Define God

@Frank Apisa,

Apisa doesn't half believe in God. He goes all the way.

What would he do without God?

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Can't read spendi's post without a bump.

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@neologist,

neologist wrote:

If you believe in God, what are his/her attributes? If you don't believe, explain what the term means to you.

     What I believe in is that if the 'Word of God' is some psychotronic communication that has reached us at some point of space and time, and if it is send by another ILF (another culture) there is great probability for our interpretation of the 'Word of God' and of the concept of God itself to be a cross-cultural misunderstanding.
     It has been explained explicitly to us, but we still cannot find any plausible interpretation of God.
     If we assume that God (without any preassigned interpretation value) is really omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent what plausible interpretations it might have?
     One such interpretation might be that God is actually the Biosphere of the Earth. It really is
     - omnipresent (everywhere around the planet; we are much more connected with the Biosphere on the Earth than we can possibly imagine);
     - omniscient (every creature of the biosphere on the Earth has some form & degree of intelligence);
     - omnipotent (it is in complex equilibrium and has huge potential to maintain that equilibrium thus far, no matter that 98% of the species ever existed on the Earth have become extinct by nowadays)
     ... yes, it may be omnipotent but not to infinity. The very moment the acidification of the atmosphere and of the ocean pass the 'event horizon' the things may get out of control actually ... and even God (the Biosphere of the Earth) would not be able to save us from our greed and stupidity.

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@Herald,

Herald wrote:

neologist wrote:
If you believe in God, what are his/her attributes? If you don't believe, explain what the term means to you.
     What I believe in is that if the 'Word of God' is some psychotronic communication that has reached us at some point of space and time, and if it is send by another ILF (another culture) there is great probability for our interpretation of the 'Word of God' and of the concept of God itself to be a cross-cultural misunderstanding.
     It has been explained explicitly to us, but we still cannot find any plausible interpretation of God.
     If we assume that God (without any preassigned interpretation value) is really omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent what plausible interpretations it might have?
     One such interpretation might be that God is actually the Biosphere of the Earth. It really is
     - omnipresent (everywhere around the planet; we are much more connected with the Biosphere on the Earth than we can possibly imagine);
     - omniscient (every creature of the biosphere on the Earth has some form & degree of intelligence);
     - omnipotent (it is in complex equilibrium and has huge potential to maintain that equilibrium thus far, no matter that 98% of the species ever existed on the Earth have become extinct by nowadays)
     ... yes, it may be omnipotent but not to infinity. The very moment the acidification of the atmosphere and of the ocean pass the 'event horizon' the things may get out of control actually ... and even God (the Biosphere of the Earth) would not be able to save us from our greed and stupidity.

One aspect you left out. The biosphere is at the mercy of the sun and CFCs

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple wrote:

One aspect you left out. The biosphere is at the mercy of the sun and CFCs

     The Chlorofluorocarbons have been replaced in the 1990s as refrigerant and the data show that the Ozone hole is shrinking. What do you mean by 'they mercy of the Sun' - there always have been solar eruptions, and in the past some of them have been more furious.
     The solar activity is something that we cannot control ... for now. What we can control is to stop digging to infinity the bitumen sands in Alberta for the production of petroleum at a cost of USD 1.2 for USD 1.0 of petrol product, and to start using that sands in the construction industry for example - for thermal insulation or something.
     What we call economic growth is actually devastating to infinity the renewable natural resources of the Earth, and nobody can tell for sure why is that. With or without God we simply cannot devastate constrained natural resources to infinity - the equation just does not go.

1 Reply

@Herald,

Herald wrote:

Krumple wrote:
One aspect you left out. The biosphere is at the mercy of the sun and CFCs
     The Chlorofluorocarbons have been replaced in the 1990s as refrigerant and the data show that the Ozone hole is shrinking. What do you mean by 'they mercy of the Sun' - there always have been solar eruptions, and in the past some of them have been more furious.
     The solar activity is something that we cannot control ... for now. What we can control is to stop digging to infinity the bitumen sands in Alberta for the production of petroleum at a cost of USD 1.2 for USD 1.0 of petrol product, and to start using that sands in the construction industry for example - for thermal insulation or something.
     What we call economic growth is actually devastating to infinity the renewable natural resources of the Earth, and nobody can tell for sure why is that. With or without God we simply cannot devastate constrained natural resources to infinity - the equation just does not go.

It is hypothesized that in the future some 5 billion years from now the sun will expand and possibly engulf the Earth, thus removing the biosphere completely.

But before that about resources. I agree there is a finite amount on Earth but I say within the next 30 or 40 years we will be extracting resources from either the moon, in the form of Helium 3 which can be used for our new energy source. Or perhaps even before that NASA is working on a large scale solar ray that can collect the suns light and send down the energy which can be gathered 24 hours a day. Also NASA has plans for strip mining asteroids that have close fly by orbits of the Earth. To gather resources from while they are near by. In other words there are options.

1 Reply

@Herald,

Herald wrote:

. . .If we assume that God (without any preassigned interpretation value) is really omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent . . .

What permission do you claim to make such assumptions? For example, the assertion of omnisceince implies that God must know our outcomes. It places a necessity upon a God for whom there is no necessity. God has no more requirement to peer into our moral futures than you or I have to spy into our child's diary.

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple wrote:

It is hypothesized that in the future some 5 billion years from now the sun will expand and possibly engulf the Earth, thus removing the biosphere completely.

We don't have 5 Bys - the game with the biosphere will be over in no more than 1-2 Bys ... and until then, your assignment that you have not wished but that the Gods have predestined for you is to move the biosphere from the Earth to Saturn, in the first place ... and after that to conquer the Galaxy.

Krumple wrote:

... but I say within the next 30 or 40 years we will be extracting resources from either the moon, in the form of Helium 3 which can be used for our new energy source

... and this He3 will increase even more the water that is the greatest green house component in the atmosphere on the Earth - the solution is to recycle the H2O and CO2 into renewable fuels (to produce CH4 out of CO2 and H2O with solar and/or wind energy, much more efficiently than it is done today), actually to use the chemical compounds as chemical nanobattery to store solar and wind and water-potential energy. If you want to restore the biosphere of the Earth to its former glory all of our economic and non-economic activities should become around 100% renewable.

Krumple wrote:

Or perhaps even before that NASA is working on a large scale solar ray that can collect the suns light and send down the energy which can be gathered 24 hours a day.

... and why do you need a large solar ray - several smaller solar rays is much better. The best case scenario of solar energy utilisation is to make the whole building a thermal generator, operating on diffused & adjustable natural ligting, and heated and lighted in the rest of the time by super-renwable energy sources (like for example heated by burning hydrogen and lighted by lucent wall paper, produced from glowing genetically modified silk of silk-worm stocked with genes of glowing medusa).
... on first time the free fall into the black hole of the exponent of CO2/NOx/SO2/Dust 2.5 & 10.0 emissions pumped out into the atmosphere has to be stopped ... or at least the increase to be reduced to a minimum, in order to have more time ... and the population to be organised and educated and funded fairly in order to stay fixed at around 7 BN - if we cannot stop the exponent of the population overgrowth we are all DOA ... sooner than expected. The idea to stimulate the population overgrowth to infinity in order to increase the pensions of the elderly population is a road to nowhere. With every day and in any way we have to share the limited resources with more and more people.

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@neologist,

neologist wrote:

What permission do you claim to make such assumptions?

I personally don't have any of the kind, but this is the official position of most of the popular religions that God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. Honestly speaking I don't know where the etymology of these claims comes from.

neologist wrote:

For example, the assertion of omnisceince implies that God must know our outcomes.

Well, this is not exactly so if the things are exposed partially to stochastics. Suppose you know everything about Roulette - you know the odds, the probability for every single number and a group of numbers, the low probability of double zero, you have the data of all previous turns and all the circumstances around them, you have a supercomputer that can process any statistics and can make any predictions - in few words you know much more about the Roulette than the Croupier will ever master. Can you tell for sure which will be the number of the first turn, of the second turn, etc. - of course not. That is how God (if exists) operates on the grounds of omniscience without knowing a priori the outcome.

neologist wrote:

God has no more requirement to peer into our moral futures than you or I have to spy into our child's diary.

The Candida and the lactic bacteria from the biosphere are not spying into your diary (whatever this might mean) - they are operating directly into your stomach, if you are curious to know.
... and these things with the moral concern sooner the ability of the human species to avoid self-destruction and/or extinction and/or auto-torture as long as possible. With or without the Word of God the truth of the matter is that we can become immortal as species ... if we succeed to find the right way.

1 Reply

@Herald,

Herald wrote:

. . . but this is the official position of most of the popular religions that God is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent. . .

But it may not be the correct position.

God is capable of telling the outcome in advance. Were he to do so for each human, we would no longer be assured of free will . . .

1 Reply

@neologist,

neologist wrote:

But it may not be the correct position.

Yet it comes from somewhere. It cannot simply appear everywhere and out of nothing.

neologist wrote:

God is capable of telling the outcome in advance.

Just like us - it is called forecast and is based on extrapolation of previous data and analyses. The people that cannot understand the justification call it 'prophecy'. All the weather forecasts may be viewed as prophecies if one does not know how they have been calculated on the computer model.
What if God (who/what-ever it might be) disposes with better experience, better data, better view of the things, and better inference engine (higher intellectual & logical abilities) and can calculate much better than we do (if we can calculate anything serious at all). Actually you don't need to be God and to have supercomputer and super inference engine to see that we are going to Hell by destroying the renewable resources of the Earth and replacing them with man-made 'economic development' (90% of which is absolute junk). We cannot calculate the value of our biosphere and cannot assess which composition of the atmosphere is better and which is worse, and which is a one-way-ticket to Hell.

neologist wrote:

Were he to do so for each human ...

I am not sure that God (if exists) would be dealing personally with each human - this is our interpretation of the things. Suppose you are a higher ILF and want to send some message to another ILF that would be faced to self-destruction 1 By after you have become extinct for some of your descendants might be there - would you deal with anyone personally (who you don't even know) or sooner will send a general message, concerning the whole species? This personal communication with God by the prophets and by some pseudo-prophets and by any fortune-tellers and quacks have always been very suspicious.

neologist wrote:

... we would no longer be assured of free will . . .

If you are curious to know with or without God you don't have free will. You cannot leave on a planet with constrained resources inhabited by 7.3 BN people, which planet is headed to the 'Dimension X' as a result of the continuous destruction of the renewable resources, without even knowing what we are doing ... and to be free. You cannot depend on the money payments you receive each month and to be free - free from what? There is no way for this to happen. Yet I don't believe that we are predestined by some determinism and by some Will of God - this is ridiculous. What is the purpose to create something (if we have been created by Him) with a great number of degrees of freedom and predestine it with some determinism. It makes no sense to be plastered on an aqua rollba fron birth to death.
So, we are not plastered too much but we are not free as well. You cannot be free even if you possess more money than you will ever be able to spend, because everything happens - there are some other 7.3 BN people wondering 24/7 how to acquire your money, for they may be of the opinion that there is no way for a person possessing several billions for example in liquid assets by selling coal and petroleum to have earned that money by honest & hard work. If you divide 50 BN to the time the corresponding person has worked - how much is their hour rate? Nobody is free on this planet and sooner or later could be caught by the past. Believe it or not, but there is no way for such things to be foreseen by ordinary people having lived 3000 years ago and for this to happen now - all that story with God and the prophets mush have been something else.

1 Reply

@Herald,

My approach is considerably less complicated. The word omniscience implies complete foreknowledge, that the God who created us knew in advance the thousands of years of misery his creatures would endure, thereby making him responsible for our state of affairs. Such an indictment is not supported by scripture and I reject it outright. Those who subscribe to such a view, if not intellectually challenged, have an agenda not in our best interests.

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@neologist,

neologist wrote:

My approach is considerably less complicated. The word omniscience implies complete foreknowledge, that the God who created us knew in advance the thousands of years of misery his creatures would endure, thereby making him responsible for our state of affairs. Such an indictment is not supported by scripture and I reject it outright. Those who subscribe to such a view, if not intellectually challenged, have an agenda not in our best interests.

Your whole god can turn on and off knowledge is absolute nonsense and you only came up with it to try and get around the problem of having knowledge. It would be like watching a movie and then erasing it from your memory? Or you can just magically decide that you want to know something and then all of a sudden you know it. It is absurd.

How about a more realistic explanation? Humans created the god concept and attempted to place characteristics on that god but as it turns out these concepts are contradictory or they present consequences that just don't match up to expectations of that god so believers continue to weave nonsense around to make excuses for how they want their god to function so they can sleep at night.

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@Krumple,

I believe the god concept that Neo is implying here is a god of calculation coupled with ability to fulfil rather than on/offable foreknowledge.

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@neologist,

"Define God"

man made.

1 Reply

@djjd62,

strengthing bones

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@neologist,

neologist wrote:

...that the God who created us knew in advance the thousands of years of misery his creatures would endure...

Where is the evidence of that? ... and what is your interpretation of the 'prophecies'? If you have enough knowledge of applied math and statistics you would be able to make forecasts that to the ignorant part of the population would look like 'prophecies' - what is your personal explanation of the 'prophecies'?

1 Reply

@Krumple,

Krumple wrote:

"Define God" - man made.

Where is the evidence of that? - How can our own intelligence, for example, be 'man-made' - and how does that happen? What is the difference between living DNA and dead DNA ... and what is the difference between Life and Death - a living body and the same body dead in some time? ... and how can a body appear 'out of nothing' and 'out of nowhere' upon birth ... and start collecting various materials and amino-acids (and toxins, BTW) from the surrounding Environment & the Biosphere?

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@Herald,

neologist wrote:

...that the God who created us knew in advance the thousands of years of misery his creatures would endure...

Herald wrote:

Where is the evidence of that? ...

There is no evidence. Please don't take my words out of context.

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@neologist,

neologist wrote:

The word omniscience implies complete foreknowledge

Where did you get that from? IMV this is some exaggeration of the things. The classical definition in religion for omniscience is: 'the capacity to know everything that there is to know.' If you pay attention there is no 'in advance' there. Nowhere you have proved that the future is knowable. The things that are to happen in the future do not exist yet at present. One cannot know for sure something that does not exist yet, no matter whether omniscient or retard. If I know everything about the dice, like for example that the probability to have 1 is 1/6th, 2 is the same ... and so is the 6, this does not mean in any way that I know in advance what will be the outcome of the throw notwithstanding that I may have all the math before that.

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