Define God

A choice, yes. One that was inevitably decided, I'm sure...

Religion bids us to blame all our foibles on them, especially Eve. 'God is within us' but Eve spoiled the fun? Nonsense. We should be glad she ate the fruit--unless we are of the mind that we wish we had never been born. Because without her 'sin' we'd not exist.

Their 'sin' resulted in the gaining of knowledge as individual entities (or at least what appears to be individual)--the 'skins' God covered them with were not animal skins but skin. The word skin in Hebrew is more like the opposite of naked. And that skin caused a separation that promotes our human start with a self-oriented awareness and a distance from the mind from which we came--that is the essence of 'sin.'

When the universe came to be, duality was born. Spirit vs. material, light vs. dark, male and female, etc. It is something unavoidable unless we count out material existence altogether. And by overcoming the idea of duality we overcome both 'sin' and 'death.' That is the secret of God--not christianity but reality.
Not superstitious rules and judgments but consciousness and awareness.

Unity is the opposite of duality.

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queen annie wrote:

A choice, yes. One that was inevitably decided, I'm sure...

Religion bids us to blame all our foibles on them, especially Eve. 'God is within us' but Eve spoiled the fun? Nonsense. We should be glad she ate the fruit--unless we are of the mind that we wish we had never been born. Because without her 'sin' we'd not exist. . .

Too much quote for a brain as small as mine to respond to. I'll take a smaller chunk:

This citation from Genesis 1:27 seems to indicate differently "Be fruitful and become many and fill the earth and subdue it, and have in subjection the fish of the sea and the flying creatures of the heavens and every living creature that is moving upon the earth."

Are not Adam and Eve being told to have children before they rebelled?

Where would they be if they had not eaten of the fruit; what would the earth be like?

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Queen

Welcome.
I would completely agree with you on this subject if somehow it could be stated in the present tense. Duality cannot be defined as having been born, as birth and death are dualistic concepts.

Sorry, that's all I can add right now. I am on my way out the door. 2 Cents

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queen annie wrote:

... by overcoming the idea of duality we overcome both 'sin' and 'death.' That is the secret of God--not christianity but reality. Not superstitious rules and judgments but consciousness and awareness.

Unity is the opposite of duality.

Thank you for that, and welcome to A2K!

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Queen annie, welcome to A2K. It's great to have someone who can write so well - and saves me the trouble since your views are much like mine.

neologist wrote:

Where would they be if they had not eaten of the fruit; what would the earth be like?

We'd all be naked and amoral - no different from any other animal. The earth would be cleaner and there would still be dodos and mammoths and oceans full of fish. There would be peace, but no heros. And no footprints on the moon.

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neologist wrote:

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

..

Is God the first cause?
Did he exist before the first event? If so, how may that be explained? Does he somehow transcend time?

If God is omniscient, is he bound to know all things or is he capable of selective foreknowledge?
If he knows all things in advance, do we have free will or are we completely determined?

If God is all powerful (and all loving), is there an explanation for why he permits evil and human suffering?

God is any one of the thousands of beings that mankind has created and imbued with supernatural powers to explain what we don't understand and ease our sense of powerlessness over fate and nature.

Storms, volcanoes, droughts, and diseases are less scary when they can be attributed to angry gods who may be appeased by the appropriate rites or sacrifices.

There is no logical way to explain God as the first cause. I don't know of any way Time may be transcended, since without time there can be no change, and without change nothing can be done.

Omniscience is impossible in the universe as we understand it (uncertainty principle) and no one has ever explained how God can remember and think without a material brain or its equivalent, or how he gets around the speed of light limitation on information transfer when the universe is at least 15 billion light-years in diameter.

We are not completely determined, but nature, nurture and life experiences limit how we can react in any situation. Some people have virtually no free will due to mental deficiencies or conditioning by parents, teachers, or spouses.

A loving God would not create evil beings (properly designed beings would have no reason or desire to choose to be evil) and would alleviate unnecessary suffering. But there is no reason that a god would necessarily be loving. It could just as easily be evil, malicious, ignorant of our feelings, or simply indifferent to human suffering.

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"God" is that which informs our conscience. "Conscience" is IMO the same as what religious folks call the "Holy Spirit".
I think of God as the mystery of Natural Law.
I also think God is beyond time in the sense that God is eternal, unchanging...the ever present "I am".
God doesn't explain away anything for me (tragedies, suffering), but represents that which is mysterious, that which cannot be explained.
I didn't use the word, "God", for a long time, and I don't think it's necessary to do so. For me, it just makes it easier to give the concept a name.

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Hi Terry;
Thanks for your post. You have brought up many interesting points.
In order to spare my limited intellect, I'll take just one:

Terry wrote:

. . . properly designed beings would have no reason or desire to choose to be evil. . .

In other words, they would not have free will. You may be right.

Now, my take on that:

The first humans rejected God's authority. True, they did not see the extent of human misery that would result. But they chose to set their own standards for good and bad.

We might expect an all powerful creator to immediately set in place a remedy for the sickness which arose in Eden.

He did.

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queen annie

It just occurred to me that if Unity is really the opposite of Duality, then don't the two of them make up another duality?
(Good/Evil, Birth/Death, Unity/Duality)

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Opposites? More proof, please.

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neologist

If you're asking me, I was just repeating something queen annie had stated. I was hoping queen might respond at some later point.

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queen annie wrote:

When the universe came to be, duality was born. Spirit vs. material, light vs. dark, male and female, etc. It is something unavoidable unless we count out material existence altogether. And by overcoming the idea of duality we overcome both 'sin' and 'death.' That is the secret of God--not christianity but reality.
Not superstitious rules and judgments but consciousness and awareness.

Unity is the opposite of duality.

I doubt there really is anything to overcome, except maybe the feeling that there is something to overcome.

I don't know, but It seems like queen annie's belief is that there is some ultimate Unity that we can attain and that will release us from the illusion of duality. IMO (maybe queen will agree) it is intended as myth. The duality/unity concept is always relevant to any situation; an idea to help us gain a deeper understanding of reality.

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neologist wrote:

Terry wrote:
. . . properly designed beings would have no reason or desire to choose to be evil. . .
In other words, they would not have free will. You may be right.

Now, my take on that:

The first humans rejected God's authority. True, they did not see the extent of human misery that would result. But they chose to set their own standards for good and bad.

We might expect an all powerful creator to immediately set in place a remedy for the sickness which arose in Eden.

He did.

I am free to go out today and disobey the law. I choose not to because I have no reason or desire to. "Good" people understand why laws are in place and obey them, not out of fear of punishment but for the good of society and to avoid harming their fellow human beings.

As I understand Christian theology, it is impossible for anyone to choose not to sin. That is not free will. Free will is having choices, but not being compelled by a sinful nature to make bad ones. This point is almost invariably misunderstood by Christians. Had we been created without evil, we would not be mindless robots, but we would be free from the irresistible urge to sin. We would still be able to sin if we so desired.

Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good or evil until they ate the fruit, so they had no idea that the serpent would mislead them (as a matter of fact, the serpent told them the absolute truth while God lied to keep them naked and ignorant) or that disobeying God was "wrong."

God should not have punished them for failing his test when he failed to give them the necessary character to resist temptation when he created them.

What is the real difference between people who give in to temptation and those who resist it? Will-power? Innate goodness? Education and training? Where were Adam and Eve to get such things, if not from God?

I do not believe that any being would knowingly choose evil over good unless God had bestowed a less-than-perfect body/mind/soul on them. A perfect being could choose evil, but would not.

It has been at least six thousand years since Eden (Bible reckoning, mankind has probably had the ability to know good and evil for somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 years) and people still have the same old biological urges which impel them to harm others. Promising salvation/punsihment after death does nothing to end the misery here on earth. When do you suppose God will get around to fixing the real problem: our brains have been programmed by millions of years of evolution to put our own survival and happiness first, and only thousands of years of civilization to instill the social conditioning to counteract such tendencies.

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In a previous post I mentioned a seventeenth century writer named Jacob Boehme. I found an excerpt from his writings where he gives his personal definition of God:

Quote:

When I ponder, what God is, I then say: He is the One in contrast to the creature, as an eternal Nothing. He has neither a foundation, a beginning nor state; and is of naught, save only of Himself. He is the Will of the Abyss. He occupies neither space nor place. From eternity in eternity in Himself He comes to be. He is like or similar to nothing, and hath no particular place which He inhabits.

This description is extremely mystical but I found it to be interesting.

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That Jacob Boehme was quite the mystic--I like his words.

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echi wrote:

queen annie

It just occurred to me that if Unity is really the opposite of Duality, then don't the two of them make up another duality?
(Good/Evil, Birth/Death, Unity/Duality)

I never thought of it like that...verrry interesting concept...one I must give some thought to.

Perhaps my choice of word was a poor one. Unity is the resolution of duality, maybe?

I don't think that the initial state of unity can be returned to--matter has been created and surely will exist from now on. If God is 'mind' and man is made in the image of the thoughts of that mind, then duality is necessary for the conscious awareness on both sides of the 'line'--one side being spirit and the other being matter. In order to observe self, one must have a mirror, a reflection to look upon....man might be that mirror for God, in due time...

I see numbers as 'vibrational energies' and as such, the building blocks of the universe. We count with them, but God doesn't need to count. Why count the chips when all the chips are your own?

1 = unity
2 = duality
3 = seed
4 = creation
5 = grace
6 = death (and by extension, redemption)
7 = divine perfection
8 = regeneration
9 = judgment (as in decision not condemnation)
10 = crowning glory

And in this sequence, 1 + 1 = 2 (of course, hee hee) but then add one to 2 and there is three, and so on and so on.

So, adding man or matter to one which is unity/God--there becomes duality.

We cannot go back, only forward. And so we progress through the 9 energies, until we reach 10, which in essence, is actually 1, and so the duality is not reversed but surpassed or overcome. Reality achieved beyond dualism, IOW.

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God....
God...
the All-Powerful one
dewlling in heaven..
(where we go after death, if we trully believe in Him, love Him, and follow His commandments, and laws)

No one can really describe God as in how he looks..
because that's a mystery to everyone
revealed only to those closest to God
(I believe that being as close as Abraham, or Moses was to God, is impossible these days)
But there are some parts in the Bible where it describes heaven, and God sitting on his throne, with his robe tumbling down on the floor, and lots of other parts where it kind of.. decsribes God
If you're curious enough, you can get a Bible and read something in there
Usually though.. if you dont understand God, you won't understand the Bible (thats just how it is) so it may be very confusing to you...
But if you get a Bible with an Index, that has topics like "Depression", "Death", "Joy", "Forgiveness", there should be "God" in there...
and it should have some Biblical places where to find that topic..
a Bible is really awesome, believe me, if only you're given the ability to understand it, because in the it says that the meaning and understand of the Bible will be closed to unbelievers...
so yeah..
I believe in Him (and we should do more than just believe, because even the devil and demons "believe" he exists- we should obey him, and if we obey him truthfully, we love Him)
There. I've said enough.

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Terry,

Adam and Eve were told by God personally that they were not to eat the fruit of a certain tree. He told them what the punishment for disobeying Him would be. Eve took the fruit from the serpent and made the decision to eat it. After she ate it, she gave it to Adam who then made the decision to eat it.

Eve even told the serpent God told them they could eat anything in the garden except that one fruit. So, sounds pretty much to me like Adam and Eve knew they WERE NOT supposed to do it and they did it anyway.

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Terry wrote:

. . . As I understand Christian theology, it is impossible for anyone to choose not to sin. That is not free will. Free will is having choices, but not being compelled by a sinful nature to make bad ones. This point is almost invariably misunderstood by Christians. Had we been created without evil, we would not be mindless robots, but we would be free from the irresistible urge to sin. We would still be able to sin if we so desired.

Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good or evil until they ate the fruit, so they had no idea that the serpent would mislead them (as a matter of fact, the serpent told them the absolute truth while God lied to keep them naked and ignorant) or that disobeying God was "wrong."

God should not have punished them for failing his test when he failed to give them the necessary character to resist temptation when he created them.

What is the real difference between people who give in to temptation and those who resist it? Will-power? Innate goodness? Education and training? Where were Adam and Eve to get such things, if not from God?

I do not believe that any being would knowingly choose evil over good unless God had bestowed a less-than-perfect body/mind/soul on them. A perfect being could choose evil, but would not.

It has been at least six thousand years since Eden (Bible reckoning, mankind has probably had the ability to know good and evil for somewhere between 30,000 and 100,000 years) and people still have the same old biological urges which impel them to harm others. Promising salvation/punsihment after death does nothing to end the misery here on earth. When do you suppose God will get around to fixing the real problem: our brains have been programmed by millions of years of evolution to put our own survival and happiness first, and only thousands of years of civilization to instill the social conditioning to counteract such tendencies.

You make a very good point which probably deserves a thread of its own.

But I submit to you that Adam and Eve were created with a perfect conscience having only one moral choice: that is whether or not to accept the set of rules God had internalized within them.

Satan intimated that God was withholding something good by not allowing them to make their own rules. Human history has shown that mankind has not been very successful at going it alone.

And yes, Adam and Eve's rebellion has put us all into slavery to sin.

But not without hope.

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