Can science now say how it could be that God is eternal, if It exists.

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I have no idea how the analogy of copper pennies in a jar...etc...has any bearing on what I posted. I understand we were talking about the one cosmos that is all.. are you meaning to imply that the jar of pennies is analogous to the one cosmos that is all... and the pennies are the 'all'? If so....it is an improper analogy as the jar and the pennies are two different things....iow..whereas the cosmos is actually constituted of the 'all', the jar is glass is not constituted of copper..

You clearly did not understand what was said to you wrt human perceptions being unable to apprehend the oneness of the cosmos.. Please understand that everything you conceive of in the mind is a mental construct that represents some real aspect external to it....it is of course not that actual aspect, but merely a symbol that stands for that actual aspect.. The real is forever on the other side of the concept...so when it comes to the one cosmos that is constituted of, so far as human perceptions are concerned, infinite aspects...it could never be apprehended by the human conceptual mind for even if it could integrate an infinite numbers of concepts....it would still be just a mental construct to represent the real one cosmos. So in religious practice, we still the mind so that it is free from thought....and all that is left is reality itself...not a conception of reality... I appreciate that if you are not familiar with the non-dual nature of existence, and the way to apprehend it.....then you will probably not understand this at first...but suffice to say at this stage....you will never understand using your conceptual mind...

Looks like this should be continued in another thread -- I think it is probably hijacking the thread.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Looks like this should be continued in another thread -- I think it is probably hijacking the thread.

I do not think it is off topic...but if that is your wish, fine...

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

I have no idea how the analogy of copper pennies in a jar...etc...has any bearing on what I posted. I understand we were talking about the one cosmos that is all.. are you meaning to imply that the jar of pennies is analogous to the one cosmos that is all... and the pennies are the 'all'? If so....it is an improper analogy as the jar and the pennies are two different things....iow..whereas the cosmos is actually constituted of the 'all', the jar is glass is not constituted of copper..

Fine, we'll continue here if you feel it's not off-topic.

Your problem, in my opinion, with using 'all' seems to be the attempt to assume that it is in some way special enough as 'all' that it's not allowed to considered the way we might consider other things. I have a radio. It won't work without most of its little bits, and those little bits won't without of their own little bits functioning correctly -- and so on. The jar of pennies was an attempt at a very simple analogy to demonstrate that point. I used the descriptive phrase "jar of pennies," but if I had chosen instead to call it "SiCu" (for silicon and copper), does that change its nature? I think probably not.

The glass of the jar, the copper of the pennies, their manufacture and value, are all components of SiCu. But any of them can be individually manipulated in such a way as to change SiCu itself. Sometimes very little (remove 1 penny from 1,000 and you don't change much), sometimes more (break the jar, and now what have you got?).

You clearly did not understand what was said to you wrt human perceptions being unable to apprehend the oneness of the cosmos.. Please understand that everything you conceive of in the mind is a mental construct that represents some real aspect external to it....it is of course not that actual aspect, but merely a symbol that stands for that actual aspect.. The real is forever on the other side of the concept...so when it comes to the one cosmos that is constituted of, so far as human perceptions are concerned, infinite aspects...it could never be apprehended by the human conceptual mind for even if it could integrate an infinite numbers of concepts....it would still be just a mental construct to represent the real one cosmos. So in religious practice, we still the mind so that it is free from thought....and all that is left is reality itself...not a conception of reality... I appreciate that if you are not familiar with the non-dual nature of existence, and the way to apprehend it.....then you will probably not understand this at first...but suffice to say at this stage....you will never understand using your conceptual mind...

I think that my mind is a temporal (and physical) part of the what choose to call "the real," but I am also aware that there was a time when my mind wasn't, and there will be a time when my mind is no more. That changes (probably in an infinitesimal way) your "real." It is unimportant that my mind cannot grasp the totality of "the real," or better put, Grok it all together. That doesn't alter the fact that at any instant in time, both "the real" and I exist, one within the other for sure, but in a whole multiple of ways independent of it. It doesn't matter to my reality in the slightest what some bozo is presently doing in South Africa, or whether there's the most amazing supernova happening in a galaxy far, far away.

And for the record, I do not accept your notion of stilling the mind "so that it is free from thought." If you could do that, there would be no mind left, no thought, and therefore no way back. As near as I've been able to discover, that anchor (which is certainly in thought, in the mind) is ever-present.

 

[psychoslice]

So we have evidence that gravity always works. But if we can't prove that it does or how it does it, that evidence is worthless. Walked off any cliffs lately?

Evidence, besides hearsay, is a circumstance that indicates a possible Truth. There is visible evidence that the Sun goes around the Earth and less intuitive evidence that the Earth rotates making the Sun appear to move across the sky. The Truth of the matter is determined by gathering further evidence that corroborates one or the other (or another) possibility. Same thing for a human observer appearing to affect the outcome of quantum transaction, re: Schrödinger's cat.



Everything that exists, including imagination (as long as we refer to it as that), except lies (which are the intentional avoidance or denial of Truth), which only self-aware sentient beings can fabricate. Animals are innocent. Aspects of Truth are (at least): knowledge, justice, love and beauty/art--from the totally objective, blended through to the totally subjective, respectively. Above all, Truth = God, wherever that leads, whether that Truth is a sentient super-spirit being God, or just the ultimate ideal worthy of pursuit god--as opposed to the gods of money, power, sex, fame etc..

You asked.

Yes, and there is no evidence for a god, your just making up what you can in vain to prove yourself right, I believe there is the pure Source of all there is, but it certainly isn't a god how most religions see it, its all there is, and we are that also. I personally don't like the word god, it has been abused over and over for many years, and really means nothing anymore.

 

[Evangelicalhumanist]

So we have evidence that gravity always works. But if we can't prove that it does or how it does it, that evidence is worthless. Walked off any cliffs lately?

Yes, and there is no evidence for a god, your just making up what you can in vain to prove yourself right, I believe there is the pure Source of all there is, but it certainly isn't a god how most religions see it, its all there is, and we are that also. I personally don't like the word god, it has been abused over and over for many years, and really means nothing anymore.

I think it goes deeper. What ThePainfulTruth said is important, but misses something critical to science. Science doesn't just use the evidence (for example for gravity) but also makes predictions. Yes, we can observe that everything falls, we can time it and measure it and all that. But science also makes predictions about what would happen under a variety of circumstances, and then tests those circumstances. And given the multitude of satellites now orbiting our planet, and the one heading relentlessly off into the cosmos after having faultlessly (and according to the predictions) visited other members of our solar system, we have pretty good reason to accept that our understanding of gravity is essentially true. Of course it might change one day. In the presence of a superstrong gravity field, who knows? The predictions are there, we just haven't had the opportunity to set up and execute the experiments.

But not only is there no evidence for a god -- nobody has ever been able to make a prediction about what would happen as a consequence of their being such an entity, in any circumstance whatsoever, and see whether it happens. Now, this is a most interesting point, because in fact, people do make such assumptions all of the time, and then test them relentlessly. They pray for cures, they pray for rain, they invoke God's name in their curses, hoping to have something bad happen to somebody who has crossed them. There's no end. And there is no result whatever that can be measured beyond the statistical probability of anything happening.

This really should be a point of enormous interest to those who really think that there's a god who has anything at all to do with this world and how it operates.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Fine, we'll continue here if you feel it's not off-topic.

Your problem, in my opinion, with using 'all' seems to be the attempt to assume that it is in some way special enough as 'all' that it's not allowed to considered the way we might consider other things. I have a radio. It won't work without most of its little bits, and those little bits won't without of their own little bits functioning correctly -- and so on. The jar of pennies was an attempt at a very simple analogy to demonstrate that point. I used the descriptive phrase "jar of pennies," but if I had chosen instead to call it "SiCu" (for silicon and copper), does that change its nature? I think probably not.

The glass of the jar, the copper of the pennies, their manufacture and value, are all components of SiCu. But any of them can be individually manipulated in such a way as to change SiCu itself. Sometimes very little (remove 1 penny from 1,000 and you don't change much), sometimes more (break the jar, and now what have you got?).

I think that my mind is a temporal (and physical) part of the what choose to call "the real," but I am also aware that there was a time when my mind wasn't, and there will be a time when my mind is no more. That changes (probably in an infinitesimal way) your "real." It is unimportant that my mind cannot grasp the totality of "the real," or better put, Grok it all together. That doesn't alter the fact that at any instant in time, both "the real" and I exist, one within the other for sure, but in a whole multiple of ways independent of it. It doesn't matter to my reality in the slightest what some bozo is presently doing in South Africa, or whether there's the most amazing supernova happening in a galaxy far, far away.

And for the record, I do not accept your notion of stilling the mind "so that it is free from thought." If you could do that, there would be no mind left, no thought, and therefore no way back. As near as I've been able to discover, that anchor (which is certainly in thought, in the mind) is ever-present.

Correct...the non-dual real can not be compared to the apparent aspects that constitute it....because these apparent aspects are only perceived as aspects due to the design of the limited vibration spectral bands of the human sensory system plus the mind's self identification with the body in time and space... Now the non-dual real is everywhere in time and space and is all vibrations...infinite...

Your analogy does not apply...not even close...

You think this about your mind and think that....but thoughts are not real...except as thoughts.....the real is on the other side.. So yes... at the end of your life, this thinking process will end and you will be no more....this is true for everyone... But for those who transcend self identification with the physical body before they die...then the awareness developed in life will endure in a vibrationary domain (spiritual) beyond detection by present human technology...

It does not matter whether you accept or reject the notion of stilling the mind....all that matters is the realization that comes about when the mind is stilled. It is not that there is no mind left when thoughts stop.....it is that there is no ego mind and hence no 'you'....but mind definitely remains....not one though that self identifies with the physical body...but an expanded awareness some call Self realization.... And for the record...any religious aspirant who has the passion, patience, and courage can realize this still mind..a mind that does not interpret reality conceptually...but it an integral of the oneness of the apparent "all that is"...

 

[Milton Platt]

No, this isn't an attempt to prove God. I'm just examining the proposition that if God does exist, IF...., then does it make any sense to say, as the Bible and other revealed texts claim, that God always was? I've claimed for God having always been is a proposition that's beyond human comprehension.

Enter the transactional interpretation of quantum mechanics. Until recently, that's the theory that's been expressed as quantum transactions occurring with offer and confirmation waves moving backward and forward in time. But that's counter-intuitive, just as much as there being multi-worlds or observer influence of quantum transactions. But what if we think of it as those transactions happening in an (?external?) timeless environment. Suddenly, even though no proof is involved or claimed, it becomes intuitively understandable.

I think that's an excellent reason to favor it.

The term "god" is way too loose. You must carefully define the attributes.

 

[Rick O'Shez]

So in religious practice, we still the mind so that it is free from thought....and all that is left is reality itself...not a conception of reality... I appreciate that if you are not familiar with the non-dual nature of existence, and the way to apprehend it.....then you will probably not understand this at first...but suffice to say at this stage....you will never understand using your conceptual mind...

No. When the mind is free from thought it is just a mind free from thought. There is a more intuitive knowing, but this is still subjective and personal, and says nothing about "reality" or the nature of the cosmos or whatever. You are arrogantly projecting out a subjective experience and claiming it corresponds to some larger "reality", but this is mere speculation and wishful thinking on your part. Basically these are religious beliefs which you are adding in.

It seems you are now so attached to your religious beliefs that you don't even realise you are adding them to your experience, and you don't realise that your religious beliefs grossly distort your perception.

 

[ThePainefulTruth]

Yes, and there is no evidence for a god, your just making up what you can in vain to prove yourself right, I believe there is the pure Source of all there is, but it certainly isn't a god how most religions see it, its all there is, and we are that also. I personally don't like the word god, it has been abused over and over for many years, and really means nothing anymore.

"....there is a pure Source for all there is,...."

Now who is it making stuff up? Are you saying that the stuff I'm making up is evidence which I stated we don't have?

I think it goes deeper. What ThePainfulTruth said is important, but misses something critical to science. Science doesn't just use the evidence (for example for gravity) but also makes predictions. Yes, we can observe that everything falls, we can time it and measure it and all that. But science also makes predictions about what would happen under a variety of circumstances, and then tests those circumstances. And given the multitude of satellites now orbiting our planet, and the one heading relentlessly off into the cosmos after having faultlessly (and according to the predictions) visited other members of our solar system, we have pretty good reason to accept that our understanding of gravity is essentially true. Of course it might change one day. In the presence of a superstrong gravity field, who knows? The predictions are there, we just haven't had the opportunity to set up and execute the experiments.

Yes, like Einstein's prediction that starlight would be "bent" when passing through a strong gravitational field, which has been verified. And how do we come up with these predictions? We use speculation and thought experiments which could prove or disprove elements of a theory, or a whole theory itself. I'm not sure what any of this has to do with a realm of timelessness.

But not only is there no evidence for a god -- nobody has ever been able to make a prediction about what would happen as a consequence of their being such an entity, in any circumstance whatsoever, and see whether it happens.

We've virtually disproven all the revealed gods, and that leaves only one, a laissez-faire deist God. But since there is no evidence for or against such a God, or no God, (by design, if there is a God), we are left with a prediction: A deist God would be indistinguishable from there being no God, which gets us nowhere except for being able to say that we can't dismiss, or reasonably favor, one possibility over the other. If there is a God, it's incredibly cunning, and if there isn't, the complete lack of evidence for a spontaneous creation is an incredible coincidence. Unfortunately, however, we can't use a lack of evidence as evidence. Ironies withing ironies in an aspic with no substance at all.

Now, this is a most interesting point, because in fact, people do make such assumptions all of the time, and then test them relentlessly. They pray for cures, they pray for rain, they invoke God's name in their curses, hoping to have something bad happen to somebody who has crossed them. There's no end. And there is no result whatever that can be measured beyond the statistical probability of anything happening.
This really should be a point of enormous interest to those who really think that there's a god who has anything at all to do with this world and how it operates.

Yes, the supernatural and divine revelation are all coincidence (or manufactured), leaving us again with two above mentioned possibilities. But what we have to contend with is people who can't stand doubt and insist on possessing certain knowledge about the unknowable, and those who exploit them.

The term "god" is way too loose. You must carefully define the attributes.

Which I already have, but in the interest of enlightenment, I will reiterate: God=Truth=God, and if God is conscious, It is the embodiment of Truth. And if God is not a conscious supernatural spirit being, at least we still have Truth. And in either case, the aspects of Truth are knowledge, justice, love and beauty--objective to subjective respectively.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

No. When the mind is free from thought it is just a mind free from thought. There is a more intuitive knowing, but this is still subjective and personal, and says nothing about "reality" or the nature of the cosmos or whatever. You are arrogantly projecting out a subjective experience and claiming it corresponds to some larger "reality", but this is mere speculation and wishful thinking on your part. Basically these are religious beliefs which you are adding in.

It seems you are now so attached to your religious beliefs that you don't even realise you are adding them to your experience, and you don't realise that your religious beliefs grossly distort your perception.

When the mind is free from thought....where is the "I" that thinks?

 

[psychoslice]

"....there is a pure Source for all there is,...."

Now who is it making stuff up? Are you saying that the stuff I'm making up is evidence which I stated we don't have?



Yes, like Einstein's prediction that starlight would be "bent" when passing through a strong gravitational field, which has been verified. And how do we come up with these predictions? We use speculation and thought experiments which could prove or disprove elements of a theory, or a whole theory itself. I'm not sure what any of this has to do with a realm of timelessness.


We've virtually disproven all the revealed gods, and that leaves only one, a laissez-faire deist God. But since there is no evidence for or against such a God, or no God, (by design, if there is a God), we are left with a prediction: A deist God would be indistinguishable from there being no God, which gets us nowhere except for being able to say that we can't dismiss, or reasonably favor, one possibility over the other. If there is a God, it's incredibly cunning, and if there isn't, the complete lack of evidence for a spontaneous creation is an incredible coincidence. Unfortunately, however, we can't use a lack of evidence as evidence. Ironies withing ironies in an aspic with no substance at all.



Yes, the supernatural and divine revelation are all coincidence (or manufactured), leaving us again with two above mentioned possibilities. But what we have to contend with is people who can't stand doubt and insist on possessing certain knowledge about the unknowable, and those who exploit them.




Which I already have, but in the interest of enlightenment, I will reiterate: God=Truth=God, and if God is conscious, It is the embodiment of Truth. And if God is not a conscious supernatural spirit being, at least we still have Truth. And in either case, the aspects of Truth are knowledge, justice, love and beauty--objective to subjective respectively.

Well of course the source is the cosmos which is all one, my point is that you don't have to make the cosmos into a god, and then add a personality to it, you don't have to worship it like people once worshiped the sun, that simple.

 

[paarsurrey]

Can science now say how it could be that God is eternal, if It exists.

Nature has been creator by G-d. One attribute of G-d is Hidden :

[57:4] He is the First and the Last, and the Manifest and the Hidden, and He knows all things full well.

[57:5] He it is Who created the heavens and the earth in six periods, then He settled Himself on the Throne. He knows what enters the earth and what comes out of it, and what comes down from heaven and what goes up into it. And He is with you wheresoever you may be. And Allah sees all that you do.
http://www.alislam.org/quran/search2/showChapter.php?ch=57&verse=0
Science deals in only physical and material things, so science cannot detect Hidden G-d from Manifest in everything with his attributes. Whenever science will try it, science will fail miserably and will become gibberish. Please
And it is sign of G-d. Right? Please

Regards

 

[Rick O'Shez]

When the mind is free from thought....where is the "I" that thinks?

Red herring. That has nothing to do with you adding religious beliefs to the experience of a thought-free mind.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Red herring. That has nothing to do with you adding religious beliefs to the experience of a thought-free mind.

Now that is a classic red herring....so I will not let you divert attention from what you said....ie. "When the mind is free from thought it is just a mind free from thought.". So my logical mind wants to know what you think happens to the "I" that thinks when the mind is free from thought?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

Now that is a classic red herring....so I will not let you divert attention from what you said....ie. "When the mind is free from thought it is just a mind free from thought.". So my logical mind wants to know what you think happens to the "I" that thinks when the mind is free from thought?

Yes, a mind free from thought is just a mind free from thought. The assumption of "I" goes much deeper than thinking, it is a deep-seated habitual assumption, more a feeling than a thought.

My point was that there is no need to add a load of woo to these different states of mind, and that adding religious beliefs is counter-productive because it distracts from seeing clearly what is actually there. What I am suggesting is more looking closely and less clutching at metaphysical straws.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

Yes, a mind free from thought is just a mind free from thought. The assumption of "I" goes much deeper than thinking, it is a deep-seated habitual assumption, more a feeling than a thought.

My point was that there is no need to add a load of woo to these different states of mind, and that adding religious beliefs is counter-productive because it distracts from seeing clearly what is actually there. What I am suggesting is more looking closely and less clutching at metaphysical straws.

But the thinker is the 'I"....it is the I that thinks!

So if you think that the thinker is an assumption....what and/or who is making the assumption? And on what grounds is the thinker an assumption?

And if the thinker is a feeling...what and/or who is the feeler? Is the feeler different from the thinker or one and the same?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

But the thinker is the 'I"....it is the I that thinks!
So if you think that the thinker is an assumption....what and who is that is making the assumption? And on what grounds is the thinker an assumption?
And if the thinker is a feeling...what and who is the feeler? Is the feeler different from the thinker or one and the same?

"I" is a deep-seated assumption resulting from identification with mind-body processes, the assumption of ownership. Assuming "my thoughts", "my feelings", "my body", "my mind", "my consciousness", etc.

 

[Willamena]

I think that my mind is a temporal (and physical) part of the what choose to call "the real," but I am also aware that there was a time when my mind wasn't, and there will be a time when my mind is no more. That changes (probably in an infinitesimal way) your "real." It is unimportant that my mind cannot grasp the totality of "the real," or better put, Grok it all together. That doesn't alter the fact that at any instant in time, both "the real" and I exist, one within the other for sure, but in a whole multiple of ways independent of it. It doesn't matter to my reality in the slightest what some bozo is presently doing in South Africa, or whether there's the most amazing supernova happening in a galaxy far, far away.

And for the record, I do not accept your notion of stilling the mind "so that it is free from thought." If you could do that, there would be no mind left, no thought, and therefore no way back. As near as I've been able to discover, that anchor (which is certainly in thought, in the mind) is ever-present.

If your mind is given the capacity to come into "the real" and exit "the real," doesn't that set it apart from "the real"?

It needn't be apart from the real.

What is "the real," but not accessible for mind to verify, is "the imagined."

Re part 2, "thought" is everything that goes on in the mind. The trick to stilling it is to realize superfluous thought.

 

[Ben Dhyan]

"I" is a deep-seated assumption resulting from identification with mind-body processes, the assumption of ownership. Assuming "my thoughts", "my feelings", "my body", "my mind", "my consciousness", etc.

So when the mind is still and free from thought....do you think there an assumption of my experience of no thought?

 

[Rick O'Shez]

So when the mind is still and free from thought....do you think there an assumption of my experience of no thought?

The assumption of "I" is deep-seated and habitual, and largely unconscious. Identification with thoughts is a relatively superficial aspect.