All You Need is Love?

Let me venture a very "warm and fuzzy" notion: Love is our only real defense against nihilism.

"He's got the whole world in his hands, he's got the whole world in his hands, la la la la la..."

I hate that song.

Fortune, I'm glad you don't just have blind faith in God, or at least you make an effort not to.

By saying "God is everything" do you mean that God is just a name to be applied to everything as a whole, rather than a 'thing' in itself? So say everything is a car - the people are the tires, the stars are the windows, or something, time is the, urm, steering wheel - separately these things are just bits and bobs, but together they form a car. Do you believe that God is the car? Or is he the car-maker?

If God is all, then he must be the book, nevermind the author of the book - he's turning his own pages, right? He can't be both can he? Can he really create the world and be the world? And if he is everything, then we are him, or part of him, so if we ever commit a sin we can quite honestly say, "God did it, the bastard!" We are absolved of all guilt, it's God's fault, right?

I'm not really bothering to form too many well-structured arguments or anything like that, I'm just blurting out questions wherever I think what you say needs questioning. If you know what I mean. Is that alright?

JLNobody, assuming that nihilism is the belief that nothing exists (I'm not sure that's what it means - I don't really know anythingabout it, so correct me if that's wrong), why do we need a defence against it? I mean maybe we do, but why?

Agrote, as I understand it, Nihilism is the belief that no absolute truth exists (scepticism is the belief that we cannot know it). Love is not a relativistic truth, it is an absolute experience (like all experiences, actually), thus a great substitute for non-existent absolute truths, in the sense of ideas which are always relativistically valid or not. This applies as a response to Nihilism, which I am not here advocating).

Right, thanks. I'm not sure I understand though, sorry.

Before I was pregnant, I would not have believed that you could love someone before you actually 'knew' or experienced them. But, when I was pregnant, from the very start I loved my baby as much as anyone I had loved in my life to that point. I felt fiercely protective of him and would have even been willing to die so that he might have life. To this day, I love him more and feel a stronger bond with him than I do even my dad or my husband.

I believe that God loved His creation and subsequently mankind before he created them. When we were just an idea or a thought He had, like a woman who is carrying a child in utero. God's love is eternal...IMO.

Thank you Doglover - this is exactly what I was thinking about when I posted the portion you quoted of mine. I needed a mother's authority here for validation.

Agrote -

Whan you and I were discussion above is assuming that God indeed exists in time. If he is eternal - the whole notion of before and after is gone.

TF

Yup, that's pretty much what I was getting at.

agrote: That's the problem with analogies. If you take them too far they start to break down. The book thing was merely a descriptive device, neither God nor the universe is actually a book (at least as far as I know ).

Umm, as for the car thing, I would have to say both "car-maker" and "car". God, wills the car to exist, so the car exists. It will exist for as long as God wishes it to. Yet it does not exist independently of him, it is the extension of his will. (I always laugh when I hear that Neitzche quote "God is dead", because if the God he was talking about had actually died, then the whole universe would have ceased to exist!)

(OK, let's see...) The point of the book analogy was to illustrate (no pun intended) both how God can be timeless where we are bound by time, and how God's creation (us, our world, existence) is like a story. Any story that you care to read began as a part of it's author's mind. Yes, we are a little more complex that words on a page, like I said, no analogy is perfect.

tcis: Sorry! I really am sorry. I seem to be quite incapable of sticking to the subject of a thread! I just keep running away on strange tangents. Let me give your question a go now.

I do not believe that love is all you need. Life is a complex and varied dish with many subtle flavours. It would be a pity to go through life without sampling more of the menu! Even a little bitter twist now and then can make you appreciate the next bite of bliss all the more. I will say, however, that when it comes right down to it, Love is my favourite food!

Doglover, do you think that God also loves all His creations, including snails and moskitos? Is so, then your religious sentiments are a step closer to mine than those of most Christians.

Okay so if God is eternal, then it makes no sense to ask whether he loved his creation before he created it. I know analogies aren't perfect, but the question I was getting at there was this: can God both make his creation and be his creation? You've said he is both 'car-maker' and 'car' - does/did God make himself?

The other thing I'm wondering is that if God is eternal, or 'timeless,' why do we speak of him having 'created' the world? Surely that implies that he did it once and he hasn't done it since - but if time doesn't apply to him, that's impossible, surely. In fact, if he is timeless, can he really do anything?

I keep asking questions because, although you keep providing answers, they are very vague. Something like 'God is timeless' could be true, but really I've got no reason whatsoever to believe that it is true - no evidence and no logic seems to be able to tell me that God is timeless, so all I really have is your word to go by. I could tell you that the world is being run by invisible monkeys, working underground. And you could choose to believe me if you liked, but why the hell would you? What's the point?

Right, I also better refer to the actual topic of this thread. "All you need is love" - that could be true. Love is all I really seem to want. And I don't mean familial love - although maybe I do need that. I'm not sure I understand the reference to tanks in Baghdad, actually.

agrote: I realise my answers must seem vague and I'm really sorry. I am trying my best to make it clear and simple, the problem is that I'm a little bit vague on your questions. I can't tell where you may be coming from on this so I can't anticipate what you may or may not have already learned of the subject. Please just be patient with me .

OK. The car thing. Screw the car. What we're talking about here is the world, reality. Car makers make cars out of bits and pieces of reality, metal, plastic, glass. God makes reality. When you're talking about creating something from nothing, you're not talking about just assembling a car or carving a bit of rock into a statue, you're talking about just willing something to be. (Hence my "story" analogy, but let's not revisit that! )

OK. That brings us to the conclusion that the world is the will of God (yeah I'm not saying you have to believe it, just follow the train of thought). So, everything that is is a part of God's will. So, while God is indeed the creator, by means of the power of his/her/it's will, it also holds that God is the creation, because God's will is still a part of God. See?

You ask does God create himself. Well, yes. Inasmuch as we create ourselves through our thoughts and inner imaginings.

You ask for evidence that God is timeless. Alright, I ask you whether you would be willing to, for a moment (just a moment, don't get worried), consider that our reality is the creation of God. Ready? OK, everything that is is made by God, space, matter, time. TIME is part of our reality, thus the creation of God. He/she/it made it up! So why would God, who is greater an infinitely more powerful than his/her/it's creation be bound by it?

Alrighty, anything else? Oh, I think the tanks in Baghdad thing was an example of how, in some circumtances, you're going to need something besides love (or you might get squashed by the tanks). Or maybe it was about love not being enough when you're faced with the more violent aspects of the world.

Oh, yeah! And if you get the chance agrote, have another go at the hodge podge poem (it was you who did that verse on botany, wasn't it?) it's starting to get interesting.

Right, I'm done for now. *collective sigh of relief*

Agrote: Eternal living does not preclude the power to do anything. It simply doesn't make sence (if the being IS eternal - Like Augustine thought and the Catholic church adopted) to say he did X before or after Y. He did them noth at the same 'time'.

Imagine yourself pouring a cup of coffee, adding cream and sugar, stirring it up, and drinking it. Let's say this process thatkes a half an hour.

Imagine that 'time' in its entirity only exists inside this coffee cup - it does not effect or apply to you.

So when did you pour the coffee? For the coffee cup (the only place time exists) it was T-1, for you it was no time. When did you add sugar? For the coffee it was T-2, and for you (again) it was no time. And so on.

So for every action that went on inside the coffee cup it happened at the same time for you. Once we make you eternal - time simply makes no sense and breaks down in the conventional senses.

Apply this to a being creating a universe. If he created a universe he must have (if time actually exists - even for us) created time along with it. So just like the coffee cup, he made the universe at the same time he sent his 'son' here to save it (according to christian doctrine) and the same time he spoke through Mohammad (for the Islamic tradition). In fact he does everything at the same time - Augustine said that he lived in the constant present - he views our past, present, and future - 'presently'.

This has the interesting effect of allowing God not to have precognition - he just sees what we are about to do a if we are doing them currently.

You tougher question, and I don't think Fortune has answered it, is how God makes something from nothing. I, personally (and I am in a huge minority) don't think he does. I have no clue what it would mean for God to have the ability to do the impossible. Ex nihilo nihil fit. If God can do anything impossible or possible I have no clue why we 'must' sin. Why can't he make it so that we sin but it is actually good - then all of his creations get to go to heaven.

I also have no clue why he would even need to send his 'son' to save us. Just make it so our sins have only good consequences - yet I view them as having bad ones. Also, while we are at it, make me perfect with also being free. I will be free but my actions will be perfect (despite my intent) and we will get over this whole needing to be saved from sin bit.

I think God must make something from something. It is a law in the universe (unless you take Hartel/Hawking past thier equation and think that the universe sprung from nothing - which it didn't - it sprang from a Naken signularity - which sprang from an "undefined 3 space") and unless I believe that God made laws arbitrarily (which I don't) then God must make someting from something.

Thus I believe, since we are all made from the same thing, that the discrete unit of space (for now the quark) IS a little bit of God. This follows wisdom like in Matthew where Jesus says that to love God is the same / similar (depending on the transaltion of the greek) as loving your neighbor.

I think you are right to hammer away at this. I think faith is the belief in something that you have no good reason to believe in. Am I (or any book or anyone on this board) going to say anything to make you believe? No. It is the oddity of faith (what the catholics call the 'mystery') that if I prooved every book in the bible true a non-believer would not believe and if I prooved it all false a believer would not stop believing.

This has lead to the athiest (also a believer in my mind) to throw up his hands and say that the theist needs to come up with any criterion to which he would cease believing. There is none - such is the nature of belief. That i why it is moot to debate a persons faith - you can debate the particulars within the faith - but not the faith itself.

JLN:

Now that I have stated all that I did above, I must then, see that God loves all of his creations in the same way - as little parts of him. It seems to be a bit silly to place (like Augustine did) things in a hierarchy. I suppose we could in that the things that have more capability could be higher on the chain, or perhaps the ones that last longer, are higher on the chain, but to a thing that is so different these would seem arbitrary at best.

I have a tough time bying into the egocentric 'humans as favored creations' but. I think this type of thinking lead to a Aristotelean / Dantean version of reality with us at the center of the universe.

TF

thethinkfactory:re. How God makes something from nothing. I did attempt to address that issue in my last post. Succesful or not I'll give my argument again so you can judge it. God's creation is the result of God's will. It is, in fact, his/her/it's will. Just like the pictures in your head are the result of your imagination. See?

As to why we aren't perfect, well I don't pretend to know the meaning of life but I do know that according to Christian (and other major religions')teaching, God did, in fact, make perfect people. They are called angels. Our function (whatever that turns out to be) is different from that of the angels and thus requires US to be different. Beyond that, I can't give you any reasons why things are the way they are.

I agree with you that trying to convert a non-believer with argument is inevitably pointless, people come to religion because it feels right for them, not because someone convinced them to. Which may cause you to wonder why I have spent so much time attempting to explain why a religious view of the world can be a reasoning one. It's simply that I (as I rather rashly said in my original post on this thread) wish that more people would take the time to understand why sensible people would choose to believe in something which may seem strange and even impossible to the casual observer. Likewise, I wish that more people would take the time to question their own beliefs before they condemn those who do not share them.

So very many words. I really should learn how o write a short post.

God was dyslexic. Dog is love.

Heh heh. If God's dyslexic then he/she/it is not reading my posts. Cool, I can totally say whatever I want!

Fortune: I can mage imaginary pictures in my head because my head exists. This is not any comparison to making the universe from nothing. You have posited my head existing prior to the pictures. I can see how these are an effort of will - but one of the simplest laws in the known universe is that something material has something else material prior to it.

As far as perfect beings being Angels - how did Lucifer come to fall? The Morning Star was the favored angel (which also is an argument against thier perfection - as perfect beings would all be equal) and he brought a war against God with thousands of other angels.

Perhaps you are arguing for the perfection of Seraphim and Cherubim - but those are not Angels. Angels are wingless denizens of the Lord - as far as tradition goes - you really don't see many descriptions of any of the creatures I mentioned biblically.

Also, I am not sure that people come to faith because of what 'feels right to them'. I agree with Kierkegarrd that reason can lead you to faith - but fiath in something you have a vague feeling on seems like blind and uneducated arbitrariness.

I think a person must have some emperical evidence for thier belief or they can and will believe in anything. The truth is - without organized religion and scripture I woudl not belief in the concept of religion that I do. I see evidence in the bible and other places for christianity and that has tested (emperically) correct for me - but belief - although in something that you have no direct evidence for - seems arbitrary at best.

In other words - eidence can take you so far - but faith has to take you to certainty - which evidence cannot give you and coicidentally what God demands.

TF

AMEN!!!

Mmmmwwwwaaaahhhhhh!!!

Fortune, it is my opinion that people "believe" in the irrational notion of God because they intuit its meaningfulness. It makes subjective sense to them. I respect that. It does not make sense to me. I believe other things that make no sense to some fellow A2Kers, and that's fine. But I do not BELIEVE in a no-God (and worship Him) as did Madeline O'hare. As I've said before here. The theistic thesis simply makes no sense to me, and I turn away from it. I am a passive atheist, not an activist Atheist. I am a practitioner of Soto Zen Buddhism/Taoism. A practice (or religion if you wish) that has no need for gods, souls, afterlifes, moral absolutes, etc..

Another subjective statement about the difference between belief and faith. I've also stated this somewhere before. To me a belief is a cognitive thesis, a proposition that cannot be, or has not yet been, proven or falsified. It is held in the absence of evidence. That does not mean that it is false as such, only that it has not been, or cannot be, demonstrated to be true or false. Beliefs are typical of religious, and some philosophical/metaphysical positions and systems. By contrast, faith, to me, is an attitude. For example I FEEL, rightly or wrongly, that the Cosmos is inherently perfect, perfectly what it is. And this applies to you and me (I know, shades of Dr.Pangloss). My attitude toward the total picture is positive. It's O.K. that I will probably be dead in a decade or three. That, it seems to me, is the way it SHOULD be, because that is the way it is. This is not a belief. I have no hesitation to acknowledge that I may be wrong. But it certainly does not feel that way. But this faith--that all is ultimately O.K., and I know that the suffering and starvation in the world appears to contradict that; it does only relatively speaking. But "ultimately", even the recent deaths of my father, wife and step-son are O.K.. Painful but O.K.. I could not convince anyone whose intuition/attitude/mind set/world view differs. This is aside from belief. But because I have this "attitude" I do not have to convince myself and others with a belief system. Beliefs, to me, serve some people as substitutes for faith. With faith, in this sense, there is no need for beliefs. I know I will take a lot of flack for this. That's when I will try to expand on the notion.

Right, a lot's been said since my last post, but I'll try and comment on as much as I can.

Fortune, I'm trying to be patient, but you're still very vague. What is God's will? What's it made of? Is it actually a 'thing'?

"So why would God, who is greater an infinitely more powerful than his/her/it's creation be bound by it?" - but he IS his creation, or so you say! If his creation is bound by laws of time and space, then He must be as well!

You've told me that 'God = everything' (the universe, the world, the whole lot), right? So if 'God = everything', then anything that is said about either God or everything must also apply to the other! if God is blue, then everything must be blue. If we are bound by laws of time and space, then God must be as well.

thethinkfactory, I think for this timeless debate to continue we'd have to establish what time actually is. Or I would at least - I'm not sure. I think there's been a thread on it, but I didn't get involved.

I don't like the whole 'humans as favoured creations' thing either. Who says animals aren't rational, conscious beings?? I think dolphins know more than we give them credit for - I think they're waiting there under the sea for us to blow ourselves up, so that they can evolve into sort of dolphin humanoids and take over the planet.

fortune, somebody's already said it now I know, but... LUCIFER!!!!! an angel, who disobeyed God. Was he perfect? And what the hell makes you think there's such a thing as an angel anyway, when was the last time you saw one? And why would God make a load of perfect angels and a load of imperfect humans?

"I agree with you that trying to convert a non-believer with argument is inevitably pointless, people come to religion because it feels right for them, not because someone convinced them to." - that's not always true. And a lot of people I know were born into religion, and they stick with it because they don't know any different, or they're too narrow minded (in my opinion) to consider the alternatives as much as they consider what they believe.

"I... wish that more people would take the time to understand why sensible people would choose to believe in something which may seem strange and even impossible to the casual observer." - I'm no casual observer, but a lot of what you believe seems impossible to me.

"I wish that more people would take the time to question their own beliefs before they condemn those who do not share them." - well, I don't really have any - so I'll just get right on with questioning yours

thethinkfactory said: "I can mage imaginary pictures in my head because my head exists." - 'in my head' here is a metaphor - imagining pictures 'in your head' has got NOTHING to do with whether your head exists. Nothing at all.

I agree that athiesm requires faith in the non-existence of God, but only in the context of a debate over the existence of God. Somebody who just doesn't think about it probably doesn't believe in God, but because they haven't actively rejected the existence of God as a possibility, and they just haven't considered it as being a possibility in the first place, they have not chosen to BELIEVE that there's no God - they just haven't chosen to believe that there is a God. Somebody who's never even heard of God is probably, technically, an athiest - but he hasn't taken any leaps of faith. If that makes any sense. Is that anything near to what you mean by 'passive atheism' JLNobody?

That everything is OK is certainly a nice thing to be able to believe, or a nice attitude to be able to hold, and I do hold it from time to time. It's almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy - if you start to think that everything's OK, everything pretty much is OK. If you're OK about dying, then death is an OK thing, for example. So it's handy, to think that everything's OK, good job!

Anybody know what happened to that 'truth about God' thread? I wrote a great big rant at whatshisname, and the thread disappeared before I could post it! I sent it to him as a PM, but I dunno whether he's been barred from the site or something... what's going on?

It's not that god isn't reading, it's just that god doesn't give a crap. You know, "Okay, the world's finished....back to making model airplanes."

Being immortal, omnipotent and all-powerful must be the most boring job in the world.