all the time. Story of hubby's life, actually. (Except he calls it his "gut" instead "intuition.") Thanks for sharing, cause it is good to know others have the same rational/intellectual conflicts with their intuitions as we do. And our Intuition talks the same way too, "Because I said so." Doesn't that just annoy the hell out of you? Would it kill to say why?

I also agree that you know when your god is talking and when it is something else. It is part of a relationship, knowing someone intimately. If my husband came to me and said, "I want us to stab our son," my response wouldn't be, "Wait, are you sure?" No. I would say, "Who are you, and what have you done with Hubby?"

My god would never ask me to do anything contrary to the laws he has put in my heart.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 7:35 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

Thanks to all who have chimed in with experiences and advice on this topic.

It has really helped me to solidify my feelings on this issue.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 7:46 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
In retrospect, my post is probably easily misunderstood. I was actually responding to DT's comments about the kinds of internal thought processes people have.

Sometimes, I have five voice dialogues. They argue. ._. Though I also have the narrative voice.

I don't really like religion, so I'll decline to comment further on the main topic.

Could be a subconscious with a multiple personality ;) Of course, I'm actually serious. I used to think there were more, but I trimmed it be the " all speak at once" thing. Try to figure out where they're coming from, conscious, subconscious, unconscious. Do they show up in dreams as characters?

I find mine do, and they are very consistent recurrent characters. I think these people might live in my subconscious somewhere.

Another thing I read was that shrinks that lock people up or cut open their brains because they "hear voices" are themselves actually part of the 10% who hear no voices, and think that only dangerous criminals hear voices, and not 90% of the population, which is what seems to be the case.

Kiki,

I think Byte means the voice that reads or speaks her conscious thoughts, this lives in the conscious mine. The meditative voice is the one that lives in the unconscious, which is what I think Anthony is talking about, but I'm not sure.

Given my own experience, I think it's completely possible for someone to read the bible and have the entire text of the word of god enter into their unconscious mind as a character, and then have it voice back to them the word, and even make decisions for them as if that character of the christian god living inside their heads. In fact, having such a situation might provide a good moral compass.

I think it's easy to see when some random lunatic takes bad action and blames it on an internal voice, like when Chapman shot John Lennon, he said that it was the voice of Buddha that told him to do it, by which he meant an internal voice that he believed to be Buddha. What's less obvious is how many good decisions were made by such internal moral compasses, and how many bad actions were taken by those who either lack them, or ignore them.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 7:58 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
It has really helped me to solidify my feelings on this issue.

So, what ARE your feelings on this issue? I heard mostly questions in the first post. But now that it's more solidified, where are you standing?

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"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 7:59 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
What's less obvious is how many good decisions were made by such internal moral compasses, and how many bad actions were taken by those who either lack them, or ignore them.

Good point.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 8:41 AM

Quote:
I think Byte means the voice that reads or speaks her conscious thoughts, this lives in the conscious mine.

Exactly. I'll respond to the rest by PM because I don't want to detract from Anthony's original topic.

Something that comes to mind as people mention a meditative voice or a God voice is an experiment. Part of the brain could be stimulated to feel a presence in a sensory deprived environment, and in religious people, they often interpreted or reported the experience as the presence of God. The experience was reported as a positive or comforting one, religious or not.

Maybe in a way, God exists and a number of people have minds hardwired to feel and recognize him. Maybe God is a sense that bolsters a person in hard times when they feel isolated and struggling to keep living. Maybe we're all actually summoners of a divine spark, and scientists just stumbled on the mechanism to tap into that energy and call down some wrath. Or, I dunno. I can toss out a few RPG video game references here that would be applicable if someone wants. Magic? Mana? Buffs?

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 10:09 AM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
I remember as a youth, someone was relaying to me the Bible story of a man being ordered to sacrifice his own son. At the pivotal moment of the story, I was asked what I thought the protagonist should do. I said, confidently, "He didn't do it. It's a test. Killing your son would be wrong."

Then, with some consternation, my Bible teacher gave me the end of the story. The man was actually supposed to go through with the murder of his son, because God said so. God sent an angel at the last minute to stop him, but this loyalty test and its implications disturbed me for the rest of my life until even today.

My question would be, if God is all knowing why does he have to test one's loyalty?

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 11:03 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by m52nickerson:
My question would be, if God is all knowing why does he have to test one's loyalty?

The Jewish/Christian God is not really all knowing. If we have true FREE will, he doesn't really know what we are going to choose next.

But, I don't think this God tests people for loyalty. I believe that is a misinterpretation of the authors at the time the Bible was written.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 12:44 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Quote:
I think Byte means the voice that reads or speaks her conscious thoughts, this lives in the conscious mine.

Exactly. I'll respond to the rest by PM because I don't want to detract from Anthony's original topic.

Something that comes to mind as people mention a meditative voice or a God voice is an experiment. Part of the brain could be stimulated to feel a presence in a sensory deprived environment, and in religious people, they often interpreted or reported the experience as the presence of God. The experience was reported as a positive or comforting one, religious or not.

Maybe in a way, God exists and a number of people have minds hardwired to feel and recognize him. Maybe God is a sense that bolsters a person in hard times when they feel isolated and struggling to keep living. Maybe we're all actually summoners of a divine spark, and scientists just stumbled on the mechanism to tap into that energy and call down some wrath. Or, I dunno. I can toss out a few RPG video game references here that would be applicable if someone wants. Magic? Mana? Buffs?

Sorry, my brain is tapped.

I think the closer we get to God, scientifically, the more it seems that there is a God.

Some people have a condition called "Freemanic Paracusia" where the internal narrative voice is Morgan Freeman. Not sure where that came from.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 1:36 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I keep meaning to reply here, and give a meaningful explanation, but activity in other threads keeps pulling my attention away.

After hearing someone else say it, (in this case several someones) it seemed obvious. If God asks something of me that I consider abhorrent, then he/she can not truly be the God I worship. He/She may be some powerful thing, and may be able to hurt me, but that isn't my God.

This understanding reminded me of my grandmother's favorite saying, spoken daily and often.

"Dios es Amor" or in English, "God is Love."

What better gauge can there be? And it was there all along, throughout my life, to guide me. Turns out I needed you all to help me remember.

Thanks,

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 2:50 PM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!

Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
The Jewish/Christian God is not really all knowing. If we have true FREE will, he doesn't really know what we are going to choose next.

But, I don't think this God tests people for loyalty. I believe that is a misinterpretation of the authors at the time the Bible was written.

I don't believe that an all knowing God is incompatible with free will.

That being said, God in the bible is described as all knowing...

Psalm 139:2-6

2You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
5You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.

Isaiah 40:13-14

13 Who can fathom the Spirit of the LORD,
or instruct the LORD as his counselor?
14 Whom did the LORD consult to enlighten him,
and who taught him the right way?
Who was it that taught him knowledge,
or showed him the path of understanding?

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 2:52 PM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I know every decision Anthony, age 10, will make in his life.

But Anthony, age 10, has Free Will.

This is how I reconcile the two.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 3:10 PM

CHRISISALL

Honestly, I believe in no anthropomorphic 'God.'
No DUDE up 'there.'

I believe in a 'Versal energy flow, a 'Force' if you will. We, our cats, our bacteria are all physical expressions of the multi-dimensional living spirit of high speed quantum particles.
God.

The Treknobabbling Chrisisall

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 3:17 PM

Taoism has a similar basis, like the force, driven by something unknown, or unknowable.

I've been meaning to check out Buddhism at some point.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 3:22 PM

CHRISISALL

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:

I've been meaning to check out Buddhism at some point.

It the only 'way' I know of that has both a sense of humour, AND the requirement to question its own system.
I like that.

The laughing Chrisisall

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 4:36 PM

Someone sent me this which I feel the need to share.

That's what a ship is, you know - it's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs.

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 5:56 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by m52nickerson:
That being said, God in the bible is described as all knowing...

Psalm 139:2-6

2You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
you discern my thoughts from afar.
3You search out my path and my lying down
and are acquainted with all my ways.
4Even before a word is on my tongue,
behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
5You hem me in, behind and before,
and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
it is high; I cannot attain it.

Isaiah 40:13-14

13 Who can fathom the Spirit of the LORD,
or instruct the LORD as his counselor?
14 Whom did the LORD consult to enlighten him,
and who taught him the right way?
Who was it that taught him knowledge,
or showed him the path of understanding?

These passages depict God as all seeing. He can see everything happening in the present. He knows me well enough to be able to predict what I might say in the future. (So does my husband.) I think he knows enough that he can calculate a probability chart of likely choices.

But if he knows what we will choose, that means the choice was already made. Doesn't sound free to me.

But then, I've never really believed in predestination or God's plan or anything like that.

ETA: Besides, Psalms is poetry. There is a limit to just how literally one can read it.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Tuesday, December 20, 2011 7:22 PM

RIONAEIRE

Beir bua agus beannacht

I believe that God knows what I'm going to do, but He doesn't choose what I'm going to do. If He was choosing then I would not end up in the same scrapes I do end up in in real life, its called being human. Its more like a video you've seen before, you know what will happen even though you didn't choose for things to go that way. Not a perfect analogy but best I can come up with now.

"A completely coherant River means writers don't deliver" KatTaya

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 4:13 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by RionaEire:
Its more like a video you've seen before, you know what will happen even though you didn't choose for things to go that way.

The key question here is, can you change this video that God has seen before?

Can you make a different choice he has already seen to arrive at an alternate ending?

If you can't, then it feels like predestination and absence of free will to me. We would just be puppets whose strings are pulled by an already written script.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 4:14 AM

DT, that is funny re Morgan Freeman.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 5:09 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

"If you can't, then it feels like predestination and absence of free will to me. We would just be puppets whose strings are pulled by an already written script."

Hello,

I'm not sure why you feel this way. When you remember an event from your childhood, does remembering it suddenly strip your young self of free will?

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 5:43 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
I'm not sure why you feel this way. When you remember an event from your childhood, does remembering it suddenly strip your young self of free will?

It does not, only because I assume this: at the time, I could have chosen something else. And then I'd be remembering something different today.

Are you saying we are simply living out God's memories? All this has already happened, and that is why God knows what we'll do next? Cause we've already made our choices? And all the influences we consider in our choices are simply so we can stick to the old choices we've already made?

I guess I am confused. The past has already been written by us, so that is how we know what happened. The future is not yet written by us, so nobody knows what will happen. I don't understand how someone can know the future with any certainty unless it has already happened. A probable future, yes. A certain future, no.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 6:01 AM

Freedom is Important because People are Important

Hello,

I imagine our perception of time like this:

We are writing the story of our lives. We know each word that we are writing as we write it. We can remember the words we have already written. We can plan to write some words in the future, but we can't know for sure that we will write those words until we have written them. We are unable to change the words we have already written, but when we wrote them, we could have chosen any words we wished to choose. At the end of our lives, the story will be as we have written it.

I imagine God to be like my wife. He can impatiently skip ahead to the last page of the story to see how it ends. Doing this doesn't change any of the author's choices, which were made by the author. But it lets him know how the story goes.

The 'magic power of God', as I see it, is that he can skip ahead to the end of the story even though we are still writing it. Again, he isn't changing the story. We still choose all the words. But he isn't confined to the page we are working on. He can skip ahead to any part he likes.

Sometimes I think of some Eastern religions, which posit that we are all God, we are all the Universe, and the Universe is trying to understand itself.

And then I think of God reading my story. And I think- if we weren't here to write this story, God wouldn't have anything to read.

I like to believe that God is an optimistic reader, and is rooting for all the characters to have a happy ending. I also like to think that when we finish writing our story, he will give us an advance so that we can begin working on a sequel.

--Anthony

_______________________________________________

"In every war, the state enacts a tax of freedom upon the citizenry. The unspoken promise is that the tax shall be revoked at war's end. Endless war holds no such promise. Hence, Eternal War is Eternal Slavery." --Admiral Robert J. Henner

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 6:20 AM

Quote:
The future is not yet written by us, so nobody knows what will happen. I don't understand how someone can know the future with any certainty unless it has already happened. A probable future, yes. A certain future, no.

Theoretically, that would be an aspect of omniscience.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 7:04 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by AnthonyT:
I imagine God to be like my wife. He can impatiently skip ahead to the last page of the story to see how it ends.

So, omniscience is a form of time travel into the future?

But as with all time travel stories, it is only one possible future. Maybe one probable future. But I have grave objections to its being a certain future.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 7:21 AM

I would posit it's probably less like time travel and more like existing outside time.

Quantum Mechanics seems to suggest there is only one future, and events in the future can reach back and influence the past and present. Quantum mechanics also posits that each potential action might spin off multiple "worlds" where the outcome is different, but we have more experimental evidence for distinctions of past, present and future being an illusion than we do multiple worlds.

Causality is just something humans impose over the universe for a sense of narrative. Perhaps we see the universe as expanding, and time moving forward relative to our sense of forward, but the universe is really contracting, and time is moving backwards.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 7:53 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Bytemite:
Quantum Mechanics seems to suggest there is only one future, and events in the future can reach back and influence the past and present. Quantum mechanics also posits that each potential action might spin off multiple "worlds" where the outcome is different, but we have more experimental evidence for distinctions of past, present and future being an illusion than we do multiple worlds.

Causality is just something humans impose over the universe for a sense of narrative. Perhaps we see the universe as expanding, and time moving forward relative to our sense of forward, but the universe is really contracting, and time is moving backwards.

Interesting! Explain?

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 8:08 AM

NIKI2

Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...

Quote:
Jesus was a person, real and whole. He was the best part of humanity IMO. Like Mother Theresa. An example of what we can aspire to in our own individual lives.

Exactly like Buddha.

Quote:
Or it may be that God is US now, every living molecule. A walk in the skin of existence, so to speak.

That's one of buddhist teachings.

Quote:
this is the voice one is supposed to listen to in meditative thought. This is the voice that observes, without passion and without pain.

That is perhaps the essence of buddhism.

Quote:
All religions are inconsistent because they reflect they that created them - us - people.

That's my main problem with organized religion.

Quote:
laws of the Old Testament seem outrageous to us now, they were values shared by a tough desert tribe who lived harsh lives that bear no relation to our own thousands of years ago.

I think it more truthful to say that man creates god in his own image, rather than the other way around.

Absolutely, in my opinion.

Quote:
If God asks something of me that I consider abhorrent, then he/she can not truly be the God I worship. He/She may be some powerful thing, and may be able to hurt me, but that isn't my God.

One of the main reasons I don't accept a "god".

Quote:
I believe in a 'Versal energy flow, a 'Force' if you will. We, our cats, our bacteria are all physical expressions of the multi-dimensional living spirit of high speed quantum particles.

A bit "scientific", but also right on, and a buddhist teaching put in a different way. All those express my own feelings in one way or another.

I've related before that I began with "Christian" parents...Protestant I believe...who weren't religious at all and just went to church on Sundays. Then I had a Mormon best friend, read the Book of Mormon over and over, and converted. I don't think I was very religious even then (mid-teens), it was more that there were two Mormons who had to visit twice weekly to "instruct" me--both were young, good looking and Australian, and I've always been a sucker for Ozzie or British accents. But I DID search my soul, I DID read the Book of Mormon and truly believed I was searching. So I got "dunked". Shortly thereafter, I found out about Mormon racism--which NOBODY had told me about--was shocked and disgusted, and left. It was inconceivable to me that a RELIGION could be racist! I was real naive, needless to say. But it was the point where I probably rejected organized religion.

For decades after that I had no religion...I was an agnostic. Then I had a co-worker who was a buddhist monk, and, when questioned, what she had to say about buddhism struck such a strong chord with what I believed that I investigated it. I've been a buddhist ever since, and aside from not having decided how I feel about reincarnation, it's never gone against my conscience or given me reason to question my belief in it.

I hate religions because of all the harm they've done over the ages. They are, to me, the epitome of not having to think for yourself FOR MANY PEOPLE (NOT, by all means, all those who believe in a religion or a god). The historical power struggles and politics of "the church" (any church) say to me that religion is something humans twist to fit their own needs. I believe those who don't question themselves follow something (or nothing) blindly; that anyone who actually spends time thinking about it, honestly and with self-knowledge (the latter being by far the most important), will come up with answers which make them compassionate people...flawed, we all are, but compassionate.

The concept of a god has always been at odds with logic to me, ever since I really began to think about it and made and effort to know and accept myself and, as an outgrowth, humanity.

Now Jesus, I believe in firmly. Not as a deity, but as someone like Buddha or Ghandi; a compassionate, wise person who existed once. There are historical questions as to whether Jesus met Buddha, each learned from the other, etc. I don't know, but it's possible to me, because I consider both to have huge similarities in their love, acceptance and best wishes for humanity.

But a "god"? No; history is to replete with different gods to worship, the need in man to answer the unanswerable, the fear of death, etc.; a single, all-knowing god to look to is just another version of this, to me. The thing about a primitive culture which leads a terribly harsh life coming up with a better "afterlife" to strive to (which means pleasing SOMEONE to achieve) is so right on, from all I observed in Afghanistan. Life then was harsh in one form or another for everyone (except royalty), life had nothing like the value we put on it in America, and was just a series of battles to survive; ergo, there had to be something better "out there" somewhere, and belief in it was desperately needed just TO survive.

I think man will always strive for a god, someone to look to, someone to guide them, until and unless we evolve beyond it...which sadly I can't envision happening for our species. I haven't evolved past that need, either, I just can't reconcile it so I accept it. For me acceptance is the biggie; that the living of life is what's important, the "path" to consciously striving to be what I believe in and letting that be the "goal"--no goal to be achieved, just one to be worked on. It is at the heart of every religion that has survived, the teachings of being the best and most compassionate person one can be. All religions just go beyond that to have something overseeing and judging how well we do it. I don't "need" someone watching and judging, that's the only difference.

In other words, Anthony, my answer would be I guess that I accept what I know to be right and need nothing beyond that to confuse me and make me question an authoritative voice which might tell me to do something I believe is wrong. If we are honest with ourselves and self-aware, we don't need anyone else telling us what to do.

The caveat being, of course, that I fail almost daily, but I accept that, too--I know when I've done something wrong; sometimes I choose to do it anyway, but if I do, I judge myself; sometimes I do it without thinking and regret it later, but I try to be compassionate and accept my flaws, then try to do better.

Long answer to complex question which, for me, is actually simple.

Quote:
He can impatiently skip ahead to the last page of the story to see how it ends. Doing this doesn't change any of the author's choices, which were made by the author. But it lets him know how the story goes.

Anthony, I know there are others like me who do that, but it's nice to hear of one. It in no way affects my enjoyment of the book, and I don't always do it. But I came to realize that I do it more often with a really good writer; with lesser writers, I don't care (and often don't bother to even finish the book). Just found it interesting.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 8:24 AM

Well, it was an idea put forward by cosmologists. We don't really know how the universe begins and ends, so there's some speculation. One is that with the way the universe is growing, coupled with dark energy and matter, that the universe might grow forever, but the stars will eventually burn all available fusionable material, and everything will be so far apart that the universe will be dark and cold and lifeless. Another is that the expansion of the universe may eventually slow, then start contracting, ending in a big crunch. Still another is that the universe "just misses" big bangs or big crunches due to quantum effects and so the universe is perpetual and expands and contracts in cycles (yo-yo universe).

In any case, some cosmologists believe that space and time are so interconnected that ONLY when space is EXPANDING does time seem to move forward relative to your perceptions, and that if space started to contract, time could potentially move backwards relative to our perceptions.

The question is, if time were moving backwards, would the shattered glass reform itself and jump from the ground back up to the table, or would we even be able to notice at all? If glasses jumping to a table were the norm of an expanding timeline, but we were living in a contracting timeline, we would interpret physics and gravity as we know it.

The idea cosmologists have is that the entirety of history would retrace itself as the universe collapsed, and that the effect of an event would come before it's cause (reverse causality), but I don't think that's the only possibility, and I think there's some suggestion that physicists still don't have the relationship of time and space right.

So personally, I think it's more a bunch of hypothetical philosophy than anything. But, the yo-yo universe speculation could gain some relevance if the universe were actually the inside (or rather, other side) of a black hole.

Think about it.

In any case, there's been experiments done measuring the position of particles, and a peculiar quantum mechanical effect was observed that it seems that measurements of a particle in the FUTURE could effect the measurement of the particle in the present, but you only realize it after you've measured again in the future and looked at the data, compared to a time when you didn't measure multiple times. Yet, each time, the measurements are consistent.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 8:50 AM

M52NICKERSON

DALEK!

Quote:
Originally posted by canttakesky:
The key question here is, can you change this video that God has seen before?

Can you make a different choice he has already seen to arrive at an alternate ending?

If you can't, then it feels like predestination and absence of free will to me. We would just be puppets whose strings are pulled by an already written script.

The difference is between "can" and "will". While I think it is possible for you to do something different then what God knows you will do, you simply will not.

I do not fear God, I fear the ignorance of man.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 9:30 AM

Thanks, Byte. I will have to read more about this. Very fascinating.

-----
"Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it. Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want - and their kids pay for it." - Richard Lamm

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 9:40 AM

Other related topic, we've mapped a lot of the background radiation coming from the big bang, and while it's right with the predicted frequency for the big bang, we've found that the intensity of the waves is inconsistent and varies from place to place. This, coupled with the observation that the universe has clusters of galaxy intermixed with lots of empty space suggests that the universe expands unevenly.

And, if expansion of space IS tied in with time... Then time actually progresses at a different rate in different pockets of the universe.

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Wednesday, December 21, 2011 9:50 AM